Ancient Madhya Pradesh: Bhimbetka, Sanchi and Ujjain

Madhya Pradesh holds the longest record of human settlement of any state in India. Painted rock shelters in the Vindhyan hills take the story back to the Stone Age, the stupas of Sanchi carry it through the Mauryan and Satavahana centuries, and Ujjain on the Shipra was a capital, a market and a centre of astronomy long before Delhi existed. This note covers the three places the syllabus names, Bhimbetka, Sanchi and Ujjain, and the sites around them that papers ask along with them.

Bhimbetka and the Stone Age

The rock shelters of Bhimbetka lie in Raisen district, in the foothills of the Vindhyas south of Bhopal, inside what is now the Ratapani forest. They were brought to notice by the archaeologist V. S. Wakankar in 1957, and more than seven hundred shelters have been counted, of which several hundred carry paintings. The oldest paintings belong to the Mesolithic period and the sequence continues into historical times, so the same rock face may show a hunting scene above a horse rider with a sword. The colours came from mineral and vegetable sources, red and white being the commonest. The best known shelters are the Auditorium Cave and the Zoo Rock, where animals are crowded together. Bhimbetka was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2003. Two other prehistoric places of the state are usually asked with it: Adamgarh near Narmadapuram, which also has rock shelters, and Hathnora in Sehore district on the Narmada, where a hominin skull fossil known as the Narmada Man was found in 1982.

Sanchi

Sanchi stands on a hill in Raisen district, near the old town of Vidisha. The Great Stupa, Stupa 1, was built in brick by Ashoka in the third century before Christ, and under the Shungas it was enlarged to about twice its size and faced in stone with a railing and a staircase. The four carved gateways, the toranas, were added in the first century before Christ in the Satavahana period, and they carry the jataka stories and scenes from the Buddha's life. At Sanchi the Buddha himself is never shown in human form; he appears as a wheel, a throne, a pair of footprints or the bodhi tree, which is the mark of early Buddhist art.

The site was lost to the forest and was noticed again in 1818 by a British officer, General Henry Taylor. It suffered badly from treasure hunters before John Marshall of the Archaeological Survey had it conserved between 1912 and 1919. Sanchi was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1989.

Ujjain

Ujjain stands on the Shipra and was the capital of Avanti, one of the sixteen mahajanapadas, whose southern half was ruled from Mahishmati, identified with Maheshwar on the Narmada. Ashoka was sent here as viceroy while his father Bindusara reigned, and in the Gupta age Chandragupta the Second used Ujjayini as his western capital. Tradition makes it the seat of the legendary Vikramaditya, from whose name the Vikram Samvat era of 57 before Christ is counted, and of the nine gems of his court, among them the poet Kalidasa, who praised the city in the Meghaduta, and the astronomer Varahamihira. Brahmagupta worked at the observatory here. Indian astronomers drew their prime meridian through Ujjain, and the Tropic of Cancer passes close to the city, which is why the Jantar Mantar built by Sawai Jai Singh the Second in the eighteenth century stands here as well. For pilgrims Ujjain is the seat of Mahakaleshwar, one of the twelve jyotirlingas and the only one that faces south, and the host of the Simhastha, the Kumbh that comes to the Shipra every twelve years. The Sandipani ashram, where tradition says Krishna studied, is also in the city.

Vidisha, Udayagiri and Eran

At Besnagar near Vidisha stands the Heliodorus pillar, set up in the second century before Christ by Heliodorus, a Greek ambassador sent by Antialcidas of Taxila to the court of king Bhagabhadra. Heliodorus calls himself a worshipper of Vasudeva, so the pillar is the earliest inscriptional evidence of the Bhagavata faith. The Udayagiri caves nearby are Gupta rock-cut shrines, famous for the great panel of Varaha lifting the earth and for an inscription of the reign of Chandragupta the Second. Eran in Sagar district has a monolithic boar and the earliest known sati inscription in India, dated to the early sixth century. Further sites worth a line are the painted Buddhist caves of Bagh in Dhar district, the Mauryan brick stupas of Deur Kothar in Rewa district, Pawaya near Gwalior, which was the Naga capital Padmavati, and Tripuri near Jabalpur, the later Kalachuri capital.