The word ‘palimpsest’, however, is not bandied about. But any object that has been reused or reclaimed by retrofitting or repurposing has been around for centuries and is frequently found in history, architecture, geology, and archaeology. The job of – and the fun for – the scholar is to trace these hand-me-down ‘upgrades’ conducted by different people in different times, whether it be from Kingsway to Rajpath to Kartavyapath, or Valmiki’s epic tweaked along the way via Kamban, Tulsidas and Ramanand Sagar.
Bridging ‘sustainability’ and ‘palimpest’, however, a remarkable work has recently been conducted by a team from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Archaeological Research at Ashoka University headed by historian Nayanjot Lahiri. They find an unlikely place to peel away the onion layers of time: the forests of Madhya Pradesh, sections of Bandhavgarh National Park and Tiger Reserve, to be precise.
‘Forests and wilderness occupied a far larger space in historic India as compared to settled domesticated land. And yet, we write about those centuries (6th c. BCE-5th c. CE) primarily from the perspective of cities and states,’ starts the research paper (bit.ly/3UPP0WE) published in the September 2022 issue of Current Science. From field studies conducted over four seasons from March 2021 to June 2022, the archaeologists investigated material relics and what these reveal about patterns of human occupation in a segment of Bandhavgarh’s forests. Recording cartographic details and tracks on GPS devices and then analysing them with satellite imagery, the study reveals what was hidden to serious study.
The ‘ground-joining’ work explores ‘how histories of settlements in jungles and wilderness, where no habitations presently exist, can be studied.’ The pieces de resistance are 81 rock-cut cave shelters dating back to 2nd c. CE, out of which around 26 caves have inscriptions in Brahmi script in the Prakrit language. What is marvellous is how the ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ have segued in and out with the ebb and flow of habitation. In 1938, the inscriptions on the cave walls were discovered by archaeologist Niranjan Prasad Chakravarti. But for him and other historians who followed, the forests ‘came in the way’ of their study. Lahiri’s team recontextualises the sites in their habitat, seeing the way they were constructed, used and maintained over time – probably as resting/halting places for travellers journeying from north to central India and the Deccan.
Inscriptions include mention of private donors comprising of merchants, traders and craftspeople. 2nd c. CE Cave 12 (photo), made up of a hall with potsherds and a room with a stone bed and pillow, is close to a stream. ‘The thick trees growing out of slopes, the sudden clearings, the streams and leaf-sodden spaces in their vicinity evoke the wild while the dark cave recesses with their inky interiors, look like domesticated dwelling spaces. This cave, though, because of the forest having taken over, brings the exterior into the interior,’ Lahiri tells me, adding how it’s ‘straight out of Lara Croft’.
8th c CE temples from the reign of the Kalachuris also stand across Bandhavgarh as markers of the passage of time and nature in the absence of man. A few centuries later, a minister under King Yuvarajadeva I, added inscriptions to advertise his own position. Then there are the 13th c. CE temples built by the Vaghelas at sites that already had a Kalachauri presence, ‘just as some of the early historic cave shelters were retrofitted by the Kalachuris’.
This fascinating revelation by the Ashoka University team even has had its share of ‘palimpsestic’ irony. Earlier this week, the Archaeological Survey of India made headlines when it claimed that ‘after a gap of nearly 85 years, [it] has restarted exploration and documentation work of ancient caves, remains of Buddhist structures, temples, and statues of Vishnu Dashavataras in the Bandhavgarh reserve forest area’. Its exploration project was conducted between May 20 and June 27 2022. No mention of the Ashoka findings have been made.
ASI being ‘palimpsestic’ or ‘self-sustainable’? I believe there’s a far simpler term to describe its action.