Megaliths of Jharkhand: MEGALITHIC COMPLEX OF CHANO/ROLA / MEGALITHS OF INDIA.

Megaliths of Chokahatu. JHARKHAND. Megaliths of India.

WINTER SOLSTICE 2019

Below are photographs of sunrises during the Winter Solstice morning in two megalithic sites of Jharkhand discovered by me some 20 years ago.

The megalithic sites apart from being burials are also astronomical sites that validates that these sites were created by the ancient tribal megalith makers who possessed a fair knowledge of basic mathematics and astronomy thousands of years prior to the Brahmanical astronomers and mathematicians. 

PUNKRI BURWDIH

The first photograph is that of the megalithic complex of Punkri Burwadih. 
Studying the site for several years I have found it having alignment towards the sunrise of the Equinoxes and that of the both Summer and the Winter Solstices.

THE WINTER SOLSTICE SUNRISE IN PUNKRI BURWADIH

The ancient tribal megalith makers have positioned the two menhirs so accurately that standing on a particular point on the North-South axis one can view the sun rise today exactly from the gap created by the two tall menhirs M1 and M2 in the Punkri Burwadih Megalithic complex. 

THE WINTER SOLSTICE SUNRISE IN PUNKRI BURWADIH

The ancient tribal megalith makers have positioned the two menhirs so accurately that standing on a particular point on the North-South axis one can view the sun rise today exactly from the gap created by the two tall menhirs M1 and M2 in the Punkri Burwadih Megalithic complex. 

 

Sharing a hot cuppa tea with Bubu, my wife and Shib Shankar in the foggy and shivering cold Winter Solstice morning while the megalithic site is visible in the distance

 

Bubu, Prantik, my son and I look for the sunrise in the foggy morning

CHANO (ROLA)

The Chano (aka Rola) Megalithic complex near Hazaribagh in the Eastern State of Jharkhand in India no more exists today; thanks to the negligence and disregard of tribal megalithic sites by Hazaribagh District Administration, State Archaeological Department and the Archaeological Survey of India.

Chano was one of the most fascinating megalithic sites that was created with mathematics and astronomy in times of prehistory by the erstwhile tribes.

This amazing site when it existed was aligned towards the sunrises and sets of both the Summer and Winter Solstices. 

The small triangle within the now defunct megalithic complex was positioned so accurately by the ancient tribal megalithic astronomers  that on Winter Solstice mornings the triangle pointed towards the sunrise of this day (as seen in the photograph).

THE WINTER SOLSTICE SUNRISE OF THE NOW DEFUNCT MEGALITHIC SITE OF CHANO (ROLA)

The tiny triangular pointer pointed exactly towards the Winter Solstice Sunrise

This is the perhaps the last photograph of the gathering during the Winter Solstice sunrise viewing at the Chano megalithic site.

If you wish to know more of these and a few more of other archaeoastronomical megalithic sites of Jharkhand you may order  one of my earlier books THE ARCHAEOASTRONOMY OF A FEW MEGALITHIC SITES OF JHARKHAND from Amazon or other online book stores (if it is not available at a bookstore near you):

https://www.amazon.in/Archaeoastronomy-Few-Megalithic-Sites-Jharkhand/dp/9386906163

the astronomical megaliths of Rola/Chano completely destroyed

The demolished astronomical megaliths of Rola/Chano

Rola/Chano megalithic complex in her hey days.

It was about 20 years ago that I had first discovered this tiny megalithic site of Chano also known as Rola. Finding this to be a tiny megalith I held this to be an insignificant site while I contemplated on my other discovered megalithic sites.

Much later only when I took up Rola/Chano megaliths as my study site then I realized what a major site this was; something which the country had never seen earlier.
The site was indeed a very early form of a sasandiri burial of the erstwhile tribals. Apart from this I found the megalithic complex was exactly located at the intersection of the alignments of the hills in the landscape. The stones in the site were positioned perfectly aligned to the hills in the landscape.

The site I found was oriented towards the sunrises and sets of both the Summer and Winter Solstices. Black and Red Wares (BRW); a rarity in Jharkhand have found by the plough adjacent to the site. Stone tools as scrapers, point, blades an iron implements as tattoo maker, nail pairer and fragment of a bone flute has been found in situ from the site and these are all in my personal museum.
There were more basic mathematics and horizon astronomy in the site which I have mentioned in two of my books: SACRED STONES IN INDIAN CIVILIZATION and THE ARCHAEOASTRONOMY OF A FEW MEGALITHIC SITE OF JHARKHAND.

People gather along with me to view the Winter Solstice sunrise in the site

The triangular pointer is positioned perfectly to point towards the sunrise of the Winter Solstice

Archaeologists, scholars, archaeoastronomers from all over the world as England, France, Germany and Russia apart from various megalith lovers from other parts of the nation thronged to the site. Several documentaries were made on the site.
Archaeologists of ASI, State Secretary, DCs, Commissioner all visited the site and suggested immediate protection of the site.
They all lied as these people had no interest in protecting a tribal megalithic site hence nothing was done and today the site has been completely vandalized by uprooting the astronomically planted stones. The triangular pointers towards the sunrises are grounded to dust and burial stones have been towed away.
In the process the a major source of India’s prehistory is lost along with the evidence that mathematics and astronomy was known to the ancient tribals thousands of years prior to the Brahmanical astronomers.

NAZCA AND WILTSHIRE CHALK FIGURE TYPE ROCK ART FORM FOUND IN THE FIELDS OF MAHARASTRA

https://www.facebook.com/BBCnewsMarathi/videos/257242531798254/

My latest book THE ARCHAEOASTRONOMY OF A FEW MEGALITHIC SITES IN JHARKHAND

The cover of my latest book THE ARCHAEOASTRONOMY OF A FEW MEGALITHIC SITES IN JHARKHAND.

My latest book THE ARCHAEOASTRONOMY OF A FEW MEGALITHIC SITES IN JHARKHAND published by Niyogi Books New Delhi has been released in the International Book Fair in New Delhi in the month of January of 2018. 

The book as such is not specifically on archaeology of the megalithic sites but on their archaeoastronomy. Although archaeology of the sites is indeed dealt in it, the book cites 6 amazing megalithic sites (of which four having discovered by me) constructed by the ancient adivasis with basic mathematics and observational astronomy. 

The book mentions the finds of various pottery, stone tools and other grave yields from the sites. But the book prominently deals with the stunning mathematics and astronomy which the ancients used to create these amazing megalithic sites some time in prehistory.
This being the first ever book on megalithic archaeoastronomy it is cogently written and comprises of stunning photographs and sketches of the positioning of the stones within the megalithic complexes.
       
Two of India's leading newspapers THE HINDU and the BUSINESS STANDARD has reviewed the book and have found it to be amazing. The links to the reviews are as under:

https://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/the-archaeoastronomy-of-a-few-megalithic-sites-of-jharkhand-review-fragments-of-memory/article22918219.ece
                                                                   &
https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/unspoken-wisdom-that-only-megaliths-can-impart-book-review-118050500196_1.html

The book is available in lot many bookstores and also on-line as in Amazon etc.

Cupules depicting acoustic properties in a menhir

https://www.facebook.com/pawansayam.gond/videos/895313527341994/

A NEW MEGALITHIC SITE NEAR GIDDHAUR

Lat: 24 deg. 12'9" N Long 84 54' 46" E

The new megalithic site is found a few kilometers East of the District town of Chatra in Jharkhand, East India on the road to Hazaribagh.

This is a burial site of the erstwhile tribes of which exactly is difficult to vouch with certainty. This site though is badly ruined yet has about 13 menhirs most of them are inclined. They may  have been planted inclined or may have become slanted by the passing time. 

The site

.

The author stands between a few menhirs

The site is similar to the other megalithic sites of Chatra as this site too consists of a tree which is a mahua (madhuca longifolia)  tree. Like in other megalithic sites of Chatra here too few menhirs though placed side by side open up in North-South directions as below:

Few menhirs here like in other megalithic sites of Chatra though are placed close to one another open up towards the North-South directions. Credit:Ujjal Ghosh

Few menhirs like other megalithic sites of Chatra lean on one another as in the photograph below:

The two menhirs in the above like other menhirs in the megalithic sites of Chatra lean on one another.

Most of the menhirs in this ancient megalithic site have been broken and pieces of pottery lie scattered all around confirming the mode of entombment to be that of pot/pitcher burial. However the raised mound on which the megalithc site stands needs to be excavated to confirm the type of burial the site comprises. All around the site are stones and hills which could be the quarry from which the stones were quarried. 

Vijay Singh shares the frame with the author and the megaliths

The raised mound where the burials are below the menhirs are clearly visible

The author stands amidst few tall menhirs

Vikram admires the old stones

My latest book, "THE ARCHAEOASTRONOMY OF A FEW MEGALITHIC SITES OF JHARKHAND"

My latest book published on the first week of January 2018

(LEFT CLICK ON THE PHOTOGRAPH TO EXPAND IT)

This book is precisely on a few archaeoastronomical megalithic sites of my home state of Jharkhand in East India. 

Megaliths in India are solely considered to be sepulchral or commemorative monuments. That a few are also associated with astronomy is not known and even not recognised by main stream archaeologists of the nation.

This book furnishes evidence how a set of megalithic proto-austroloid Kolarian Mundari tribes who still pursue megalithic burial practices built such megalithic complexes with precise astronomical alignments.

The book deals with 6 megalithic complexes of Furuka, Chano, Katia Murbey etc in both Hazaribagh and Chatra districts  which reveals positioning of the entire site and the stones within them with precise alignments to the notches and peaks of the encircling hills, towards significant sunrises and sets of solstices and equinoxes and even towards the cardinal points. The placements also reveal basic mathematics as ratios, hex-sectionings  et al. 

The book also deals with the general information on megaliths and even other purposes of these ancient monuments.

Thereafter the book sets an inquiry whether it were indeed the proto-austroloid Kolarian tribes who built these archaeoastronomical complexes. If so then why their present day megaliths are devoid of such sciences ? 

Could the makers of the temples be some unknown set of people?

The book questions what may have been the need of such astronomical megalithic temples and at the the same time attempts to provide a reasonable answer to this query.

Lavishly photographed and though written in a scholarly manner the book will induce interest even in the common people who would really want to know the left out unknown chapter of India's past.

The book is available in all the leading book stores of the country and even on-line. The book could also be bought from my publisher:

niyogibooks@gmail.com

Tel: 01126816301, 26818960

CART RUTS OF INDIA

CLICK LEFT TO BLOW UP IMAGES:

Left: Cart ruts of Rajgir. Bihar. Right: Cart ruts of Mahabalipuram. Tamil Nadu

In many places of the world as Bolivia, Malta, Italy, France, Azerbaijan, Portugal and Belgium etc one sees mysterious long deep grooved tracks on stones.

The explanations vary from one person to the other as, the ruts may have been produced on the rocks by the wheels of carts or wagons while quarrying stones, or these could be ceremonial lines of the ancients, or these probably served as drains. Some even associate these ruts with aliens. It therefore seems that are as many interpretations as there are visitors to these enigmatic sites.  

But that India too may house these ruts was not known to many. Below I cite only two cart rut sites known to me. Surely there ought to be more but they have not yet been brought to light.

RAJGIR

Rajgir is in the Bihar state of east India. Here there is a parallel furrow on stone that begins abruptly and runs a small distance towards a neighbouring hill. The ruts softly bend towards the right in a slope towards the hill. The depth of each rut vary, at some place it is quite deep and broad and at times it is slim and shallow. However the distance between the two ruts is largely uniform. 

The ASI board suggests that the ruts are indeed chariot marks occurred due to chariots that belong to the Mahabharata period (?).

Archaeological Survey of India has set up a display that states that these ruts are actually chariot wheel marks created during the Mahabharata period. However the local legend is that it was created by the chariot of Lord Krishna who rode his chariot in such a speed that it created the furrows in the stone (pity the horses).

                               

Studying the cart ruts while Bubu looks inquisitively.

I tried figuring out the real reason that may have created the parallel tracks. I tried tracking the tracks and found that they headed towards an adjacent hill. Was this track therefore created to cart boulders from the neighbouring hill. The boulders were perhaps needed to build the cyclopean wall by Ajatshatru to protect his kingdom. The large boundary wall incidentally is pretty near to this rut site.

Was the pair of ruts built to quarry stones for this cyclopean wall to safeguard Ajatshatru's terittory ?

But this is only speculation as a large section of the world as stated above too hold these ruts of which no body has an appropriate explanation.

Prantik and I gaze at the inscription stone.

The conch shell script on the stone.

  Adjacent to the parallel furrow of ruts are a few outcrops on which are engraved a few Shell Inscriptions also known as the Shankh Lipi. This inscription having Brahmi characters and resembling conchs is not yet deciphered and is said to belong to the 5th/6th cent AD. No body therefore knows what these script on the stones adjacent to the ruts suggest.

The entire complex is today enclosed within a boundary of block of stones.

MAHABALIPURAM

To the Southern part of India is a Hindu site of amazing temples sculpted out of rock boulders and the sculptures display stunning artistry of the skilled artisans of ancient India.

But there is something more here: the cart ruts.

Though a little different than that of Rajgir and of the rest of the world the tracks here run alone and even in a trio. These lines run all over the rocks. 

The tracks do not give an inkling that they are wheel tracks. What purpose did these serve, were they used for some sort of a drainage? Not possible as a few of these tracks can be seen ascending uphill. 

The quality of the incision of these ruts here are relatively better than that of Rajgir's. One three-track set seem to resemble the ones on the stones of the Bolivian woods.

The three parallel ruts of Mahabalipuram

This is a single rut

These tracks have an uncanny resemblance with the ones of Bolivian jungles

The three parallel ruts climbs up the stone in the foreground thereafter disappear in the earth in the middle and then continue to climb on the boulder at the background.

Despite the various interpretations by the multitude of people one cannot say conclusively the purpose of these ruts and why they are all over the world. 

These ruts certainly have kept and would keep firing the imaginations of people till one day an authentic explanation comes our way.

Till then let the interpretations live on...they are indeed fun to read.

CUPULES/CUPMARKS

CUPULES/CUPMARKS
   

Cupmarks on a natural rock near  the Raja Gosawin menhir. The presence of the cupules near the menhir might suggest that the menhir may have had been a major temple in hoary antiquity.          

   Cupules are a mystery. No one has so far come forth with a suitable elucidation of these tiny hemispherical depressions on stones. These small cavities have been named cupules by the famed archaeologist Roberet G. Bednarik. 

Cupules have been found in all the continents of the world excepting Antarctica. Cupmarks are therefore the oldest surviving rock arts known to human beings. 

CUPULES IN THE PALEOLITHIC ROCK ART OF ISKO

         I also agree with Benarik that cupules must have been made for different purposes during different ages. Many associate these features with the symbols of the primeval Great Goddess. Megaliths were the appendages of the now defunct primitive fertility cult, the world over. The ‘yoni’ or vulva of the female was worshipped, as it was through this organ the child took birth. Pregnant wombs and pregnant women became revered entities under this primitive religion of fertility. 

         Therefore, across the world, a specific shape of a hill resembling a reclining female having a pregnant womb began to be worshipped as the Recumbent Mother Goddess form and the female vagina became the emblem of this Great Goddess and it still is in countries like India.Circles are also the symbols of the womb or the vulva of the Great Mother. 

Cupules in a megalithic complex of Napo. 

   In primitive countries like India, this primordial fertility cult can still be seen mingled with the much later evolved Brahmanical Hindu religion and its Sanskrit rituals. Therefore, circles are drawn in red or ochre on walls during marriages; circles in India are still the symbol of the womb of the Mother.

    It could be that such circular hemispherical engravings made on megaliths known today as cupmarks or cupules, were the symbols of the archaic Mother Goddess. Putting them on megaliths which too were female temples of the Great Goddess was perhaps in a way for the celebration of the glory of the Mother Goddess.

   I have observed two types of cupmarks made on megaliths. One which can be seen made arbitrarily on a specific stone and the other type is a set of two rowed eight in each cupules, rather sixteen cupules in total on a megalith. The second kind I have found to have been made in an east west orientation. Today village children make such cupmarks on stones to play a game with small pebbles in them. The game, I feel is a later alteration of this much primitive arrangement of cupmarks. But do the 16 cupules (two-rowed 8 in each) anything to do with the so-called 16-month megalithic calendar of Alexander Thom?

These two- rowed eight-in-each cupmarks (making a total of 16 cupules) were made in an East-West orientation in most of the horizontal stones, as this recumbent menhir  in Chano. 

   I have found cupmarks on vertical stones in the rock arts India but on megaliths I have always seen them made on horizontal stones and on inclined stone(as in the pic of Napo above) unlike them being found even on vertical stones, abroad (I would however like information on cupmarks on verticals stones in India, if you know of cupulues on vertical megaliths as menhirs or even on dolmens, do inform with a photograph, if possible). The diameters of these depressions range from three cms to a whopping eight inches.

 THE RAJA GOSAWIN CUPULES:

I had the fortune to discover this amazing cupule site about two decades ago. This site comprising of about 350/400 cupules is undoubtedly the largest cupules site of Jharkhand Just adjacent to the Jaganaath Pahari in  Silwar village about 6 kms east of Hazaribagh in Jharkhand is a tall menhir which the villagers revere as the Raja Gosaiwn. At its Northern and western ends surrounding are outcrops which are profusely ornamented with cupules. 

There are hundreds of them in here.The village women also pour milk in them on Saturdays and Tuesdays, the days assigned to the Mother Goddess.For them the cupules are the Goddesses' vulva hence are objects of veneration.

The cupules at the bottom surface of the Bodhayana Shila in the Jaganaath Pahari

     In the Jaganaath pahari itself there is a polyhedron structure whose bottom surface has about 8 to 10 large sized cupules which does not touch the platform on which the stone rests. These were perhaps sculpted before placing the enormous sized stone upon the platform to work as 'grippers' so that the polyhedron structure does not skid to its front while placing.

   One of the oldest dating of cupmarks has  perhaps come from Australia’s Jinmium province where cupules are found to be about 58,000 to 75,000 years old as dated by Australian scientists according to an article published on " The Sydney Morning Herald News Review of Sep 21, 19996". According to Bednarik  cupmarks appear in India in the Pleistocene, but most are from the Holocene, and they were made from Acheulian to the historic period.

This is a ritualistic implement in a Hindu household even used in weddings. Is this an evolved form of the primitive cupules ?

For more information on cupules on megaliths of Hazaribagh, visit: http://chitrolekha.com/cupules-megalithic-sites-jharkhand/

rajeev said...

good infrmation. I was looking for it.

October 3, 2010 2:44 AM 

Anonymous said...

This is really interesting. Megaliths are mystery.

October 3, 2010 2:47 AM 

Megaliths of India said...

Received by E - mail :-

hey your blog design is very nice, clean and fresh and with updated content, make people feel peace and I always like browsing your site.

- Thomas