New Jain Sites, rock art - Gingee, Tamilnadu

Over the last three months, two rock art sites, two caverns with Jaina beds, and dolmens have been discovered within a radius of 25 km on the hillocks behind the Gingee fort in Tamil Nadu’s Villupuram district.

The rock art consists of a painting of a deer done in white kaolin with outlines in red ochre.

“This is really rare,” Mr. Gandhirajan, an explorer who specializes in art history said. While this figure of a deer is about 3 feet by 3 feet in size, there are tiny drawings of deer and lizard (udu mbu in Tamil) on the adjacent rock surface, as if to contra-distinguish their size. He estimated that the paintings might belong to circa 1000 B.C. “These paintings were done by pre-historic men — by hunter-gatherers who used to live in this cavern. Much later, the Jain monks occupied them

More in this Hindu report.