Subhashis Das
Individual Researcher, Hazaribagh, India
Email: subdas.hzb@gmail.com
Volume 6, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF
Article DOI: 10.21659/chitro.v6n3.02
Received October 03, 2016
Revised October 20, 2016
Accepted October 20, 2016
Published October 22, 2016
Abstract:
Cupules have been reported from most of the states in the country. Not much is known about them, profound study is relentlessly being carried out by scholars across the country to unravel the mystery of these enigmatic relics of our ancestors. Albeit abundant study of cupules on rock surfaces continues much effort is essential to untangle their obscurity on megaliths. Jharkhand has an abundance of cupmark sites in caves, rock shelters, and rock arts and even on prehistoric megalithic sites that lie strewn all over the state. The paper in question comprises a study of cupules on four megalithic sites in and around Hazaribagh district of the Jharkhand state that are his personal discoveries. No excavation of these sites has been undertaken neither any tool nor flake has been recovered from the sites that could establish the monuments’ and the cupules’ possible age. The paper is not only a study of cupmarks but basing on certain belief systems of the megalithic tribes of Jharkhand it also attempts to seek various possible causes that may have prompted people in hoary antiquity to create these inscrutable indentations. Furthermore the paper also delves into the author’s study how cupule making having gone through a transition still continues in an unrelenting manner among the present day peasants; the surface only having changed.
Keywords: Cupules, Hazaribagh, tribals, Megalith, Daraki Chattan, Gurua, Napo, Raja Gosain.