Place · rock shelters & pilgrimage hills · India
Pachmarhī / Mahādeo hills
The painted Mesolithic rock-shelters and natural caves of the Satpura massif in Hoshangabad district, Madhya Pradesh — the only hill station in Madhya Pradesh at 1,100m. The shelters contain paintings from 10,000 BCE through the historic period layered on the same walls, with hunting, dancing and animal scenes. Pachmarhi is simultaneously a Hindu pilgrimage: pilgrims still carry tridents 400 metres up Chauragarh peak to the Shiva shrine at the summit during Mahashivaratri each February. The town was Captain James Forsyth's 1857 Indian discovery for the British, and became the summer capital of the Central Provinces.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Archaeological record
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 22.467, 78.433
Worth knowing
The Chauragarh summit is covered in iron tridents left by pilgrims over generations, carried up on the Mahashivaratri walk and planted in the rock. The painted shelters are a few hours away on the same massif, which makes continuity of sacred use visible without any continuity of meaning — nobody claims the Mesolithic painters were worshipping Shiva.
Connections (2)
- Site adjacencyNarmadapuram / Hoshangabad
South of Narmadapuram the land rises into the Satpuras toward the plateau at Pachmarhi, a British hill station and summer seat of the Central Provinces that sits on the same massif as painted Mesolithic shelters and the Chauragarh shrine, where pilgrims still carry tridents to the peak. The river here divides the Vindhyan north bank from the Satpura south, which is a real geological as well as cultural boundary.
- Site adjacencyBhīmbetkā
Pachmarhi and Bhimbetka are the two central Indian shelter concentrations, a hundred and fifty kilometres apart on the Satpura and Vindhya ranges. Pachmarhi's hills also carry the Chauragarh Shiva shrine, where pilgrims still leave iron tridents on the summit, so the same massif has Mesolithic painting and a functioning Shaiva pilgrimage on it.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Pachmarhi”. Archaeological Survey of India rock-art surveys of the Satpura shelters; Madhya Pradesh Gazetteer, Hoshangabad district.
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