Volume 6, Number 1

Exploring New Findings at Bathistal Cave in Suid Dachhan, Kishtwar

  Authors

Anoop Singh, APS University, India

  Abstract

During the 1920s a Brahmi Inscription was found by R C Kak, from a cave prevalently known as Bathistal cave, situated at Suid Dachhan, District Kishtwar, Jammu, and Kashmir. It was an important discovery of the Brahmi inscription in District Kishtwar of the Jammu region. The numbers and typology of those characters are too exhaustive to be in any way unraveled and assessed in detail and even today the connections and associations couldn't be appropriately made among these characters. R C Kak in his research emphasized that these characters belong to the 3rd Century AD, some belong to the 5th Century AD and few characters belong to the later period. The typology of these characters is so rich that only a few characters painted on the ceilings of that cave got deciphered and evaluated during the research of Kak.

This cave is of great historical significance, as it embodied an important source of archeological study i.e. it has painted as well as carved inscriptions and symbols. On my first and very recent visit to that coveted site, I made a well-detailed observation of the whole cave with the multipronged approach, and subsequently, I got some important findings that R C Kak couldn't manage to establish. On one side of the cave very close to its base there are carved inscriptions, some characters made of red ochre, few symbols, rock paintings, and some unintelligible carved symbols and characters were noticed. The present paper will discuss some new findings at Bathistal cave and the rock paintings near Bathistal.

  Keywords

Bathistal, Cave inscription, Paintings, Symbols, Kunti Mata, Dachhan, Kishtwar.