The State government should install railings to protect

 Telangana | Written by : Suryaa Desk Updated: Tue, May 22, 2018, 01:14 PM

Like many important monuments across India, the prehistoric rock paintings in Telangana’s Jayashankar Bhupalpally district are prey to confessions of undying love and names etched for posterity.

“Increasing defacement, including instances of scraped graffiti and smeared oil paints, are a cause for grave concern at the millennia-old rock paintings of Pandavulagutta, which trace the evolution of human knowledge,” laments D. Kanna Babu, Superintending Archaeologist, Archaeological Survey of India, Chennai.Pandavulagutta is home to painted rock shelters dating to 10000 BC-8000 BC, an 8th century inscription of the Rashtrakuta period, and painted frescoes from the 12th century Kakatiya empire.

The pre-historic rock paintings resemble those at Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh, with flora, fauna and human figures seen in red ochre.The Kakatiya artists, on the other hand, painted scenes from the Mahabharata and of the elephant-headed Ganesha.“Paintings from three different time periods have coexisted admirably down the ages, but they have not been protected or preserved since their discovery in 1990. They have been damaged because they are easily accessible to the public,” says Mr. Babu, who visited Pandavulagutta as part of a detailed temple survey project.

“If something drastic is not done to stop it, the defacement will destroy the original paintings rendered with natural colours.”For instance, figures of magnificent beauty in a mural frieze, set against a background of thick lime plaster that projects them as if in an open-air theatre, have been ruined by graffiti, with the frescoes scraped from the plaster and the storytelling disrupted.“No preventive measures have been taken so far by any responsible agency.“The State government should install railings to protect and preserve the paintings,” Mr. D. Kanna Babu added.