Rock markings in the heart of Delhi are clues to India’s pre-Ashokan past

Why should some small cup-like depressions and a maze of lines recently discovered on a rock in New Delhi matter? What do these markings mean and how can we decipher their date?

The large outcrop stands in the Central Ridge forest, not far from Sardar Patel Marg.

It was one that the writer and naturalist Pradip Krishen had visited innumerable times in past years, a big rock where he used to take his dogs for a walk and one whose patches of living stable biocrusts he had watched over the seasons as they turned from brown to green with the first rains.

The markings on the rock, though, had somehow escaped his attention. These he noticed for the first time when he went there some weeks ago with the activist Chetan Agrawal who had seen such cupules – so called because they are cup-like, round depressions – in the Haryana Aravalli hills on many occasions. The discovery is now in public domain and has been widely reported.

My purpose here is merely to explain why these are significant and deserve protection.

The cupules – as these photographs reveal – have been embedded in the rock in the form of small round depressions to make two sets of parallel...

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