TRICHY: A 3,000-year-old rock art with a symbol of a square and a plus mark incised on the surface was found in Malaiadipatti village near Pudukottai district.
Malaiadipatti is a historical place with cave temples of Shiva and Vishnu, Jain stone beds and a megalithic burial site. About 25 km from Trichy city, the rock art is perhaps the first to be found on a hillock known as ‘Thiruvalathur’.
Trichy based archaeo-symbolist T L Subash Chandira Bose noticed the four-square rock art drawn in white pigment on a rock surface at the back side of the hill near to the Jain stone beds. “There are lots of petro-glyph (pre-historic rock carving) symbols attributed to various periods of time on the rock surface of the hill. But this is the only rock art found in the hill, which makes the finding significant,” said Chandira Bose.
He says similar symbols denoting ‘Param’ or God were observed in ancient archaeological sites such as Gangai Konda Cholapuram Shiva temple and Kongar Puliankulam caves. “Mayamata, an Indian treatise on housing architecture and iconography has the reference of this four-squared symbol as ‘Pecaka’ geometrical diagram. The geometrical diagrams as symbols were invented by ancient Indians to understand the unknown or god,” he said.
He further said that a square refers to space (sky) and a plus mark or cross with a vertical line (cause) and a horizontal line (effect) refers to causation. A plus mark is the first consonant of Tamil letter ‘Ka’ and also denotes numerical number ‘one’ in Tamil language. The ‘plus’ symbols denote ‘addition’ in mathematical science. ‘Ka’ denotes the god.
