KOZHIKODE: It took years of hard work for him to offer a new perspective to approach the rock carvings at Edakkal in Wayanad — art forms that still remain an enigma to sociologists and critics. After much effort, art critic A T Mohanraj did a documentary on the subject using the new insights provided by disciplines such as neuro-aesthetics. But the situation emerged after the spread of Covid halted the efforts to take the documentary to the people.
After the curbs over Covid are eased, Mohanraj is planning to screen the documentary at various places in Kerala. The 34-minute documentary ‘Rock carving at Edakkal’ will be screened at the ‘World is One Family’ exhibition organised by the Kochi Biennale Foundation in Alappuzha on November 1.
“Edakkal cave is the womb from where the art and culture of Kerala emerged in different forms. Painting, theatre, iconography and sculpture have their origin in the primitive figures in the cave,” said Mohanraj, who retired as a professor of Malayalam.
“Unlike the estimate of some historians, who stated that the carvings represent the transition from the new stone age to the iron age, I feel that the carvings are much older. It could be between early or middle palaeolithic age,” he said. A prominent figure among the carvings is a female figure coming out of a form that looks like a vulva. “It could be the beginning of the worship of the mother goddess that is prevalent in the kavus of Kerala. Other figures could symbolise worship of female genitalia,” he said.
A significant thing Mohanraj noticed was the perfection of the figures in the carvings. “We used to believe that modern art is technically developed than primitive art. But Edakkal carvings attest the new finds that the brain of primitive human beings was much evolved,” he said.
The researcher believes the Edakkal carvings can be linked to the figures found at Mohenjo-daro. “It was Kesari A Balakrishna Pillai who hinted this in 1938. But now we have more evidence. The fish-like figures at Edakkal and Mohenjo-daro are very similar,” he said.