CHOKHOPANI CAVES
28.712500,83.666700
Description
A number of man-made, rock-cut chambers, which once have been used as burial caves and troglodyte settlements, are found 100 vertical metres above the valley floor at Chokopani (note 1), where a small electric powerstation (two times 70 kW) is installed. GEOLOGY: Excavated from the weathered remnants of a fluvial terrace, which is assumed to rest (the base is buried below alluvial accumulations of the Kali Gandaki riverbed) on jurassic limestones of the Jomosom Series. The presumably Holocene fluvial terrace is poorly consolidated throughout and consists partly of fluvially deposited pebbles (well rounded) with intercalations of inconsistent and fine grained lacustrin sediments, while other parts are built up of glacial moraine with poorly rounded boulders. A finest-grained, predominantly calcitic matrix (silt of glacial origin) cements and isolates the rocky constituents of the accumulation and controls both porosity and strength. The 'cave' matrix lacks any inner order in kind of bedding, banking, or sorting. It is chaotic and polymict to a degree that the largest boulders from the upper end of the grain-range rest in the immediate neighbourhood of the finest grained pelites. The complete perturbation of the conglomerate is shown by its petrographic components, polymictic composition, and morphometric qualities of its composites, which range from angled via sub-rounded and facetted to rounded and well-rounded.
NOTE 1: A small ridge (in German: Nebentalauslasssporn) about halfway between the villages of Marpha and Tukche, and above the right (northern) bank of the stream locally known as Chokhopani (pure water, in Tibetan: Marshang Kyu), a tributary from the left (east) to the Kali Gandaki.
Documents
Bibliography 05/07/2016- Heide, Susanne von der 1988; Mishra, Tara Nanda 1988 for 1987-1988, 1991, 1994; Pandey, R N 1987; Schön, Werner & Simons, Angela 1993; Schuh, Dieter 1993 for 1992-1993; Sharma, Janak Lal 1994; Shresta, Khadga Man 1994a, 1994b; Simons, Angela 1995; Simons, Angela & Schön, Werner 1998; Simons, Angela, Schön, Werner & Shresta, Sukra Sagar 1994a, 1994b; Söhring, Anna 1991; Tiwari, Devendra Nath 1985 for 1984-1985.
History
EXPLORATION HISTORY: The funerary caves at the site of Chokhopani were completely buried when the inclined ditch for the stockpen of the hydroelectric power station was cut and a first cave burial was discovered in 1978. The bones found were immediately destroyed but the pottery findings were recovered and the Archaeological Department, Kathmandu, then under T.N. Mishra, was informed. Engineers took care that another ditch for the stockpen was dug and, since no governmental archaeologist turned up, a selection of pottery was brought to Kathmandu. Only in 1985, the site was still not archaeologically investigated, were useless, blurred photographs published in Ancient Nepal, in company with a masterpiece of an untenable, straightforward silly interpretation (TIWARI 1985). In the years following erosion kept on incising the abandoned stockpen ditch and the developing gully cut into three levels of different cave levels. In 1990 Prof. D. Schuh (University of Bonn, Germany) made the current author climb into the gully, where several hundred pieces of pottery were discovered and more than 100 vessels recovered to save them from being washed away by the next monsoon floods. Systematic archaeological excavation commenced in 1992. Till 1994 several burial caves and some of the neighbouring artificial caves, used as subterranean settlements were investigated (modified after SCHÖN & SIMONS 1993; SIMONS 1995; SIMONS & SCHÖN 1998; SIMONS, SCHÖN & SHRESTA 1994a, 1994b).
Caves nearby
| Distance (km) | Name | Length (m) | Depth (m) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.8 | TUKCHE BOULDER CHOKE CAVE | ||
| 1.4 | LARJUNG - MARPHA (Cave between) | ||
| 2.4 | TUKCHE CAVES | ||
| 2.5 | DAMBUSH KHOLA (Cave in the) | ||
| 2.5 | DAMBUSH KHOLA ROCK SHELTER 1 | ||
| 2.5 | DAMBUSH KHOLA ROCK SHELTER 2 | ||
| 4.5 | MAMDIP sGRUB PHUG | ||
| 4.5 | MARPHA GOVERNMENT FARM (Cave above the) | ||
| 4.9 | CHUKSANG CAVE |