Rock Painting / Petroglyph / Inscription

Category Historic

Rock Painting of Barhamsiya Maan

At one place in Sasaram’s Barahmasiya rock shelter, rock paintings have been made in red color. Here are ten large anthropomorphic figures standing outstretched, which are ancient. In the rock picture superimposed on them, a man is hunting a reindeer, which is dark red in color, with arrows and bows. There is a dog with him.

Rock Painting of Ghorghat Valley Maan

This big rock shelter is in Ghorghat valley, Sasaram. A group of humans are shown on the wall going forward. These pictures are small. In front of them is the drawing of an animal. Its skeleton is visible. Looks like people are moving to hunt it down.

Rock Painting of Tarvakhal Maan

This rock shelter is located in the ‘Kajhiya’ hill of Rohtasgarh. About 150 meters after this, there is another small hill, which is called ‘Tarvakhal Man Hill’. On the northern and southern sides of the ‘dhoke’ are the seating areas, where a band is formed in the rock.

Petroglyph of Hathiya Maan

It was named ‘Hathiya Maan’ because of the elephants carved in Sasaram’s Hathiyamaan. In this rock shelter facing south-west, many figures have been carved on the stone in the historical period. In these, in addition to five elephants, there are three sixteen gotias for playing the game and two for playing only Chaupad or Chausar’s engraving.

Phulwariya Inscription

Phulwaria village is situated in the forest on top of a hill of about 1500 feet under Tilothu block of Rohtas district. Although this village has many archaeological evidences in its hands, but Pratap Dhaval Dev, the hero of Khayarwal dynasty, has got his second inscription written here, due to which this village has archaeological importance. This inscription is a document of the Khayarwal dynasty, which reveals the complete genealogy. The Phulwaria inscription was written by Pratap Dhaval Dev, the Nayak of the Kaimur-Rohtas region, on Thursday (27 March 1169 AD) in the Vaishakh month of Vikram Samvat 1225, the twelfth date of the Krishna Paksha. The language of this inscription is Sanskrit and the script is early Nagari. The lower part of the inscription is in Sanskrit in bold letters in five lines. According to this inscription, Pratap Dhaval Dev built a road on the river and the mountain and built the steps.

Ashokan miniature inscription on Chandan Shahid Hill

The reign of the third Mauryan emperor Ashoka lasted from 272-232 BC. He was influenced by Buddhism. He got inscriptions written from place to place in order to spread his Dhamma. Ashoka’s inscriptions are found from Kandahar in the north-west to Bihar in the east and from Kalsi in Dehradun in the north to Karnataka in the south. Most of these inscriptions are in Prakrit language and Brahmi script. The script of some inscriptions is Kharoshti. It must have been the intention of the emperor to get the inscriptions engraved so that his messages should be disseminated in the local language and scripts so that the information could reach most of the people and the public could be benefited. In this sequence, Emperor Ashoka had got a miniature inscription written on the present Aashiqpur (Chandan Shaheed) hill in Sasaram. It is written in the northern wall of a small cave about 30 feet below the top of the hill. This manuscript is written in Bramhi script. Its language is very close to Pali. This important inscription was preserved in the year 1917 by the Archaeological Conservation Department of India during the British rule.