Research Publications

(305 pages, Illustrated with color photographs and line drawings) Twelve Chapters on Provenance and early sources of Rockart, Comparison with village art, Introduction to 14 Rockart Sites in Hazaribagh and Chatra. The threat to the rockart has been highlighted in the Chapters reports in ICOMOS Heritage at Risk 2001/2002; 2002/2003, World Report on Monuments and Sites. The threat to the rockart has also been listed in the 2005’s Most Endangered Sacred Sites List, USA.

This richly illustrated book with text and photographs by the author on a subject first brought to light by him after the discovery of several prehistoric rock-art sites after 1991 which have been carefully researched and which he has shown as the prototype for the village ritual art practiced by the village women during the marriage season in Spring-Summer and harvest season in Autumn-Winter in the Hazaribagh region of Jharkhand.

Illustrated and line drawing by the author, 85 pages. This manuscript is adapted from Bulu Imam’s 1990s large research titled HARVEST ICONS on Sohrai Village Murals of Hazaribagh. This manuscript was completely re-written using all the relevant portions of the volume and hence that title is most apt for the present work.

A Search for the Adivasi Khovar Tradition. Profusely illustrated, 185 pages. The first book on the subject of the discovery of rockart in Hazaribagh and its connection with the village painting, published by INTACH, New Delhi, 1995.

Illustrated with photographs and line drawing. 131 pages. Sums up fifteen years of continuous research by Bulu Imam into the ecological, cultural, and artistic heritage of the Hazaribagh region. It tracks the evolution of stone tools and the culture that produced them through the Mesolithic period twelve thousand years ago into the anthropomorphic rockart and its contem-porary signi-ficance in arts, tattoo, and ritual. It continues the voyage of human discovery catalogued carefully to show the Damodar as one of the major sites of human habitation and evolution in South Asia, and perhaps in the world. This living ancient culture is seen as a level of proto-historic cultural evolution in the villages of northern Jharkhand, throughout the hilly forested environment of the Hazaribagh plateau and its numerous side valleys, each of which evidences the rise of pre-historic man . As the title suggests, the author is presenting the lost tribal civilization in all its pristine glory as a contemporary phenomenon in Hazaribagh in which the major actors are the tribal women who carry forward the tradition of painting in the prehistoric icons which predate the first script and gave birth to a remarkable picto-grammatic art form of Khovar and Sohrai.