Gudahandi also known as 'Gudahandi Hills' and 'Gudahandi Caves' is a pre-historic site in

Odisha Odisha (), formerly Orissa (List of renamed places in India, the official name until 2011), is a States and union territories of India, state located in East India, Eastern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by ar ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

. It is located in the Ambapani sanctuary of

Kalahandi district Kalahandi district (Pron: Kaḷāhāṇḍi) is a district of Odisha in India. It was a princely state in British India and in post-independence period it merged with Odisha state in India as Kalahandi district comprising current Kalahandi d ...

. It is close to the

Nabarangpur district Nabarangpur district, also known as Nabarangapur district or Nawarangpur district, is a district of Odisha, India. The city of Nabarangpur is the district capital. Most of its population is tribe, tribal and the land is heavily forested. It bord ...

Border and about 17 km and 88 km away from Ampani and District Headquarters

Bhawanipatna Bhawanipatna is a city and the headquarter of Kalahandi district in the state of Odisha, India. Bhawanipatna has numerous temples dedicated to different deities of the Hindu pantheon. Geography and climate Bhawanipatna is located at . It h ...

respectively.

History

The word ''Gudahandi'' is derived from two Odia words, ''guda'' meaning

raw sugar Brown sugar is a sucrose sugar product with a distinctive brown color due to the presence of molasses. It is either an unrefined or partially refined soft sugar consisting of sugar crystals with some residual molasses content or produced by ...

and ''handi'' meaning a clay pot. The appearance of the hills resembles sugar pots that used to be used in

. Pre-historic pictographs, drawings and inscriptions are crafted on the stone walls of the Gudahandi caves. These caves date back to 25,000 to 20,000 CE.

Paleolithic Paintings

The rock art shelter exhibits both monochrome and bi-chrome paintings of early historic period. It is the only reported rock art site of Kalahandi district. The rock art panel preserves the specimen of paintings which include a stylized human figure in red, deer and a variety of geometric patterns of squares and rectangles either empty or in filled with straight and diagonal lines or with dots on the borders grid patterns, wheels with spokes, apsidal patterns, oval shapes with dots executed either in monochrome of red or in polychrome of red, blue and black.

Gallery

File:Gudahandi Rock painting.jpg File:GudaHandi Rock Art.jpg

References

{{Kalahandi district Kalahandi district Caves containing pictograms in India Rock shelters Odia language Rock art Indian painting Brahmic scripts

Pictograms A pictogram (also pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto) is a graphical symbol that conveys meaning through its visual resemblance to a physical object. Pictograms are used in systems of writing and visual communication. A pictography is a wri ...

Rock art in India I

Painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...