• Jan 25 2016
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Rock Art Gallery Chaturbhuj Nala

The Chaturbhujnath Nala Rock Art Shelters are considered the longest rock art gallery in the world, situated in Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary near Bhanpura in Mandsaur district in Madhya Pradesh. About 30km away from Bhanpura, the nearest city, you will spot a faded sign that tells you that the rock shelters are 6.5 kilometers away.Named after a small modern temple, Chaturbhujnath Mandir, this site was discovered in 1977 by three schoolteachers, Ramesh Kumar Pancholi, Abid Chaudhury and Satish Bhatnagar. The rock shelters are now looked after by the Archaeological Survey of India.

The 800-metre-long rock art site is home to 2,510 paintings. In India, rock art, especially paintings and carvings, have been known to exist over centuries, starting from the Mesolithic Age and continuing to the Early Historic period. The Chaturbhujnath Nala rock shelter is a repository of rock art images in 12 different styles and time periods, starting from the Upper Palaeolithic period (50,000 – 12,000 years ago), and continuing through the Mesolithic period (12,000 – 6,000 years ago) then the Chalcolithic period with a simplified styles (6,000-4,000 years ago) and even the early Historic period.These paintings created across centuries, offer a glimpse of the everyday life of the then native inhabitants of the area and how it progressed with time.