Nature culture relationship of rock shelters at Kathotiya, Sehore, Madhya Pradesh/

Abstract

Kathotiya is a small tribal village in Udaipura tehsil in Sehore district of Madhya Pradesh, inhabited by the Bhil and Bhilala Tribes, situated about 25 km from Bhopal. The village is situated in a beautiful green valley, surrounded by precipitous hill faces, verdant forests, and ancient rock shelters and paintings. The tribes were traditionally Gatherers and Hunters but have now taken up rain dependent agriculture, although their meagre earnings are still significantly supplemented by forest produce collected from the abundant forest around. The village however lies in dense Teak forests in the off shoot of the Vindhyan scarplands with varied landscape, it expresses a long intimate relationship between peoples and their natural environment, bio-diverse habitat, rock shelters with cave paintings dated to circa 16000 BP, within a wide geographical arc well known for the discovery of thousands of Paleolithic and Neolithic sites of archaeological and anthropological interest. Prehistoric Art in India consist mainly of cave paintings in Central India as geologically, The Vindhyan rocks in this part of the country are formed of sandstone which, being a soft rock, weathers easily under the impact of temperature fluctuations, rain and wind. During the course of several hundred million years of geological time, these rocks have weathered to form several thousand shelters and caves, ranging from small hollows in rock walls to large subterranean caves. It was an ideal place for stone age hunters-gatherers to form their shelters. The forests in the region have variety of trees like mahua, teak, peepal, arjun and has medicinal benefits, the region was densely inhabited by the triblals for 2000 years. For this reason the central India has rich tribal concentration, there is a need to establish a relationship with daily life of tribals and the nature.Shelters containing the cave paintings also served as holy places or spiritual places, bhils in the region worship the stones considering it as sacred groove and perform their daily rituals and celebrate their festivals, Baabdev is a place of worship where villagers gather twice in a year on no moon night, to worship Baabdev, the bhils offer the spirit prepared from mahua seeds and leaves as offering during festivities