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TAMIL NADU, INDIA, June 2, 2003: Rock art, with origins from prehistoric times, has been receiving publicity in Tamil Nadu for the past several years when G. Chandrasekaran, professor at Chennai’s Government College of Fine Arts, formed a society called Roots. Under this banner, artists, art historians and archaeologists are attempting to save over fifty sites in Tamil Nadu from blasting by granite quarries. India possesses one of the three largest concentrations of rock art where the art form is expressed by paintings using wet paint or dry pigments rather than by petroglyphs, where images are engraved and etched onto the rock surface. Sites in Central India are well known, but the concentrations in Tamil Nadu have so far been neglected. Chandrasekaran has been studying large deposits of rock painting sites at Settavarai, Alampadi and Keelvalai in Villupuram. He reflects about a specific image depicting a deer or a goat on a 20 by 15 foot canvas at Settavarai, “Unlike the other images on the same rock canvas, the deer-goat image is executed with finesse and style by an artist who was sure of his/her lines and strokes.” At Alampadi, huge reptilian images capture the rock surface while Settavarai boasts figures that could be placed anywhere between 3,000 BCE and 500 BCE. The rock art at Keelvalai was probably of a later period and depicts images of boating scenes and symbols such as the swastika. Even though these sites have been known by archaeologists for more than twenty years, very little has been done so far to preserve the art forms that are usually near granite quarrying sites. Art historian K.T. Gandhirajan says, “The issue here is not of Tamil culture and heritage. Rock art belongs to all of humanity. There are some 20 million rock art images in over 120 countries. What we have here in Tamil Nadu is part of an international heritage.”

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