India discovered - docshare.tips (2023)

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DISCOVERY The Restoration of a Lost Civilization Civilization

João Chave

Contents Cover Cover List of Figures Figures Introduction Introduction

CHAPTER ONE This wonderful country

CHAPTER TWO A Curious Englishman CHAPTER THREE Thus Spoke Ashoka

CHAPTER FOUR Black and Time-Stained Rocks CHAPTER FIVE The Legacy of the Pot

CHAPTER SIX The old fighter

CHAPTER SEVEN Buddha in a robe

CHAPTER 8 A little more heat than necessary

CHAPTER 9 Wild in human faith and warm in human feeling

CHAPTER TEN A topic often talked about

CHAPTER 11 The Hideout Behind the Elgin Marbles

CHAPTER TWELVE A primal power

CHAPTER THIRTEEN New Observations and Discoveries

CHAPTER FOURTEEN An Idolatrous Affection

CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Wondrous Woven of Nature

Author's Note on the Third Edition Sources and Bibliography Bibliography Index Index Chronology 1765-1927 1927 The Great Arch India: A History

list of illustrations

1. Aurangzeb Mosque in Panchganga. Panchganga. 2. James Prinsep with Hindu Pandits, Hindu Pandits, Sanskrit Sanskrit College, Benares. 3. The Rock of Girnar. 4. The Mahabalipuram Temples. 5. Stone Temples of the West Indies. 6. The Stupas The Stupas of Sanchi. 7. The ruined temple of Boddh Gaya. 8. A Buddhist stupa Gates of a Buddhist stupa in Mathura. 9. The Buddha. 10. A bodhisattva. 11. The temple complex of Khajuraho. 12. Sculpture in Khajuraho. 13. The Jagannath festival in Puri. 14. Colin Mackenzie at work.

15. Drawing of the Palace of Amber by Bishop Heber. Palace. 16. Gwalior, the "Gibraltar of India". India'. 17. The Qutub Mosque. 18. Jama Masjid of Shah Jehan. mosque 19. Humayun's Tomb in Delhi. 20. The Taj Mahal in Agra. 21. Sanchi's torso. 22. The wall paintings in the Ajanta caves. 23. A scene depicting "The Temptation" in Ajanta Cave. Cave. 24. Death of Colonel James. 25. Colonel Colin Mackenzie. 26. EB Havell. 27. Mr. William Jones. 28. Mr. Curzon. 29. BH Hodgson. 30. General Sir Alexander Cunningham. 31. Sir George Everest by William Tayler. 32. Mohenjo-daro Giri. 33. Seal of the Indus Valley Civilization. The author and publisher would like to thank the following persons for permission to reproduce the above figures: India Office Library, British Museum for numbers 1-5, 5, 7, 11, 13-16, 16, 19, 22, 25- 30; 30; the Victoria & Albert Museum for numbers 6, 9, 17, 18, 23 and 24; the British Museum for numbers 10 and 33; 3 3; the Werner Forman Archive, London for #12; the Library of British Architecture, RIBA for #20; the National Portrait Gallery #31; 3 1; and the National Museum, New Delhi for No. 32. Figure No. 8 is reproduced from: Archaeological Archaeological Survey of India, Report of a Tour in the Central Provinces Lower Gangetic Doab 1880–81b and 81 by Alexander Cunningham, Vol. XVII, Plate XXI.

introduction

One day the full story of British Indology will be told and it will surely become a glorious, intriguing, intriguing and inspiring story.

AJ Arberry, British Orientalis Orientalists ts (1943)

200 years ago, India was the land of the fabulous and the fantastic, the "Exotic East". Travelers returned with tales of marble palaces with gilded domes, of kings beckoning in gold and somber maidens dripping with pearls and rubies. Against this magnificent backdrop stand elephants, tigers and unicorns, snake charmers and sword swallowers, merchants of reincarnation and magic, long-haired ascetics on beds of nails, widows leaping onto the pyre. It was like a glorious, brilliant circus - circus - spectacular, spectacular, exciting, but a little unreal. Instead of the circus, we now have the museum. India is the ultimate cultural experience. Instead of the harsh and noisy big tent, we have the meditation and subtle tones of the zither. There are temples and tombs, erotic sculptures, abandoned palaces and miniature masterpieces. Hinduism is studied with absolute seriousness; The ascetic no longer needs a bed of nails to secure an audience. Even elephants and tigers have become too important to be funny; they too must be carefully studied and preserved. This dramatic change in attitude came about primarily through careful study of all things Native American. No conquered people, no conquered country has been so closely scrutinized as India during the period of British rule. This aspect of the British case in India is the subject of this book. The 19th century was the age of research. Perhaps it was inevitable that India would have its Darwin, its Livingstone and its Schliemann. There was also something about the paternalistic nature of British imperialism that appealed to academics and scientists. The men who discovered India came as amateurs; by profession they were soldiers and administrators. But they came home learning giants. Scholarship. And then, above all, there was India itself, exerting its own irresistible allure. The more it was investigated, the more ancient it became, the more inexhaustible its variety and the more incomprehensible its subtleties. The pioneers of Native American studies described in this book rose to the challenge. "Humans and nature; what one does or the other produces" would be the field of his investigations. Even in the Age of Discovery, the results were as sensational as the country and the scale of the company. First, the history of India goes back two thousand years, from the time of William the Conqueror to about a millennium before the era of Tutankhamun. In the process, two great classical civilizations were discovered and one of the richest literary traditions in the outside world was revealed. the origins of two of the world's greatest religions. What Lord Curzon called "the greatest galaxy of monuments in the world" has been saved from decay, classified and preserved. See Ancient writings have been deciphered and dated.

and used to unravel the history of kings and emperors. Hundreds of coins and paintings were discovered and their meaning mapped. Western sensibilities found it difficult to accept the discovery of erotic sculptures in places of worship. In the natural sciences, one of the most fascinating flora and fauna has been studied and catalogued; as well as the incredibly rich human mix of racial, linguistic and religious groups. The entire subcontinent was studied and mapped; The highest mountains in the world have been measured. Etc. In short, India's modern image has been reconstructed. In tracing this process, I have tried to convey something of the wonder of each new discovery and the excitement of each new conclusion. Striking sights like the temple complex of Khajuraho or the painted caves of Ajanta, men felt as if they had suddenly stumbled upon the vine-covered, bat-infested Uffizi Gallery, not visited for a thousand years. It is not difficult to understand their amazement. Parts of India are still littered with monuments and ruins that conservationists never noticed. Shepherds camp in royal palaces, mirror mosaics creak underfoot, and bee nests hang from painted ceilings. It is one of India's perhaps ironic glories that, in addition to the best known and most spectacular sites, there are still real ruins, neglected, still crumbling, still victims of rain and vegetation. The discovery of these various and magnificent monuments aroused curiosity about India's past. It is difficult to understand today that nothing was known about the history of India before the Muslim invasions until the end of the 18th century. “At this time [1000 AD. C.]", wrote Thomas Twining in 1790, "we reach a line of shadows beyond which no object is clearly discernible. What treasures might not be discovered if the light of science ever penetrated this darkness. For Twining, Indian history was like Aladdin's deep cave. The outer chambers were well lit, thanks to the later Mohammedan chroniclers, but beyond them the cavern was dark. Darkness. No one could say how long ago. There was only one uncertain lead, one clue: Alexander the Great's invasion in 326 BC. By examining all possible sources and combining conjecture with some brilliant conclusions, the Orientalists successfully broke through this darkness. The emotion when a new light was released in the depths of darkness was tremendous. But much remained in the dark; Whole centuries resisted the Enlightenment. For all the excitement and remarkable achievements, India's story is far from over. There are almost no ancient historical works to provide a framework, no chronology to provide the dates, and especially no contemporary chronicles to provide the details. It's missing just about everything that traditionally makes the story palatable to the general reader. There are no anecdotes, no scandals, no campaigns or well-documented personalities. A chronological approach quickly devolves into an incredibly confusing list of obscure dynasties and kings, with no reliable dates and no defined reigns. The same applies in part to the art and architecture of India. The artists, master builders and sculptors are mostly anonymous and, in many cases, so are their clients. We know little about how they work and nothing about the problems they encountered. In Indian painting, for example, there is a gap of nearly 1,000 years, making any discussion of the subject highly conjectural. In this book I have concentrated more on historians than on history, more on Indologists than on India. The careers of men like Sir William Jones, James Prinsep, Sir Alexander Cunningham, James Fergusson - Fergusson - and many more - more - reveal almost as much about British India as centuries before. Furthermore, the problems and prejudices they had to overcome in engaging with a very, very foreign art and culture are the same as any non-Indian Indian.

not familiar with the matter still have to face. The history of the pioneers is an excellent guide to understanding India. You don't have to sympathize with the British Raj to appreciate this story. The government's role in this was the usual, too little too late. It was a constant source of embarrassment that the British authorities showed little interest, while other European governments generously supported research on indigenous issues. The field was left to individual initiative. The men who took up the challenge were no more enlightened or liberal in attitude than other British officials at the time. Some had great respect for all things Indian. They criticized government policies and were derided as "Brahmins". Others, perhaps a majority, considered today's Indians utterly unworthy of their glorious heritage. Heritage. They attributed the best of Indian culture to outside influences or portrayed Indian history as one of steady decline into cultural bankruptcy and moral degeneration. more worthy motives, they were nothing less than iconoclasts and hooligans. The damage done to Indian forts by British guns was outweighed by that done by British officers in their search for suitable barracks. And there were engineers whose desire to fill in their railway dams and embankments led to some of the most tragic archaeological devastation. Even zoologists were sometimes sportsmen who saw no contradiction in studying Indian wildlife and contributing to their gradual extinction. To die. But all this need not detract from performance. (Eventually the vandals were stopped; even the government was made to feel some responsibility.) The products of British science deserve to rank alongside the most cited legacies of the Raj - the Raj - the railways, the judiciary and civil service, the democracy. In any large library, India requires a rather disproportionate amount of shelf space (nearly five times as much as China in the London Library). Working or just walking through these squeaky shelves is an exhilarating experience. Apart from travel diaries and memoirs, political commentaries and official documents, the shelves are still full, crammed, with about 200 volumes of archaeology, an equal number of works by surveyors, almost fifty of them with ancient inscriptions alone. This is certainly an aspect of the Raj of which an Englishman can be unreservedly proud, a rare and unique salute from a conquering power to an older, nobler and more enduring civilization.

CHAPTER ONE This wonderful country

On 1 September 1783, the Crocodile Crocodile sailed five months later from Portsmouth and anchored in Madras. On board, Sir William and Lady Jones watched with concern the wall of foam where the Indian Ocean waves broke against the offshore reefs. With the other passengers, the ladies in voluminous, whispering tunics and the men, all with cocked hats and swords, silk stockings and buckled shoes, shoes, they crowded into wooden cages and lowered them over the side of the ship. Below, an armada of canoes and catamarans maneuvered for customs; Crouching was common, drowning was not uncommon. Even the first glimpse of India in the form of boatmen, captains, was anything but comforting. They wear "no kind of covering, except a little rag, so as not to completely hide their limbs", wrote William Hickey, Hickey, "a very unpleasant display for modest girls on their first arrival". and ruffles with each stroke of the oar. And, one of the first lessons in the nature of British rule in India, these stalwarts had the finest ladies and gentlemen in their power: safe in the foaming waves, each passenger had to hug one of those hard brown torsos for a ride on the back. . through the shallow waters. Getting to Madras was not a worthy task. But on the beach a parade of well-dressed gentlemen and beautiful carriages awaited the new arrivals. Beyond, the city gleamed in the sun, white and neoclassical among the swaying palm trees, "similar to the images that float through your mind after reading One Thousand and One Nights." Come on, a place where a gentleman can live like a lord and amass a fortune at the same time. Sir William Jones was no exception. His first priority was achieving financial independence, or £30,000 to be precise. As a result of his appointment as a judge in the High Court of Calcutta, he was knighted and married. His salary, he calculated, would allow him and Anna Maria to save £30,000 over six years. Then back to England, to your books and your friends. But he was more Oriental than most of the newcomers. His professional qualifications as a lawyer were unique. Edward Gibbon, then writing The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, described the Empire, Jones described Jones as "the only jurist who was equally familiar with the Westminster annuals, the commentaries of Ulpian, the Attic writings of Isaeus and the sentences of the Arab and Persian cadhis cadhis. [judge]". Aboard the Crocodile, Crocodile, Jones continued his studies in Persian law. He had a small fortune to make, but he also hoped to do justice to the people of Bengal according to his own laws, to study and clarify them. Elsewhere, Gibbon described Jones as more than a lawyer; he was a genius'. And it was his other accomplishments, considerable by any measure and spectacular by British standards, that already made him better known. The son of an eminent mathematician, he was an avid student of mathematics, astronomy, and natural science (natural science), but first gained distinction as a classical scholar. Greek and Latin literature were his passions; he modeled his letters on Cicero, his speeches on Demosthenes, and peppered both with classical allusions. At Oxford he turned to modern languages ​​and then to Persian and Arabic. His first published works were typical: a Persian grammar and a translation from Persian into French. He was also a highly respected poet.

he was intensely interested in music and possessed that unfathomable memory so essential to any student; at the age of eleven, he is said to have surprised his schoolmates by providing them with the entire lyrics to The Tempestout from his head. But Oriental literature was now his main interest. While in India he intended to collect manuscripts; He was even willing to put part of the £30,000 into it. When the Crocodile Crocodile crossed the Arabian Sea with India at the head and Persia in port, he was overcome with violent excitement. What a vast and culturally unexplored field surrounded him; what untold riches were hidden there; and what a glorious achievement if you could guide people in their systematic discoveries. After a few days in Madras, the Jones Joneses were back aboard the "cute crocodile" and on their way to Calcutta. Madras, once the Crocodile, once the pride of British settlements in India, had now been eclipsed. Calcutta, founded less than 100 years ago, was now the big draw. By Clive's treaty with the Mughal Emperor of 1765, all of Bengal, stretching from Benares to Burma, was ceded to the East India Company. Business priorities gave way to administrative and fiscal needs. Indeed, precariously but unstoppably, British hegemony was established in India. Jones himself described Bengal as "that wonderful land which fortune laid in Britain's lap while she slept". Administrative responsibility meant increasing revenue, developing communications, regulating commerce, and administering justice; hence the judiciary and the Supreme Court, not to mention the network of civil and military officials. Calcutta was a commercial settlement for seventy years and suddenly became a colonial metropolis. It's hard to imagine the city as the cheerful and elegant capital of the East. Few places have acquired such a contrasting reputation over the course of a few centuries - centuries - as Regency Bath, which sprawls across the Bronx. Contemporary paintings by artists such as Tho Thomas but Daniell depict spacious Palladian mansions, wide streets and stately gardens bordered by the azure waters of the River Hughli - river - no, no crowds, no dust; it even looks nicer. As Crocodile Crocodile sailed upriver, the Joneses passed their future home in Garden Reach Reach, a nine-mile stretch of "gracious mansions". "They are all white, their roofs are invariably flat and are surrounded and encircled by colonnades, and their fronts are relieved by tall columns supporting deep porches." The water cascades over the edge and presents a constant succession of everything that pleases the eye or can testify to the wealth and elegance of the owners. Then came the fort, also on the east bank, and "so well preserved, and everything in such excellent condition, that it is a curiosity to see it - everything - all the slopes, slopes and walls are covered with the richest vegetation, which completes the all." the charm of the scene." Finally, the town itself, flanking the fort with government offices and military residences. "When you drive past Fort William and the Esplanade, it's beautiful. Indeed, Calcutta was known as the 'City of Palaces'. Palaces' It was also, in Clive's opinion, "one of the most wicked places in the universe and immensely greedy and luxurious [sic]". Fortune, so easy to make, was so easily lost at the whist table. was marked by a dinner around 14:00-20:00 - a soup, roast chicken, curry and rice, a lamb cake, a quarter of a lamb, rice pudding, pastries, very good cheese, fresh butter in the barrel, good bread and excellent Madeira.', and that was as long as there were no guests. After dinner, the master of the house finished his three bottles of red wine and retired to bed until it was time for the walk you see. nearby, dinner and dancing, or another round of drinking. The sassy little Emma Wrangham and the beautiful Madame Grand caused a scandal; For those too drunk or syphilitic to keep up, there were also legions of "sooty bibis bibis" (prostitutes). fractional

Disputes were part of life at all levels. Only three years have passed since Warren Hastings, the Governor-General, had his famous duel with Sir Philip Francis, a high-ranking member of the Governing Council. And yet it was all extremely exciting, exciting, like a combination of Paris in the raunchy 90s and the Klondike. The other striking thing about the city that would be Jones's home for the next eleven years was its insularity. Although it was the seat of a considerable part of India, Calcutta was even less Indian than Madras or the small colony of Bombay. Clive Live had foreseen the possibilities of the Indian empire, and Warren Hastings recognized that with government came profound responsibilities for the Indian people. However, there was no general awareness of such things. More typical was the attitude of Sir Philip Francis, who never strayed more than a mile or two from the town. The only British empire known to most was the recently lost one in North America. In India, the settler mentality prevailed. What was happening at Mofussil Mofussil on the outskirts of Calcutta was a mystery; what was going on among the earthly powers behind him was completely irrelevant. In fact, the administration of Bengal by the East India Company was just another courtesy of the Mughal Emperor in Delhi, and not unlike the trade concessions of the previous century. Century. The country's "upward" disturbances "were deplorable when they stopped the flow of trade; but not for the next twenty years would the B-Brits feel compelled to do anything about it. William Hodges, the artist who was touring India when Jones arrived, he found it "surprising that so little is known about a country so closely connected with us. Little has yet been said about the face of the country, its arts and crafts". After several failed attempts, unsuccessful attempts, Hodges managed to advance into the interior of Agra and Gwalior, reminding his contemporaries of the glory of the massive fortress of Gwalior Taj Majal at the top of the hill, the "Gibraltar of the East". They made little impression. in Calcutta's high society. The prize for Indigo, the betrothal of Miss Wrangham and the shocking affair of William Hunter and the three mutilated girls were more to his liking. On this one greedy and bourgeois society, Sir William Jones could hardly be just a notable exception. In London he had been accused of showing temper in company and, though he had reasonable objections, it was more temper than restraint. As befits a man of letters, he he was reserved in the company of others, unless they were his intellectual equals, the same, and there would be few of them in Calcutta. He also had no time for factions and politics. An experience unhappy experience, unhappy as a candidate for MP for Oxford and the mo The notoriety of having to finance his career by soliciting favors left him bitter. After all, he was now happily married. Anna Maria, beautiful, accomplished and dedicated, was his great joy. Her health would be his only real concern in India, and their camaraderie was a major factor in the confidence with which he carried out his work. In a society so riddled with scandals, it was no small feat not to be forever affected by them. In only one other relationship in India has he rivaled hers, hers, another Anna Maria and her husband, Warren Hastings. All that had been achieved in Indian studies before Jones was due to Hastings. India's first governor-general (Clive had only been governor of Bengal) was also its greatest. Faced with the challenge of governing tens of millions of Indians, he had the new and significant idea of ​​trying to do so with their consent. Little was known about his customs, whether Muslim or Hindu, and few thought much of his character. "A people as degenerate, cunning, wicked, and superstitious as any race in the known world," thought a contemporary, adding "if not more." Hastings disagreed. He spoke Urdu, Bengali and other things.

Persian; he could understand and respect her in turn. If British rule in India is to prosper and last, British administrators themselves must be partially Indianized. You have to learn the languages, study the customs. Government must work within existing institutions and not try to impose a new set of Western institutions. There has to be an intellectual exchange, not a walk; and if there are flagrant abuses in Indian society, they must be reformed from within, not ostracized from without. According to one eminent historian, "Hastings loved and respected the people of India to a degree unmatched by any other Anglo-British ruler". equal'. To realize this ambitious plan, the first requirement was that all potential managers could speak the language. Language. Persian was the language of diplomacy and was already widely used in government circles. circulates Bengali, the local slang, was lesser known; but by the time Jones arrived, the first Bengali grammar, written by Nathaniel Halhed, an old Oxford friend of Jones's, and printed by Charles Wilkins, was already in circulation. Bengali was therefore the first of the Indic languages ​​to be made available to scholars; and Wilkins, who cast the type with his own hand, was the first to print in the vernacular in India. The impact of this achievement would be enormous, not only for the British, for whom the work was intended, but also for Indic writings. Another important work and another in manuscript was completed. To allow lawyers to pursue their cases in local courts, Halhed has updated its grammar with a Gentoo Code [i.e. Gentoo[i.e. Hindu Laws]. Hindu Laws]. This was a summary compiled by Brahmins working under his supervision. Jones would have found it inadequate as a statute book, but it was a step in the direction Hastings wanted the entire government to take. The other job was potentially much more exciting. After establishing his Bengali printing press, Wilkins gained the trust of the local Brahmins and, with their help, began to learn Sanskrit. Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hindus. Its origins were then unknown and as dead as a spoken language like ancient Greek. But it was the medium in which the first religious compositions of the Aryan settlers of India were expressed; and in the jealous possession of the Brahmin priestly caste, it has been preserved and augmented for centuries. Therefore, it seemed to be the key to the discovery of ancient India: everything of literary, historical and scientific value in the pre-Islamic culture of India was written in Sanskrit or one of its later derivatives. The first Europeans to adopt the language were probably Portuguese priests in the 16th century. To strengthen their position in the religious disputes with the Brahmins, at least two of the priests had delved into its mysteries, but without showing any appreciation for its literary wealth. The first Englishmen who were interested in these things were also blind. "There is little knowledge among them [Hindus]", wrote an 18th-century traveler, "one of the reasons may be the lack of books, of which few exist, and their manuscripts". He was right about the books. There were only manuscripts and they too were carefully guarded. But he ignored the oral tradition. As any Sanskrit scholar would point out, finding the right pundit (master) (teacher) to interpret them was as important as owning the manuscripts. All we know of Wilkins' pioneering efforts in Sanskrit is that, when Jones appeared, he had almost completed the first translation of a Sanskrit work into English. He had chosen the Bhagavad, the Bhagavad Gita, a Gita, a long stretch of the longest of all epics, the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata. The Gita Gitawas was the most popular devotional work in India and its publication caused a stir. But first, Wilkins sent the work to his patron, Warren Hastings. Would the Governor-General recommend that the East India Company finance its publication?

I have no hesitation in calling the Gita Gitaa a performance of great originality [wrote Hastings], of an almost unrivaled grandeur of conception, plot and diction; and a single exception, among all the religions known to mankind, of a theology which exactly agrees with the Christian disposition and strongly illustrates its basic teachings. You must not be afraid to compare the best French versions of the most admired passages in the Iliad or the Odyssey, or the first and sixth books, with our own Milton's books and the English translation of the Mahabharata. the Mahabharata. Hastings was overwhelmed. "Not long ago, the inhabitants of India were considered by many to be creatures barely above the rank of wild life." Now their civilization has been revealed in this masterpiece from a time before even the first attempts at civilization in our own neighborhood of the earth. . For the sake of Compa Company's sober and sober directors, he noted that the office could only evoke gratitude from his indigenous subjects and greater understanding from his employees. And he ended with a powerful and prescient statement about the body of Indian scriptures. writings "These will survive when British rule in India has long ceased to exist and when the sources of wealth and power it once produced are lost to memory. Memory." It was like he already knew she was aware, though. However great and enduring the British Raj was, the discoveries of the Orientalists were to surpass it. Buried in antiquity is the fabric of a remarkable civilization; Excavated and rebuilt, it could become the finest of all British-era monuments in India. No one was better equipped for this task than the new Justice of the Supreme Court. Jones Jon combined Hastings' bold, broad vision with Wilkins' keen intellect. Furthermore, his personality and enthusiasm for the task was attractive. Coming straight from England, he was above the meanness and hedonism of Anglo-Anglo-Indian life. His stature brought a new seriousness to those who took Indian culture seriously. Hastings could encourage and uplift others, but Jones had the rare gift of inspiring others. Even before he found a home in Calcutta, he made contact with Hastings' protégés. Wilkins and the others each worked in their own vacuum. You were flattered. On January 15, 1784, less than sixteen weeks after his arrival, Jones invited thirty like-minded and influential minds to the Supreme Court jury room. The event was opened by Sir William Jones, who gave a scholarly and highly stimulating lecture on establishing a society for the study of Asiatic, civil, natural, antiquity, art, science and literature history. Asia. The speech was received with enthusiasm and it was decided to found the Society under the name of Asiatic Society. Supposedly modeled after the Royal Society, the Asiatic Society owed everything to Jones and supported Dr. Closer, in fact, to the famous Johnson club, to which Jones had belonged. It was very informal; there were no rules and the only qualification for membership was a willing and voluntary "love of knowledge". After Jones, much of this informality would change; but his other condition remained. The field of study must be broad. “You will examine what is strange in the wonderful structure of nature, correct the geography of Asia, and trace the annals and traditions of the nations that populated or devastated it; They examine his methods in arithmetic and geometry, in trigonometry, measurement, mechanics, optics, astronomy and general physics; Physicist; & in morals, grammar, rhetoric and dialectics; in Medicine and Anatomy and Chemistry. To this will be added investigations into their cultivation, manufacture and trade and music, architecture and poetry, and whether the question now is what

If within these broad limits lie the intended objects of our investigations, we answer to man and nature; what one achieves or the other produces. ,different'. Designing such a comprehensive scheme was an achievement in itself. But Jones was also the only man of his generation who could make a notable contribution in all these fields. During his ten-year term as president, he shaped society with his own unique brand of universality. His contributions include treatises on Indian music, on the cure of elephantiasis, on Chinese literature, on the scaly anteater, on the course of the Nile, on Indian chronology, on the Indian zodiac, on the Indian origin of chess, on a new one. on the finch, on Indian botany, on spikenard, on mystical poetry and on the slow lemur -lemur-, in addition to his most pioneering studies on Hinduism, Indian history and the language and literature of Sanskrit, were in his annual speeches incorporated into society. For the remote worker with a keen interest in crustaceans, meteorology or Arabic, it was a revelation that here was a society eager to listen and a man who knew enough about the subject to undertake his studies to conduct and publish his results. From Benares to Chittagong and further afield into Madras and Bombay, the men sat back and surveyed their surroundings. Reports of manuscripts, monuments, inscriptions, ancient coins, strange customs, forgotten tribes and rare birds began to arrive. Through the partnership, Joness was able not only to collect and transmit all of this material, but also to publish it. The first volume of Asiatick Asiatick Researches, Researches, the Society's journal, appeared in 1789. Four more followed during Jones's ten-year term as president, each attracting increasing attention in Europe. In the past, the notion that they somehow had a bad reputation was the great obstacle to indigenous studies among those who recognized that there was something to study. What could be learned from idolaters who worshiped cows and monkeys and yet dared to assert a history that surpassed that of classical Greece and a religious tradition that discredited the accepted chronology of Genesis? Why bother with invariably suggestive and often obscene sculpture, or a religion that had widows burned? The Hindus evidently tolerated infanticide and, according to a seventeenth-century writer, regarded the most flagrant eccentricities as evidence of sanctity. Some yogis are completely naked, some I have seen in India and Hindu women come up and kiss them in the yogi's court. Others put something over it when it is written, with which yogis buy food; and several come to caress her, thinking that there is much virtue in her, and none has left her, as they say, because they do not sleep with women and do not use any other means to extract their semen. They can hold their breath and remain dead for several years while their bodies are kept warm with oils, etc. all the time. They can fly and transform souls, into each other, or into any animal. They can shape their body into any shape they want, making it so flexible that they can put it through a small hole and it squirms and squirms like soft wax. They eat a very moderate diet, eating nothing but milk and some type of grain they have. By the end of the 18th century, it was no longer common to be as open and frank as John Marshall. But reports like this were common knowledge. How could these people, "little raised above the level of the wild," be worthy of serious study except by anthropologists? anthropologists? On the other hand, Hastings' praise of the Gita Gita suggests that, for all its modern absurdities, Hinduism was founded on the highest religious sentiments. It was also said that the Hindus really worshiped only one God, although there were many forms in man. This immediately made the subject more respectable. However, Jones was most intrigued by the man who takes many forms. "I am in love with Thegopis", Thegopis wrote to Wilkins in 1784, "enchanted by Krishna, an enthusiastic

Admirer of Rama and devout worshiper of Brahma. Yudhishthir, Arjun, Bhima and other warriors, warriors of the Mahabharata, the Mahabharata seems to me greater than Agamemnon, Ajax and Achilles appeared when I first read the Iliad." To Western tastes, one of his first articles was on the gods of Greece, Italy and India. Indian usage. Using his immense classical knowledge, he identified many of the Indian gods with their classical counterparts and even suggested that the Greeks might have imported many of their deities from India. Zeus and company may not have been entirely respectable , but his exploits were never seen as a reason to ignore classical scholarship. The same goes for the Hindu pantheon. Pantheon. Siva's wife, Parbati, corresponded well with Venus; Jones couldn't help reminding his audience that Venus was occasionally depicted in the form of a "conical marble", for which "the reason is very evident in Indian temples and paintings". The lingam or phallus was indeed a tremendous stone. the stumbling block for any good English Christian who could easily become fascinated by Hinduism or Indian sculpture. But, as Jones noted, in Hinduism "it never seems to have occurred to legislators or peoples that anything natural could be obscenely obscene, a singularity that permeates all their writings and conversations, but no proof of their depravity is morality." . Moral'. An argument the British would never buy. Jones is almost unique in his acceptance of eroticism in Indian art and its place in Hindu religion. After clearing the obvious hurdles, he was ready to embark on a compassionate and compassionate discovery of India's past.

CHAPTER TWO A Curious Englishman

In the winter of 1784/85 the Joneses set out on a round trip up the Ganges to Benares, finding ancient cities corresponding to Gaya and Gaur. Sirwith William was looking for information about these manuscripts. the wonderful One Earth,' he says, and the precious copy of the Code of Laws of Manu, the ancient lawgiver whom he had formerly compared to Moses, was his most valuable acquisition. He planned to use it as the basis for a new compendium of Hindu law to replace Halhed's. He also considered how to overcome the Brahmins whom the courts had to rely on to interpret, not always impartially, Sanskrit laws. But it wasn't until Wilkins announced his intention to leave India that he finally decided to learn Sanskrit. Wilkins remained the only Englishman to speak the language. Language. Jones would be second. In the autumn of 1785 the Joneses moved to Krishnagar, sixty miles upriver from Calcutta. There, near the former headquarters of Bengali scholarship in Nadia, they rented a bungalow built "entirely from plant materials", and Jones approached the local Brahmins for instruction in Sanskrit. Despite considerable financial support, they declined, leaving for a religious festival. In his absence, Jones found Ramlochand, a physician who knew and taught Sanskrit, although he was not a Brahmin. He accepted the new student with reservations. For the next six years the Joneses returned to Krishnagar and Ramlochand each autumn. Nadia became Jones' "third college". He adopted the loose white cotton Indian dress; Cotton; Their thatched-roof bungalow became the setting for a rural idyll that was the complete opposite of life in Kolkata. Anna Maria, who "is not always sick but never well," seemed to revive there. The days passed in a routine of simple pleasures and hard learning. Sanskrit Sanskrit turned out to be an extremely difficult language, even for a polyglot. But "I learn with more grammar and precision than the indolence of childhood and the impatience of youth would allow me to learn anything else." Perhaps it was this highly systematic approach that allowed him to make his first major discovery. Because at six months, months, he had a feeling of déjà vu; you; the grammar, even the vocabulary, seemed to bear some resemblance to Greek and Latin. The Sanskrit for mother was matr, matr, mouse mouse mus musand and so on. For someone who doesn't have a Sanskrit-English dictionary and looks up glibpandit sentences and glibpandit inflections, it wasn't as obvious as it seems now. The implications were also unclear. It might just be a few loanwords, whether it's from Sanskrit to Greek or vice versa. However, Jones suspected he was on to something bigger and presented his theory to the Asiatic Society in February 1786. The Sanskrit language, ancient as it is, has a wonderful structure; more perfect than Greek, richer than Latin, and more exquisitely refined than both; yet they have a greater affinity with both, both in the roots of the verbs and in the forms of the grammar, the grammar, than could have been produced by chance; so strong that no philologist could examine them all without believing that they come from a common source, a source that may no longer exist. There is a similar, though not quite as convincing, reason to believe that both Gothick [i.e. Germanic] and Celtic, though mixed with another language, had the same origin as Sanskrit; and ancient Persian might be added to the same family. It was the genius of Sir William Jones who accidentally discovered what he was looking for.

As if by chance, he was able to recognize and interpret a cardinal concept. He not only discovered what later became known as the Indo-European language family and noted that they shared a lost origin; indeed, he had established the principles of comparative philology. If the study of languages ​​could reveal something as surprising as the common Aryan origin of the ancient peoples of Europe and northern India, it could clearly be used as a method of historical research. Languages ​​obviously evolved in a similar way to, say, architectural styles. The state of a language at a given time could be used as an indicator of the level of civilization reached by those using it. It could also be a way of giving an approximate date to literary compositions of unknown antiquity. Since then, philological studies have helped to unravel the mysteries of many ancient civilizations. India, with its wealth of literature and ancient inscriptions, benefited more than most, and the dates now associated with its earliest literary compositions depend entirely on evidence from philology. Jones' discovery showed more clearly that, far from being savages, the people of North India were actually of the same ethnic origin as their British rulers. Even if Sanskrit were "more perfect" etc. than Greek or Latin, then the history of civilization in India could be longer than in Europe. So troubling for sahibs, sahibs, it was a tremendous boost to oriental studies. The translation of Sanskrit literature suddenly became a much wider interest. What could I not say about the civilization of these ancient people and perhaps about the common origins of all Aryan peoples? And the timeline? How old are the various Sanskrit scripts? With what free time he had left after a busy life at court, Jones continued his studies. “I cherish every wasted day in not acquiring new knowledge of man or nature,” he wrote in 1787. “It is my ambition to know India better than any other European. he . I rise an hour before dawn, and walk from my garden to the fort, about three miles; and at seven I am ready for my pandit mypandit with which I read Sanskrit; at eight a Persian or an Arab arrives, with whom I read until nine; at nine the lawyers come with affidavits; So I'm dressed and ready for dinner." Dinner was at 3 pm. "As the sun sets on the Ganges, we return to the Gardens in our Post-Chaise Post-Chaise or Anna's Phaeton, drawn by two beautiful Nepalese horses Ho. rss. After teatime we read; and never get up, if we can help it, after ten o'clock. He taught Anna Maria algebra, and together they read Dante, Ariosto, and Tasso in the original. Life in Garden Reach had become as idyllic as ever. their bungalow in Krishnagar. They studied botany together: Anna Maria drew and painted the plants; Sir William classified them according to Linnaeus's system and wrote a Latin description of each. He drew the line for picking the flowers. However much loved science, he had a very, very Buddhist aversion to the destruction of life in any form. His studies promoted botany in India but temporarily halted zoology. "I cannot reconcile my ideas of humanity with the idea of ​​making miserable. innocent animals and attack harmless birds.” The cattle that filled her garden responded to this human attitude. From Jones' dairy came "the best butter in India." Her sheep and goats, safe from the butcher's knife, ate from Anna Maria's hand. All was as the poets tell us. of the heydays; And you can see a boy and a tiger playing at Anna's feet. The tiger is not as big as a full-grown cat, but it will be as big as an ox: it is suckled by a goat and has all the tenderness of its foster mother." "Foster mother." Jones always insisted that even in England he was never unhappy; "But I was never happy until I settled in India." India'. He too was in a state of extreme excitement. Excitement. "The Sanskrit literature is indeed a new world; the language (which I am beginning to speak fluently) is the Latin of India and the brother of Latin and

Greek. There are half a million stanzas written in Sanskrit about history and sacred literature, countless epic and lyrical poems and (which is wonderful) countless tragedies and comedies, about 2,000 years old, also works on law (my main goal), on medicine, on theology, in arithmetic, in ethics, and so on ad infinitum. He felt like a man who had accidentally stumbled across classical literature. How could he convey that emotion? Let us suppose that Greek literature was known only in modern Greece and in the hands of priests and philosophers; and suppose they were still worshipers of Jupiter and Apollo; Suppose Greece was successively conquered by Goths, Huns, Vandals and Tartars, and finally by the English; Suppose then it were a court established by the British Parliament at Athens, and a curious Englishman as one of the judges; Suppose you learned Greek there, which none of your countrymen knew, and read Homer, Pindar, Plato, which no other Europeans had ever heard of. That's how I am in this country; He replaced Greek with Sanskrit, the priests of Jupiter with Brahmans, and Homer, Plato and Pindar with Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa. Jones had no doubt that Sanskrit literature, like the language itself, was in all respects the equal of Greek or Latin literature. Now, in 1787, he was translating a drama by Kalidasa, the 'Indian Shakespeare'. Sakuntala Completed in 1788 and published the following year, Sakuntala lived up to expectations. It was the first Sanskrit work to be translated solely on its literary merit. Despite the omission of some passages too bold for contemporary tastes -tastes- like the one describing the partisan. The heroine Sakuntala's swelling was her breasts: the comparison to A Sh Shakespeare not unduly reminiscent of Kalidasa The Tempest or Aakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream and Dream, Sakuntala was an instant success. The Calcutta edition was followed by two London editions in three years. However, Jones was wrong about one thing. Kalidasa was known to have lived in the era of a king named Vikramaditya, but Jones's Jones is dated "over 2000 years" a few centuries ago. Vikramaditya was the title of several Indian rulers, therefore Vereigns, and the patron saint of Kalidasa reigned around 400 AD. C. Therefore, he was a contemporary of St. Augustine, not Homer. As literary evidence for a great classical period of Indian history accumulated, the question of dates became increasingly exasperating. Sanskrit literature contained some long lists of kings, but no chronicles - chronicles - and nothing that could be considered history. This was a huge disappointment. Where was the Indian Tacitus? And how could this civilization fit into any historical historical context without it? Jones heard of Rajatarangini, Rajatarangini, a twelfth-century Kashmiri work that we now know is the only historical work to refer to pre-Islamic India. But it's a far cry from the classic in time and space, and Jones didn't get a copy anyway. Otherwise, there was only one date in all of India's ancient history: the story, 326 326 B.C. Strangely, strangely enough, this event, so significant for Western historians, seems to have completely escaped the attention of Sanskrit writers. Nowhere did Jones find any mention of the Greeks or any sign of Greek influence. In the early 1790s he continued to broaden the scope of his reading S Sanskrit Anskrit. He had already discovered that chess and algebra were of Indian origin; Origin; to this he added the heptatonic scale after studying a Sanskrit treatise on music. He also progressed with his law book and gained a certain reputation in the courts. "Now I can read both Sanskrit and Arabic so easily that native lawyers will never be able to apply it in the courts I sit in."

Enlightened Sons of Men') added the genuine respect and affection of Bengalis, be they suppliants or pandits. Indian orchids worked their magic on him. His planned six-year stay had expired; but he no longer wished to return to England. He may pay a visit to Europe, but he still plans to be in India at the turn of the century. Hinduism found him increasingly attractive, and the doctrine of reincarnation seemed to him "incomparably more rational, more pious and more deterrent to vice than the horrors of endless punishment instilled in Christians". But he was not tempted to abandon Christianity. In fact, there was no need; The thirty-nine articles, if they were articles, if they were written in Sanskrit, would pass as the work of a Brahmin and would be perfectly acceptable to Hindus. By this time, the Joneses had become something of an institution. Young Thomas Twining, just seventeen years old and newly arrived in India, was so honored by the invitation to dinner that he filled an entire page of his diary with the account of the visit. The party consisted of Sir William and Lady Jones, another gentleman and myself. Sir William was very cheerful and pleasant. He made some observations about the mysterious Hindu word omof om and other Indian topics. While sitting down after eating, he suddenly shouted "Othello, Othello" in a loud voice. He waited a minute or two and Othello did not appear and repeated his message: "Othello, Othello". His particularly fine voice, his white Indian costume, a small black wig on him, his jollity, playfulness and great fame made this scene extremely interesting. I was surprised that no one, Muslim or Hindu, responded to his call. Finally I saw a large black tortoiseshell chair crawling slowly towards us from an adjacent square. seemed to please. Sir William remarked that he was very fond of birds, but not very fond of seeing or hearing them unless they were free; and doubtless he would have freed Othello if he had not remembered that he was safer at his desk than in the hall. I spent a very pleasant day in the company of this distinguished and capable man. He was kind enough to express my approval of my Persian studies by repeating for me two lines from a Persian couplet, and also his translations of Kill not the ant that steals some grain; Live with pleasure and die with pain. Sitting in the shade on the banks of the Hughli, surrounded by venerable pandits and domesticated cattle, while Anna Maria gently sketched in the background, he looked the epitome of the Indian teacher-teacher-learned man and lawgiver, patron of both man and beast. So it was with the Asiatic Society. He chaired nearly every meeting and at the beginning of each year gave a challenging talk on a different aspect of Oriental studies. There was something Socratic about it from the beginning, he goes to look at this, look at that, etc., etc., and in his last speech he called the Society a "symposium meeting". Revered and loved (though rarely seen) by Calcutta society, he was in effect the Indian Socrates. In 1793 he gave his tenth lecture and marked the occasion by casually introducing the long-awaited advance in Indian chronology. "The Jurisprudence "Since the jurisprudence of the Hindus and the Arabs is the field I have chosen for my regular work, you cannot expect it to add significantly to your collection of historical knowledge; but perhaps I can pay homage to him from time to time, and I cannot fail to mention a discovery that happened to me by chance.” He had already laid the foundations of literary and linguistic study; now, at last, he had found a basis on which to begin the reconstruction of ancient Indian history.

The discovery may have been accidental, but it was the greatest; no one could have done it without his immense knowledge and genius for detecting a relevant fact. First, there was the Greek background. After Alexander the Great's invasion, Seleucus Nicator, his successor in Asia, sent an ambassador to India named Megasthenes. This man's account was later sought after by numerous classical writers for their descriptions of India, and so, although the original was lost, it could be largely reconstructed. Megasthenes apparently found the Indian court at a place called Palibothra at the confluence of the Ganges and Erranaboas. He had given a long and interesting account of the court and its ruler, Sandracottus; but where Palibothra was, what river the Erranaboas was, and who Sandracottus was, all remained a mystery. One geographer claimed that Erranaboas must be Jumna and therefore that Palibothra must be modern Allahabad at the junction of the Ganges and Jumna. There were several other candidates, including Kanauj and Rajmahal, but the most promising was Patna, whose ancient name is known as Pataliputra. That sounded a lot like Greek; But there was a problem. No river flows into the Ganges near Patna. In the 1770s and 1770s, the great geographer James Rennell revealed that the River Son may have flown into the Ganges at Patna, although it has since flowed much further east. But how could the river Son be the Erranaboas, especially when Megasthenes had mentioned the Son as a river of its own? Jones must have had this puzzle in his head while exploring Sanskrit literature. The first connection came when he encountered Hiratiyabahu's son, Hiratiyabahu, or the Golden Armor. I immediately realized that he was an Erranaboas, which could be a Greek attempt at Hiranyababu; in Hiranyababu; in this case, Erranaboas was the son after all, and Megasthenes was wrong in thinking they were two separate rivers. And if Erranaboas was the son, then Palibothra must indeed be Pataliputra, the modern Patna. Only Sandracottus remained, the Indian ruler Megasthenes so admired. He was obviously an adventurer and usurper of adventurers, but a man of considerable skill and creator of a vast empire. But such a name did not appear in any of the Sanskrit king lists. Jones continues reading. In an obscure political tragedy he found Chandragupta's supposed history; He was described as a usurper who chose Pataliputra as his capital and received foreign ambassadors there. That proved the point; To see; Chandragupta must be Sandracottus. The later discovery of an alternative spelling for Sandracottus Sandracottus as Sandraguptos made this possible. Going back to classical sources, Seleucus Nicator is also known to have visited, or rather invaded, India before sending Megasthenes. He had been repulsed, but his opponent by then was Sandracottus, Sandracottus whose rule had already been established over the whole of North India. Seleucus returned west and is known to have arrived in 312 BC. BC Babylon. SO Sandracottus must have ascended the throne before that date, but after Alexander's visit, sometime between, say, 325 B.C. and 313 B.C. Thus, a decade from now, an event in ancient Indian history was given a date. It is impossible to overstate the importance of this discovery. Coincidentally, Alexander, Seleucus and Megasthenes entered Indian history at a crucial time. Chandragupta would soon emerge as something of an Indian Julius Caesar, the builder of an empire and the founder of a dynasty unique in Indian history. So his accession date was a crucial date. From the birth of Buddha and onwards, using Sanskrit king lists, the entire chronology of Indian history can and has been based on this. Six months after announcing his discovery, Jones wrote to a close friend in England. “Ten years ago we landed in Calcutta; and if it weren't for the incessant disease

my beloved Anna, they would have been the happiest years of an ever happy life &' But now Anna Maria must go home; a longer stay would endanger her lives. Jones himself would follow, "as soon as I can, according to my own plans, but as I have nothing to fear from India and much to enjoy in it, I will make a great sacrifice whenever I leave." '. I will indeed leave a land where we have no Royal Court, no Royal House of Lords, no clergy of wealth or power, taxes, encumbrances, fear of thieves or fire, no snow, no bitter frost followed by desolate thaws, and no ice. but the one that is artfully made to fuel our desserts; Also, I have twice as much money as I want, and I know that I am doing very great and far-reaching good to many millions of Indians who look to me not as their judge but as their lawgiver. However, a man who has almost reached the age of forty-seven, and who sees younger men dying around him, has a right to think of retiring from this life, having to think mainly of preparing for another, and already deteriorated, has lost his view. and in November he collapsed with a fever. He recovered, but rheumatism and a tumor continued to cause him great pain. Anna Maria sailed home. Jones became increasingly immersed in his studies. Now seven volumes of the collection of Hindu laws were complete. One more year of intensive study and the remaining two volumes must be completed. He formally applied for permission to resign the magistracy and return to England in 1795. A month after he proposed to me, he broke down. Doctors linked the tumor to inflammation of the liver. Once again he appeared to be on the mend. On April 26, 1794, doctors deemed him well enough to put to sea immediately. The next one died. Day, shaken by the thought, as soon as he departs, to 'the Father of England. Oriental Studies died. Jones' discoveries—of the Indo-European family of languages, the riches of Sanskrit literature, and the first dating in ancient Indian history—were landmarks. In retrospect, however, his most significant achievement was the founding of the Asiatic Society. Had he not left such an institution, his death might have left an unbridgeable gap in the ranks of the Orientalists; Reconstruction of India's ancient history may be decades overdue. As it was, there was no interruption. Henry Thomas Colebrooke, another brilliant scholar who read his first essay for the Society shortly before Jones' death, Colebrooke completed the summary of Hindu laws. He also took up Jones' mantle as champion of Hindu civilization and exponent of Sanskrit literature; indeed, Professor Max Muller, the great German Orientalist, thought Colebrooke the best scholar. Many other notable figures helped in the study of Sanskrit and how the vernacular languages ​​of India evolved from it. They also indirectly contributed to the reconstruction of Indian history and the appreciation of Indian art and architecture. But the most sensational discoveries would be made elsewhere. Sanskrit Sanskrit literature has proved unreliable in terms of facts and data, too difficult to authenticate and too diffuse to assimilate; sometimes it was downright misleading. But if Jones focused on literature, he also ensured the widest possible use of research, encouraging it: "Man and nature, whatever the one achieves or the other produces." her inspiration and without her a true picture of India would never have emerged. He also managed to make Indian studies attractive. In England, Calcutta was now compared to Florence; there was talk of an Indian renaissance; and Jones and his followers have been compared to the great Italian humanists. The "Exotic East" gained a new meaning. India was no longer seen as a bright and extravagant circus. It was a challenge for scientists and a responsibility for administrators. Several renovations were made

India is less attractive to adventurers and speculators. Jones' fame ensured that scholars and collectors took his place, becoming the true glory of the Raj.

CHAPTER THREE Thus Spoke Ashoka

Among the perks of the government established in Calcutta to deal with the sudden takeover of Bengal was not only a judiciary but also a mint. What was like an assistant master's test on this coin, which James Prinsep made in India in 1819. TheItpost is indistinguishable; in Prinsep, far from being a celebrity like Jones, he couldn't expect anything better. He was only twenty years old and, according to his obituary, "perhaps he wished to reach the degree of classical scholarship conferred in the public schools and universities of England". As a child, the youngest in a family of seven children, his passion was building very complicated working models; "Habit of precision and meticulous attention to detail" remained his hallmark qualities. He studied architecture with Pugin, transferred to the Royal Mint when his eyesight became difficult, and thence to Calcutta. "Well grounded in chemistry, mechanics and useful sciences", he was not an obvious candidate for the Jones mantle and the prize of being India's most gifted scholar. In the quarter century between Jones's death and Prinsep's arrival, the British position in India changed radically. The defeats of Tipu Sultan, ruler of Mysore, Mysore, the Marathas and the Gurkhas made the British undisputed masters of as much India as they wanted. Indeed, the British Raj had begun. The sovereignty of the East India Company was almost as much a political fiction as that of its nominal but now helpless ruler, the Mughal Emperor. Both, though they lasted another thirty years, became anachronisms. From Calcutta, a long arm of British territory now stretched across the Ganges and Jumna to Agra, Delhi and beyond. One thumb touched the Himalayas between Nepal and Kashmir, while several blunt fingers dug into Punjab, Rajasthan and central India. To the west, Bombay had expanded into the Maratha homeland; Broach and Baroda were under British control, and Poona, a center of Hindu orthodoxy and the capital of Maratha, became the legendary watering hole of bored Anglo-Indians. In the south, everything that was not British territory was in the hands of friendly feudal lords; the French have been eliminated, Mysore has established itself and the limits of territorial expansion have already been reached. Visitors in search of the real India no longer needed to wander the coast; now they could march boldly and safely through the middle. Bishop Heber of Calcutta (the appointment itself was a sign of the times; in Jones' day there wasn't even a church in Calcutta) visited his diocese in the 1820s. and " Reginald "Reginald Calcutta", as he signed himself, traveled all the way from the Ganges to Dehra Dun in the Himalayas, then through Delhi and Agra to Rajasthan, which is still largely independent, and set out from Poona and thence to Bombay. The acquisition of all these new territories brought the British in touch with the country's architectural heritage.Two centuries earlier, Elizabethan envoys had marveled at the cities of Mughal India "as opposed to those found throughout Christendom". from Agra, Fatehpur Sikri and Delhi, "each much larger than London and more populous."British settlers arrived in Upper India and showed genuine reverence for the sublime architectural relics of Mughal power. aniells, his memories of India were detailed drawings of the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort. His curiosity also extended to buildings.

sacred to the non-Muslim population; Khajuraho, Abu and many other sites were discovered between 1810 and 1830. The raw material for a new exploration of India's past was piling up. But it was another class of monuments, monuments made before the Mohammedan invasions and bearing unmistakable signs of extreme antiquity, that would become Prinsep's speciality. The first of these monuments, monuments, could hardly be called buildings, buildings, to attract European attention were the cave temples near Bombay. Elephanta Island, in the port of Bombay, was known to the Portuguese and became the subject of one of the first archaeological reports received by Jones's new Asiatic Society. Company. The cave is about three-quarters of a mile from the beach; the road passes through a valley; the hills on either side are beautifully dressed, and, except when interrupted by the dove calling for its absent mate, there is a solemn stillness; the mind is prepared to contemplate the approaching scene. The approaching scene was not a natural cave with a few prehistoric scratches, but a spacious portico with fine sculptural details and colossal stone figures: an architectural creation in all but name; because everything was carved, carved, carved and chiseled from solid rock. North of Bombay, Salsette Island had other groups of this type of cave. In 1806, Lord Valentia, a young Englishman whose greatest claim to fame must be the sheer weight of his travelogue (four quarto volumes written by just one and a half hundred kilos), set out to investigate them. He took Henry Salt, his partner, to help clear the jungle around the caves. Outside the caves of Jogeshwar they faltered with the new footprints of a tiger; According to locals, the tigers actually lived in the dens for part of the year. Salt noted that the other Salsette caves in Kanheri and Montpezir were also recently occupied. For the Portuguese, the nave and transepts flanked by columns were synonymous with a basilica; there was even a hole in the facade for a rose window. They had just finished plastering the delicate but heathen plaster and consecrating the place. Salt peeled off the stucco and noted how the sculpture had been preserved. Although these figures are not so well proportioned, their air, size and general bearing give an expression of grandeur which the best sculptors have often failed to achieve; the laziness of the pose, the simplicity of the drapery, the appropriateness of the situation, and the simplicity of the style in which they are executed, all contribute to this effect. He had a good idea of ​​the treasures of ancient art. In Lord Valentia's entourage he moved to Egypt, where he remained as British consul and was so successful in seizing and selling the artistic treasures of the pharaohs that he rivaled the great tomb robber Belzoni. Meanwhile, other rock-cut temples have sprung up in India. The freestanding Kailasa Temple at Ellora, carved into the rock above like a gigantic engraving, was uncovered and uncovered in the late 18th century. This was followed by the famous Ajanta and Ba Bagh caves. o “Few vestiges of antiquity,” wrote William Erskine in 1813, “have aroused greater curiosity. History records no facts to guide us in determining the period of their execution, and many opposing opinions have been formed about the religion of the people of whom they were made." By the statues of Elephanta and Ellora, especially the multi-headed, many-armed figures, it was clear they were at least Hindu. But why were they in such remote places and why were they neglected for so long? Besides, what about the simplest caves like Kanheri and the biggest of all, Karli in the Western Ghats? Lord Valentia was certain that the seated figure surrounded by devotees was "the Boddh" in Karli; he had just arrived from Ceylon, where Buddhism still existed.

a living religion, though it seemed almost unknown in India. Other critics, looking to the West for an explanation of everything they found admirable in Indian art, insisted that the excellence of sculpture indicated the presence of a Greek, Phoenician, or even Jewish colony in the West Indies. Still others looked to Africa: who but the pyramid builders could have accomplished such monolithic wonders? These theories were based on the idea that such monuments were unique to the West Indies, which had a long history of maritime contacts with the West. They became less credible with the discovery of the so-called Seven Pagodas at Mahabalipuram, near Madras. Here, a thousand miles away and across the Indian Peninsula, was a group of temples, carved not from solid rock but from rock. At first glance they looked like real buildings, a little rounded like old stone houses, but well proportioned, up to twenty-five feet long and thirty-five feet high, with porticoes, columns, and statues. It was only upon closer inspection that it was realized that each of them was a single gigantic stone carved into the architecture. "Incredible," declared Ed William Chambers, who visited the site twice in the 1770s and 1770s (although his account had to wait for the Asiatic Society's first publication in 1789), "of a style that is no longer in use." comes even closer to Egypt.” Egypt." Five years later, another account of the Boulder-Boulder Temples, or Raths, Raths, was given by a man who had also seen Elephanta. For him there was no doubt that the two were closely related in style and technique. Had he also seen the Temple of Ellora Intaglio, he might have been tempted to postulate a theory of architectural development - first the cave temple, then the independent excavation, and finally the exposed rock-like crust, finally the architecture of the cave. India somehow went out of fashion, earthen stone buildings always evolved from wooden buildings, but in India it was as if architecture was an evolution of sculpture.The defining characteristic of all truly Indian buildings is their sculptural quality. temples look like mountainous groups of figures and friezes; Even the Taj Mahal, though of its pure lines, is remembered as a masterpiece of sculpture rather than construction. kind of ancient monument that fascinated the first visitors. Thomas Coryat, an eccentric Englishman who appeared in Delhi in 1616, was probably the first to take notice. To the south of the Mughal city of Delhi (now Old Delhi) lie the abandoned tombs and forts of half a dozen earlier Delhis (now, confusingly, the site of New Delhi). The ruins stretched for ten miles, overgrown with bushes, inhabited by bats and monkeys. But in the middle of that jungle of crumbling masonry, Coryat saw something that stopped him; was not part. A simple round column, forty feet high, loomed over the remains of a dying palace, gleaming in the late afternoon light so characteristic of a ruin. From a distance he took it for bronze, up close for marble; it is actually polished sandstone. Weighing later estimated at 27 tons, it is a single finely pointed stone, another example of highly developed monolithic craftsmanship. But what intrigued Coryat was the discovery that it was registered. One of the two main inscriptions was in a script composed of simple vertical letters, somewhat like pinmen, which Coryat was sure was Greek. So, he thought, the column must have been erected by Alexander the Great, probably "as a sign of his victory" over the Indian king Porus in 326 BC. BEFORE CHRIST. Fifty years later, another such column was discovered by John Marshall, a member of the East India Company, and was described as "the first Englishman to really study Indian antiquities". He was certainly less inclined to jump to conclusions. Its pillar was "9 yards and 9 inches high" and bore a remarkable capital: Capital: "Upon this pillar and set is an engraved tiger, the most beautiful I have seen in India." In fact, he was a lion. But perhaps the most interesting thing about this pillar is that it is located in Bihar, thousands of kilometers from Delhi and far beyond.

Rock monuments around Bombay and Madras. Writings similar to those on the Delhi Pillar have been found in some cave temples; and in Karli certainly there was a small pillar outside the cave. Obviously, all these monuments were connected to each other in some way. But it was doubtful that Alexander would have reached Delhi, let alone Bihar. The existence of a similar pillar defeated Coryat's idea of ​​commemorating Alexander's victories, although the possibility that the letters were a corrupted form of Greek would persist for many years. With the founding of the Asiatic Society, there was finally a forum where a collective study of all these monuments could take place. Location. Reports of other pillars and caves soon arrived. Jones himself was rightly convinced that the mystery of who created them, when and why could only be solved if the inscriptions could be translated. Some ancient civilization, perhaps a foreign conqueror or a master craftsman, seemed to be clamoring for recognition. Recognition. Another breakthrough seemed imminent; at least; and with it another part of India's lost history could be restored. Thanks to Charles Wilkins, the man who preceded Jones as a Sanskrit, progress was initially encouraging. At one of the Society's first meetings, he reported on a new pillar, also in Bihar. Sometime in the month of November, 1780, near the town of Buddal, near which the Company has a factory and which was under my care, I discovered at a short distance a monumental headless pillar, much like the trunk of a coconut tree. , which is broken in half. It is located in a weed-covered swamp, near a small temple. After getting close enough to the monument to examine it, I took its measurements and made a drawing. A few meters above the ground there is an inscription engraved in the stone, of which I took two prints upside down with printing ink. Lately I've been lucky enough to discover the character. Although very different from Devanagari, the modern script used for Sanskrit was clearly related to it, and Wilkins was not surprised to discover that the language was, in fact, Sanskrit. For historians, the translation was a disappointment; Pilar Buddal didn't tell them anything interesting. But the decryption was an important breakthrough. It is now recognized that the modern Devanagari script has gone through three distinct stages; first the writing of the pin, which Coryat thought to be Greek (Ashoka Brahmi); second, a denser and more elaborate writing (Gupta Brahmi); and third, a more curved and rounded script (Kutila), giving rise to the orange script above the Devanagari line. Buddal's mainstay was Kutila, and after Wilkins discovered he had a Devanagari connection, Devanagari, the possibility of going back to earlier scripts was only dimly realized. So, as if to illustrate, Wilkins surprised his colleagues by extracting some meaning from an inscription written in Gupta Brahmi. It came from a cave near Gaya, known for some time, but never visited; a mr. Hodgekis, Hod Kis, who tried "was killed on the way". Encouraged by Warren Hastings, John Harrington, the secretary of the Asiatic Society, was more successful and found the cave hidden behind a tree near the top of a hill. The character of the inscription, according to Wilkins, was "undoubtedly the most ancient of any I have yet examined. But though the writing is not modern, the language is pure Sanskrit. Sanskrit." apparently guessing that the inscription was written in verse. It was the discovery of the meter that somehow helped him to successfully decipher it. But then again, there was little in this new translation to quench the historian's thirst for facts... facts.

A much more promising approach to the problem, even a shortcut, seems to have been announced in a letter to Jones from Lieutenant Francis Wilford, a land surveyor and avid student of all things Oriental, stationed at Benares. Beautiful res. Copies of the inscriptions found at Ellora and written in Ashoka Brahmi, the pins still undeciphered, were sent to Jones. He had probably sent them to Wilford because Benares, the Hindu holy city, was the most likely place to find a Brahmin who could read them. In 1793, Wilford announced that he had found such a man. I am honored to return facsimiles of several inscriptions with an explanation of them. At first I despaired of ever being able to decipher it&. However, after many unsuccessful attempts on our part, we were lucky enough to finally find an ancient sage who gave us the key and published a Sanskrit book containing a large number of ancient alphabets that were used earlier in different parts of the world. This was indeed a happy discovery which may be of great use to us later on. According to the ancient sage, most of Wilford's inscriptions refer to the deeds of the five heroic Pandava brothers of the Mahabharata. the Mahabharata. At the unspecified time in question, they were ordered not to converse with the rest of humanity; So their friends devised a method of communicating with them by "writing short, obscure sentences on rocks and stones in the desert, and in characters prearranged between them." The sage had the key to these characters in his codebook; he voluntarily transcribed them into Devanagari and then translated them. To be honest with Wilford in Sanskrit, I was a little leery of how the inscriptions got there. But he had no doubts that the decoding and translation were genuine. "I think we were able to decipher them is a big point, as it could lead to more discoveries later on that could limit our efforts." Most importantly, he had found the codebook, "an extremely fortunate circumstance". . Done'. Poor Wilford was the laughing stock of the Brahmins of Benares for a decade. He had previously been deceived with Sanskrit texts about the source of the Nile and the origin of Mecca which were later shown to be false. Following the codebook was a geographical treatise on the Holy Isles of the West, which contained an ancient Hindu reference to the British Isles. The Brahmins, for whom Sanskrit was a sacred prerogative for so long, defended themselves. One wonders how much Wilford paid his "wise old man". Wise'. Jones was already a little suspicious of Wilford's sources, but about the codebook, which was just as fake as the translations supposedly based on it, he reserved judgment until he could see it. He never did. In fact, he was never heard from again. But despite these disappointments, Jones continued to believe that this older writing would eventually be deciphered. He had received a copy of the writings on the Delhi Delhi Pillar and told a correspondent that they “drive me to despair; I have no doubt that you are right to consider them odd; I think they were Ethiopian and imported a thousand years before Christ. It was not one of his brightest guesses and, at the time of his death, the mystery of the inscriptions and monoliths was as obscure as ever. And so it remained until the work of James Prinsep. Jones gave Oriental studies a strong literary bent, and his successors continued to focus on Sanskrit manuscripts. Consequently, archaeological studies were ignored, as were inscriptions. Wilkins' few translations came to nothing, and the most intriguing scripts remained indecipherable. Even the translation of Gupta Brahmi's scriptures from the Gaya cave fell by the wayside in the face of waning interest; it would have to be decrypted again.

During his first twelve years in India Prinsep confined himself to scientific matters. He was sent to Benares to open a second mint and redesign the city sewers there. He also contributed some articles to the Asiatic Society magazine ('Descriptions of a Rain Gauge and Evaporator', 'Note on Japan's Magical Magic Mirrors', etc.). W). But in 1830 he was called to Calcutta as an assistant to the master essayist Horace Hayman Wilson, who was also secretary of the Asiatic Society and an eminent Sanskrit scholar. At the time, Wilson was intrigued by the meaning of several ancient coins recently found in Rajasthan and Punjab. Prinsep helped to catalog and describe them, and trying to decipher their legends piqued his interest in the whole question of ancient inscriptions. While his ignorance of Sanskrit was certainly a handicap, here, in deciphering the scriptures, was an area where his extraordinary gift for careful and methodical study could be brilliantly displayed. Since the days of Jones, another pillar has been found in Allahabad like that of Delhi Delhi; in addition to a Persian inscription from the Mughal period, it had a long inscription in each of the two oldest scripts (Ashoka Brahmi and Gupta Brahmi). A report was also received of a rock in Orissa covered with the same two writings. In 1833, Prinsep persuaded Lieutenant Burt, one of the engineers and surveyors surveying the city, to make an exact replica of the inscription on the Allahabad Pillar. Facsimiles reached Prinsep early in 1834. He soon had the issue of his Gupta Brahmi with a leading Sanskrit, the Reverend W. H. Mill. This manuscript, which Wilkins deciphered nearly fifty years ago, has since been forgotten. The same thing probably wouldn't happen again; back then, the inscription had something to say. Apparently it was recorded by order of a king named Samudragupta. He told of his extensive conquests and mentioned that he was the son of Chandragupta. The temptation to suppose that this Chandragupta was the same as Jones Chandragupta, the Sandracottus of the Greeks, was almost irresistible. But not quite. On the one hand, according to the Sanskrit king lists, Jones's Chandragupta was not succeeded by a Samudragupta; however, they mentioned several other Chandraguptas. But if Prinsep and Mill were disappointed to be denied the simplest and most satisfactory form of identification, there would be compensation. They lifted the veil over a dynasty now known as the Imperial Guptas. According to the Allahabad inscriptions, Samudragupta had "forcibly extirpated" nine kings and annexed their kingdoms. His reign extended across northern India to the depths of the Deccan. Politically, there was an empire here that rivaled that of Jones Chandragupta. Chandragupta. But more importantly, the Gupta period, around 320-460, 460 CE, would soon be recognized as the golden age of classical Indian culture. Many of the Ajanta frescoes, the finest sculptures by Sarnath and Mathura, and the plays and poems by Kalidasa, the 'Indian Shakespeare', date from this period. Shakespeare'. But, at the time, Prinsep and Mill knew no more about these Guptas than what the Pillar told them, and they tended to regard it as actual hyperbole and therefore unreliable. In any case, Prinsep was more interested in the scripts than their historical interpretation. Unlike Jones, he didn't indulge in grand theories. He was not a classical scholar, not even a Sanskrit one, but a pragmatic and committed scholar. In between experimenting with stainless steel treatments for new steamboats to be used on the Ganges, he fought Ashoka Brahmi's men at the Pillar of Allahabad. Coryat's idea that he was some kind of Greek came back into fashion. One scholar claimed to have identified no less than seven letters of the Greek alphabet, and another had read a Greek name written in that script on an ancient coin. Prinsep was skeptical. The Greek name was

only Greek if read backwards. Turn it over and the Pin-Men lettering was exactly like the pillars. But he still had no solution of his own. "It would require an intimate knowledge of many languages ​​of the East, as well as total leisure and distraction from other occupations, to participate in the recovery of this lost language." He surmised that it must be Sanskrit and thought that the writing looked simpler than Egyptian-Egyptian hieroglyphs. Still, this was too much for him, and he could only hope that someone else in India would take up the challenge "before the restless and indefatigable students of Bonn and Berlin". Silk'. No one responded directly to this appeal, but in faraway Kathmandu, the sole British resident of the Nepal court, Brian Houghton Houghton Hodgson, read his copy of the society's journal and immediately wrote a distraught note. No man contributed more to the discovery of India than Hodgson, nor explored it in so many different fields. From his outpost in the Himalayas he flooded Asiatic society with so many reports that it is little wonder some were misplaced. This was a case in point. "Eight or ten years ago" (in the mid-1820s) he had sent details of two other inscribed columns. columns. Prinsep could not find her. But Hod Hodgson gson also announced that he had now found a third. It was in Bettiah (Lauriya Nandangarh) in North Bihar and, like the others, very close to the border with Nepal. Could they then have been erected as landmarks? Even more fascinating was the facsimile of the inscription on this pillar, which Hodgson had carefully written. It was Ashoka Brahmi and Prinsep, along with their Delhi and Allahabad exemplars, who again looked for clues, this time concentrating on separating the shapes of each consonant from the vowels that adorned them in the form of small markings. As he ran from one facsimile to another to review them, he suddenly experienced that shiver that ran down his spine at the unexpected revelation. “By carefully comparing them [the three inscriptions] to find other words they might have in common, I arrived at an extremely important discovery; That is, that the three inscriptions were identical.' The same.' Any surprises I hadn't noticed earlier must be mitigated by the fact that the inscriptions, all 2,000 years old, were far from perfect. perfect. Many letters were removed, and in one case much of the original inscription was obscured by later writing over it. The copies Prinsep worked with also left much to be desired. Aside from the inevitable mistakes of trying to transcribe a significant portion of the script in completely unfamiliar characters, a copyist managed to transpose the first and second half of each line as he went down the column. By correlating all three versions, it was now possible to obtain an almost perfect fair copy. At the same time, even the cautious Prinsep could not resist making some assumptions "about the origin and nature of these unique pillars, erected in places so far from each other and all bearing the same inscription." Enrollment'. If they mark the achievements of a victorious Raja; raja;--if they are like the pillars of his dominions;-dominions; – or whether they are of a religious nature and can only be satisfactorily resolved by the discovery of language. Obviously, this people, this kingdom, this religion was important to the whole of North India. In general, it was too big a subject to be left to chance. Foot. Prinsep, Rinsep, now in a good position as secretary of the Asiatic Society to evaluate the various materials (Wilson had retired to England, England), decided to do the translation himself. In 1834 he tried the obvious line of relating this writing to the Gupta Brahmi he had just deciphered. He made a table for each one.

shows how often individual letters occurred, with the idea that those that occurred approximately the same number of times in each script might be the same letters. It was worth a try, but obviously it only worked if you both spoke the same language and dealt with the same type of subject. In fact, they didn't speak the same language, and Prinsep soon abandoned that approach. He then tried to combine the individual letters from each of the two scripts that shared a similar conformation. That was most encouraging. He tentatively identified a handful of consonants and heard from a correspondent in Bombay who was working on the cave temple inscriptions that he had also identified these and five others. Armed with these few identifications, he attempted a translation, hoping the meaning would reveal the rest. But some of his letters were misidentified, and besides, he kept barking up the wrong tree, imagining that the language was pure Sanskrit. The attempt was a miserable failure. Despondent, but far from defeated, Prinsep went back to the drawing board. For the next four years, he pushed himself physically and mentally beyond the limit. Kolkata changed clothes in front of his office. The Governor-General had a new residence, modeled on Kedleston Hall but considerably larger: the dining room seated 200 people, and sometimes more than 500 attended balls at Government House. Society was less rough than it was in Jones' day. The hookah was gone, and so were most of the "sooty bibs"; the Memsahibs Memsahibs took over. But the only innovation Prinsep would have known was the fluttering punkah, the fluttering punkah or the fan over his recording table. Now the Master of Essays, the whole day with the coin and the whole afternoon spent with your coins or consultations with your experts. pandits. Around seven in the morning I was behind the desk. There is no record like Jones's of a morning walk or walk, and no mention of free time. Instead, he lived vicariously through the struggles, struggles, and achievements of his correspondents. As President and Founder of the Asiatic Society and the most respected scholar of his day, Jones inspired and dominated his peers. Prinsep was the complete opposite. He was the company's secretary, not the president, an intern, a humble gentleman with little pretensions beyond total devotion. But that alone was enough. His enthusiasm rubbed off on others and was irresistible. When he asked for coins and inscriptions, they came from all over India. He meticulously annotated, translated and commented on them. By 1837 he had an army of enthusiasts - enthusiasts - officers, officials, engineers, explorers, political agents and administrators - stewards - informally collecting for him. Colonel Stacy in Chitor, Udaipur and Delhi, Lieutenant A. Connolly in Jaipur, Captain Wade in Ludhiana, Captain Cautley in Saharanpur, Lieutenant Cunningham in Benares, Colonel Smith Smith in Patna, Mr. Tregear in Jaunpur, Dr. Swine Swiney in Upper India and the list was long. It was from one of these correspondents, Captain Edward Smith, an engineer in Allahabad, that the crucial clue to the mysterious script came in 1837. At Prinsep's suggestion, Smith made a long journey to central India to visit an archaeological site of great interest. in Sanchi, near Bhopal. Prinsep Prinep wanted accurate drawings of his sculptural wonders and facsimiles of an inscription by Gupta Brahmi that had not yet been translated. Smith agreed with both and, noticing some shorter inscriptions on the stone railings surrounding the main shrine, took copies just to be on the safe side. These apparently trivial fragments of coarse writing [wrote Prinsep] led to even more important results than the other inscriptions. We have learned the alphabet and language of those ancient pillars and rock inscriptions which have been the marvel of scholars since the days of Sir William Jones, and I am almost ready to give an account to the S Society of how I wrote the last [pillar] [column] in Delhi , with great satisfaction, because I was the first

to analyze these unknown symbols, for which he was now to be rewarded with the realization of a discovery which he was desperate to complete for lack of competent knowledge of the Sanskrit language. Normally, Prinsep would launch into a lengthy discussion of the sculpture and other inscriptions that kept his audience and readers in suspense for another ten pages. But he had already written to Lieutenant Alexander Cunningham, his protégé in Benares, about the discovery. May 23, 1837. My dear Cunningham, Hors Cunningham, Hors de département de mes études! [a study! [a reference to a Muslim coin sent to him by Cunningham]. No, but I can see Delhi's #1 top read; Sanchi's inscriptions enlightened me. Each line is engraved on a separate pillar or handrail. So, I thought, they must be gifts from individuals where the names are registered. They all end in danam danam [in [original letters] - letters] - this must mean "gift" or "given". Let's see && He proved his point by immediately translating four of these lines and then moving on to the first line of the famous pillar inscriptions: Devam Inscriptions: Devam piya piyadasi raja hevam aha, aha, 'most beloved of the gods - especially 'beloved - of-the-gods raja declares thus'. It wasn't right; the r should be 1, laja not raja. But rajah. But it was close enough. Fuck enough. Danam gave him the d, n, and m, all very common and hitherto unidentified, enough to make the difference. With the help of a respected Pandit-Month Pandit, he immediately changed the long inscribed pillars. June, Calcutta's most unbearable year; the mind concentrated for a long time, even for a minute, is a great achievement. By this time, the Governor-General and the rest of Calcutta society had become accustomed to going to the cold heights of S. Simla imla on such occasions. Prinsep remained at his desk. The decoding went well, but he finally recognized the unexpected difficulty of the non-Sanskrit language. As Hodgson suggested, it was closer to Pali, the sacred language of Tibet, that is, it was one of the Prakrit languages, native derivatives of Classical Sanskrit. This made it difficult to determine the precise meaning of many phrases. Prinsep also had to engrave all the plates himself for the script that would illustrate his story. Despite this, his translation was completed in an incredibly short period of six weeks and he announced it to the Society. Company. As usual, he treated it with a long introduction to the discoveries that had led him on and the difficulties he still presented. But unlike other inscriptions, these had a remarkable quality. There was an almost non-Indian directness to the language, no exaggeration, no exaggeration, no long lists of royal qualities. Instead there was a bold, disarming directness: Thus spake King Devanampiya Piyadasi. In the twenty-seventh year of my anointing, I published this religious edict in writing. I recognize and confess the faults that I keep in my heart. The King had evidently undergone a religious conversion, and from the nature of the sentiments expressed it was clearly Buddhism which he had embraced. The purpose of his edicts was to promote this new religion, to encourage right thinking and conduct, to discourage killing, to protect animals and birds, and to designate certain days as holy days and certain men as religious stewards. The entries ended in the same style in which they began. In the twenty-seventh year of my reign I wrote this edict; so says Devanampiya; "Let stone pillars be prepared and this decree of religion be engraved on them, that it may last to the remotest ages." Centuries.

Something about the language and content was immediately familiar to me: it was the Old Testament. Even Prinsep could not resist the obvious analogy: "we could easily cite a more ancient and venerable example of the law laid down on tablets of stone." P Perhaps, perhaps it was only out of reverence that he called them decrees rather than commandments. But the message was clear enough. Here was an Indian king who mysteriously imitated Moses and even surpassed him; In addition to using stone tablets, he created these magnificent pillars to carry his message through the centuries. But who was this king? 'Devanampiya Piyadasi 'Pi yadasi' may be a proper name, but it does not appear in any of the Sanskrit king lists. It could also be a royal epithet, "beloved of the gods and gracious in countenance". At first, Prinsep thought first. In Ceylon, Mr. George Tumor was working on the Buddhist stories preserved there and had just sent in a translation mentioning a Piyadasi king who was the first king of Ceylon to embrace Buddhism. your M. This fit the bill; but what did a king of Ceylon do, scattering inscriptions all over northern India? Indeed, one of the edicts stated that the king had planted trees along country roads, dug wells, built rest houses for travellers, etc. How could a Sinhalese king plant trees along the Ganges? A few weeks later, the Tumor provided the answer. Studying another Buddhist work, he discovered that Piyadasi was also the common epithet of a great Indian ruler, a contemporary of Ceylon Piyadasi, Piyadasi, and that this king was also known as Ashoka. It was also called Ashoka lighting. He was the grandson of Chandragupta and was enshrined 218 years after this Buddha's enlightenment. Suddenly everything started to make sense. Ashoka was already known in Sanskrit king lists as a descendant of Chandragupta Maurya Maurya (Sandracottus) and in Himalayan Buddhist sources as the legendary patron saint of early Buddhism. Now his historicity has been dramatically established. Thanks to the inscriptions, which were just a dubious name, suddenly more was known about Ashoka than about any other Indian ruler before 1100 AD. C. As Chandragupta's heir, it was no surprise that his pillars and inscriptions were so scattered. The Moorish Empire was clearly one of the greatest known to India, and here were its noblest descendants, speaking of their life and work through the mists of 2,000 years. It was one of the most exciting moments in the entire history of archaeological discovery.

CHAPTER FOUR Black and time-stained rocks

After breaking Ashoka Brahmi's code, Prinsep was now in complete disarray. Mind and body holding together, he would round to the cave temple inscriptions, try the coins again, and finally return to the long inscriptions on the rocks. Only then would it be possible to appreciate the full significance of his discovery and put Ashoka in the right perspective. But even as he worked, more monolithic finds were collected. Thanks in large part to Hodgson's discoveries along the Nepalese border, Prinsep knew the five pillars of Ashoka. When he deciphered their messages, a sixth (the second found there) surfaced in Delhi. Broken into three pieces and buried in the ground, it is said to have been the victim of an explosion at a nearby gunpowder factory sometime in the 17th century. The inscription was very worn, although it appeared to be the same as on the other columns. In due course, the entire pillar of the Asiatic Society Society was offered for its new museum. They accepted, but found the difficulty and cost of transport to Calcutta prohibitive; they finally settled for the part that had the inscription. How these pillars were originally moved in India and whether they were still in their ordered positions was a fascinating subject in itself. It was now recognized that they were all made of the same stone, all polished by the same inexplicable process, and therefore all came from the same quarry. Prinsep thought it was somewhere in the outer Himalayas, although we now know its origin was Chunar on the Ganges near Benares. Yet somehow they were transported for up to 500 miles, no mean feat considering the heaviest weighed over forty tons. River transport was probably the answer. An interesting light on this has just been shed by studying the Muslim history of India. This showed that none of the Delhi Pillars were originally erected in Delhi; Apparently, they were brought to decorate the capital of the first Mohammedan kings or sultans. The first pillar was in the ruins of the palace of Feroz Shah, a 14th-century sultan. According to contemporary chronicles, he ordered the pillar to be brought from a location on the Jumna River near Khizrabad. When the sultan visited this district and saw the columnar pillar in the village of Tobra, he decided to move it to Delhi and erect it there as a monument for future generations. After considering the best way to lower the column, orders were issued ordering the presence of all residents of the neighborhood and all soldiers on horseback and on foot. They were instructed to bring all materials and equipment suitable for the job. Instructions were given to bring bundles of cotton from the silk-cotton. Quantities of this silk stuffing were placed around the pillar, and when the earth at its base was stirred, it fell gently onto the prepared bed. The cotton was gradually removed, and after a few days the pillar was safely in the ground. The pillar was then wrapped in reeds and sheepskins from top to bottom to prevent it from being damaged. A chariot was built with forty-two wheels, and ropes were tied to each wheel. Thousands of men pulled each rope, and after much toil and toil, the column was lifted onto the wagon. A strong rope was attached to each wheel, and each of these ropes was pulled by 200 men. By the simultaneous efforts of so many thousands of men, the chariot moved and landed on the banks of the Jumna. Here the 5000 sultanands gathered. Several large ships were assembled, some of which could be transported

7000 Maund [ten tons] of grain. The column was very ingeniously transferred to these ships, and then taken to Firozabad [Delhi], where it was landed, and, with infinite labor and skill, conveyed to the palace. Rebuilding the pillar was also a complicated task, since Feroz Shah ordered it to be placed on the roof, nine stories high. After much more maneuvering on cotton sheets and an elaborate system of weather vanes, "he stood upright, straight as an arrow, without the slightest deviation from the vertical." Feroz Shah then proudly displayed his new acquisition and asked for an explanation of the strange inscriptions. “Many Brahmins and Hindu devotees were asked to translate it, but no one was able to do so.” Prinsep was justifiably proud. Feroz Shah's pillar still stands in Delhi and Hodgson's in Lauriya Nandangarh, while not the most elegant, is the only one still retaining its original capital. Others fared less well. Of the pillars in Bihar, two seem to have been used for cannons and target shooting during the Mughal period. And in the 1840s, the remains of at least two other pillars were excavated at Sanchi. According to local lore, they were dismantled by an Indian industrialist to be used as rollers on a gigantic sugar cane mill. Only the base remained from one; The other was found in three pieces, with the chisel marks still visible where it had been intentionally broken. Perhaps a more embarrassing case of vandalism for British antiques dealers was the persistent rumor that the steamroller used by a shrewd engineer in Allahabad was actually an Ashoka mainstay. If there was anything to it, hopefully it was just a broken shard. It is almost certain that the only pillar knocked down by the British was the much studied one at Allahabad. It apparently got in the way of a new dam that was part of an 18th century reinforcement program. Remorsefully, Asian society and even the government arranged for his reintegration. Captain Edward Smith, the man who provided Prinsep with Sanchi's vital facsimiles, designed a new plinth for him, which received much praise. Unfortunately, he went even further and also designed a new capital. It must be a lion in the style of Lauriya Nandangarh; nandanga; but it wasn't exactly the "cleanest spot". According to Alexander Cunningham, "it looks nothing like a stuffed poodle in an upside-down flowerpot". Flower vase'. We now know of at least nine inscribed Ashoka pillars, but these clearly outnumber the rock-carved Ashoka inscriptions. Of course, the pillars first attracted attention, but in fact the inscriptions on the rocks turned out to be more interesting, both in terms of content and location. The pillars were only found in northern India (Sanchi was the southernmost), widely scattered across the Ganges basin. Rock inscriptions have been found much further afield, from Mysore in the south to near Peshawar in the far northwest; and near the coast of Orissa in the east to the coast of Saurashtra in the west. These last two, the first at Dhauli in Orissa, the second at Girnar in Gujerat, were the only ones Prinsep knew of. Fortunately, they were two of the most informative. The Orissa Inscription was discovered in early 1837. 183 7. Lieutenant Markham Kittoe was sent to the Orissa desert in search of coal deposits. Largely left to his own devices, he also searched for antiquities and soon came across a network of ancient caves and sculptures. He described his discovery to the Asiatic Society: "I am pleased to announce the discovery of the largest pillar inscription I have ever heard of and there is no road or footpath to reach this extraordinary piece of antiquity. Climbing the rock through the thorns and bushes , I suddenly came to a small terrace, open on three sides, with a vertical ledge on the fourth or

To the west of its face projects the front half of an elegantly made elephant, over four feet in height; the whole is carved from solid rock. On the north face below the terrace, the rock is gently carved into an area measuring almost four meters by three metres, and the carefully cut inscription covers the entire space. He spent a day creating a fax and returned to the site again in November of the same year to complete the job. The stone was badly worn in places, but he found that the shadow cast by the afternoon sun allowed him to make out invisible letters. Despite some gaps, Prinsep immediately attempted a translation and deciphered a number of intriguing phrases. But he abandoned the task early in 1838, when a much better preserved copy of the Girnar inscription came into his possession. This was first noticed by Colonel James Tod, another legendary figure in this story, who was in Gujerat in 1822. The monument in question, obviously of a great conqueror, is an enormous hemispherical mass of dark granite which, like a wart on the body, emerged through the crust of Mother Earth, without cracks or bulges, and which, with the help of the "iron spring" was transformed into a book. The arch measurement is nearly ninety feet; its surface is divided into compartments or parallelograms, inside which are the usual inscriptions. In Tod's day, of course, the script was still a mystery. Colonel Colonel I was one of those who thought he might be Greek. But he got closer to the goal when he confidently predicted that sooner or later someone from the Asiatic Society would solve the problem. By this time he had only copied two short sections. Fifteen years later, a Bombay antiquarian, hearing of Prinsep's translation of the inscriptions on the pillars, rushed to Girnar. I wanted to see if the new code would work on Tod's application. “To my great joy and that of the Brahmins with me, I found that I could decipher several words.” The engraving was still surprisingly sharp; it was possible to impress by filling in the letters with ink and passing a cloth over them. Of this he made a reduced copy - copy - in the original each letter was nearly two feet high - and sent it to Calcutta. Prinsep, switching from the Orissa inscription to this new one, once again felt a shiver run down his spine. With the exception of two additional paragraphs in the Orissa inscription, the two were identical. Ashoka issued his edicts from one end of India to the other, in an empire far larger than that of British India and equaled only by that of the Mongols. But even more surprising was a statement in one of the edicts. If Prinsep's reading is correct, Ashoka had established hospitals for humans and animals throughout his kingdom, including the southern tip of the peninsula "and beyond, within the dominions of Antiochus the Greek". He also stated that the gospel of non-violence, non-violence and respect for all living beings was recognized even "by the kings of Egypt, Ptolemy and Antigonus and Magas". Wizards'. That says a lot about Ashoka's international reputation. But, more important, here was finally another point of contact - contact - the first since Jones identified Sandracottus - between the history of ancient India and that of the West. While Prinsep Prinep was leafing through the classics to find out which Ptolemy and which Antiochus might be, he sent an urgent message to Kittoe, who was still in Orissa. Would the miner run to Dhauli and check the decrees where those names appeared? Kittoe reacted immediately. On my arrival at Cuttack, I received a letter from my friend, the secretary of the Asiatic Society, informing me of his discovery of the name of Antiochus in the inscriptions of Girnar and Dh Dhauli auli, and asking me to recheck my transcription and correct it. for all errors. . I immediately left my Dak [arranged [arranged transport] and left at 6 pm. to Dhauli, the strange place where he had come before

it was dawn and we had to wait for the light; because the two bear cubs that got away from me back there last year when I killed the old bear were now all grown up and fighting on the ground. At daybreak I went to Aswastuma [the rock] and cut two large forked branches from a tree near the spot and placed them against the rock; I rose above them to reach my goal. I had taken the precaution of hiring a porter to store the firewood, but, concentrating on my interesting task, I forgot my precarious balance; the porter had also fallen asleep and let go so after I lost my balance the wood slipped and I was thrown headfirst off the rock but luckily I landed on my hands and nothing but a few bruises and a heavy blow, I suffered injuries; I rested a little and finished the work. At the same time, Prinsep tried to double-check Girnar's inscription. The vital edict, which included mention of Ptolemy, was badly damaged and many of the letters have disappeared completely. Reluctantly, he turned to the government, an idea that would have been unthinkable just a few months ago. But for now, the excitement caused by his revelations was considerable. The government agreed to help, and within weeks Lieutenant Postans was on his way to Girnar. Mrs. So did Postans, eager like everyone else to share the illumination of what she called "that black, time-stained rock." The government-funded operation was carried out with unprecedented rigor. The great rock was covered with stout ladders and scaffolding; An awning was erected overhead to shade the workers from the sun; The entire inscription was then divided into numbered sections, and for three weeks Postans and his men crawled across the vast surface, trail after trail. As a foreground, the letters have been carefully filled in with a red pigment (vermilion and oil), paying attention to inflections and other tiny but important points. A thin, perfectly transparent cloth was then firmly pasted over an entire compartment, and the letters, as clearly seen through the cloth, were drawn in black; In this way, all the edicts were transcribed and the cloth removed, the copy carefully reworked letter by letter with the original. The very smooth and convex surface of the rock on this side was very favorable to this method, but it is tedious and requires ten days of incessant work. Needless to say, it became of prime interest to find a reference to the discovery of the missing part of the rock on the east face, from which the all-important Eighteenth Edict, containing the names of Ptolemy, etc. Mutilation. All our investigations led to the conclusion that the rock had been detonated to supply materials for the neighboring dam; to remove and this would have involved a cost which I did not feel entitled to incur, but all the ground at the base of the rock was excavated a considerable distance and as deep as possible. In this way, two or three inscribed fragments were found. But it was impossible to decide where they came from. Postans had to make do with his much improved facsimiles of the rock, and these were duly sent to Calcutta. They arrived in early November 1838, just a day after a ship named Hertfordshire, the Hertfordshire, came up the Hughli. On board was James Prinsep, insane and dying. He was battling a headache and nausea as he struggled with the first transcripts of Dhauli and Girnar. The disease quickly evolved into a "brain condition". When he was taken aboard the Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire, "his mind was muddled". He made it to England but never regained his sanity and died a year later at the age of forty. "To say he was a great man may not be entirely true," wrote a friend and obituary (probably thinking of Jones, whom Prinsep dated so often).

compared). "But he was one of the most useful and gifted men England ever gave India." His genius lay less in his erudition than in his tenacity, "his ardent and irrepressible enthusiasm". Ultimately it was his undoing, his undoing, because his obsessive devotion to the Indian scriptures had disturbed his mind and destroyed his body. But he also attracted a new group of scholars determined to study him and India's past. "We felt he was watching us and taking care of us," wrote one. And, of course, that led him, perhaps it did, to the solution of India's greatest historical mystery. Puzzle. One of his latest achievements was two carefully engraved tablets showing the evolution of each letter in the modern Devanagari script since its origin in Ashoka Brahmi. He illustrated nine different stages and gave each one a date. This was of immense value to philologists and a dignified and concise summary of his life's work. Although it has been supplemented and restricted, it remains the basis for a study of Indic scripts. But, as Prinsep fully realized, there was an even more important aspect. "The 'Table' represents a curious kind of paleographic chronometer by which any ancient inscription can be assigned with considerable accuracy to the time when it was written, although it has no actual date." not only according to the inscriptions, but also according to the monuments in which they were found. And since nearly every building in India bears some sort of inscription, this paved the way for a new and even more spectacular branch of Indology, the systematic study of Indian architecture. But of more immediate importance was his revelation of Ashoka. Until now, any contact with ancient India has seemed incredibly elusive. The great classical civilization foreshadowed by the fame of Sanskrit literature could only be seen from ten feet away, in translations of minor classical authors, which conveyed information that Megasthenes had gathered many centuries earlier during his probably brief visit to northern India. It was more like trying to unravel the history of the Plantagenets with nothing more than a modern historical novel. Now, suddenly, it was like taking ownership of the text of the Magna Carta. In Ashoka, here was finally a true historical figure, an Emperor - Emperor - apparently one of the most influential and powerful - powerful - whose own words expressing the reasons for his rule were miraculously preserved. When mentioning contemporary rulers like Ptolemy and Antiochus, his dates - dates - are around 269 to 232 BC. - BEFORE CHRIST. - more secure than any other Indian king before AD 1000 and that his empire stretched from Orissa to the Khyber Pass and from the Himalayas to at least as far south as Madras. Within this vast area there were independent tribes in the forests and hills, as indeed they were until British times. They must have posed a real threat, as Ashoka appears to have had a strict, if not repressive, policy towards them. In other respects, his decrees advocate tolerance and passivism. In the early years of his reign, he waged war in Orissa. The bloodshed and horrors of that campaign made him renounce further attacks. It is doubtful that he was actually a Buddhist monk or even understood Buddhist theology. But there is no doubt that the result of his conversion was an unwavering commitment to the ethics of this most humane and kind religion. "The greatest and noblest ruler India has ever known," according to Professor Basham, "was indeed one of the great kings of the world." Ashoka stands out above the other kings of ancient India, not least because he is the only one whose personality can be constructed with any degree of certainty. It's this personal dimension that makes Ashoka so intriguing. His rejection of all non-religious pleasures, and the rigidity and directness of his language, suggest Cromwellian Puritanism - Puritanism - and yet he seems so typically Indian;

Vegetarianism, non-violence, reverence for life in all its forms, tolerance towards men of other religions were as important to Ashoka as Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi. Building rest homes and planting trees along roadsides were measures recommended by many of India's great rulers, including the Mongols and the British. British. And there was what, by Western standards, can only be described as Ashoka's naivete. For Christians, the idea of ​​moral reform on a worldwide scale is irrevocably linked with the ideas of sacrifice, suffering and persecution. But for Ashoka, as for most Indian reformers, renewal springs from within and can spread through persuasion, command and example. As with the Buddha, Ashoka's conversion was due to renunciation; like the Mahatma, he appealed to something deep in the Indian soul.

CHAPTER FIVE Pout's Legacy

Sanchi Hill, the source of the brief inscriptions that gave Prinsep the key to deciphering the Ashoka script, is one of the most beautiful archaeological sites. Miles from anywhere, right in the center of the Indian subcontinent, the hill rises gently into a sea of ​​squalid jungle, home to tigers and aboriginal tribes. On its flat top, the architectural forms are strange and unfamiliar; even silence indicates extreme antiquity. However, it does not evoke a thrill of spirit like the austere dawn of Stonehenge's creation, nor that thrill of emotion evoked by the chaste lines of the Parthenon or the fragrant splendor of the Taj. Instead, there's a comforting sense of peace and an overwhelming sense of civilization despite the wild surroundings. Sanchi has been a treasured center of worship, learning, art and commerce for over a thousand years. The Panels The sculptural relief panels covering the doors depict the life of Buddha and Buddhist history in bustling, bustling scenes. All creation seems represented, all human moods represented. No written history could so vividly reflect the reality of civilized society two millennia ago. But as tangible as the atmosphere, surroundings and buildings are indescribable. The first man to attempt an account of what he called "the remarkable ancient building near Bhilsa" was Captain Captain E. Fell. He had made the 160 kilometer trek from Bhopal in 1819 on the recommendation of a friend. No doubt he had an idea of ​​what to expect; and he was far from disappointed. But how to give Calcutta Journal readers an idea of ​​even the main stupa, main stupa or tower? Tower? On a plateau of a detached hill & there is an ancient network of hemispherical shape, built with thin layers of free stone, like steps, without any cement, and apparently solid; whose exterior was completely covered with a layer of Chunam Chunammortar. & The monument (for so I shall name it) is reinforced by a buttress of stone masonry, twelve feet high and seven feet wide, round the base, the circumference of which is measured to be 554 feet. It really was some kind of circular pyramid, and Fell thought it might not be solid at all. If there were hidden cameras, they could be "extremely interesting and worthy of investigation". verified'. The monument is surrounded by a colonnade of granite columns, ten feet high, one and a half feet apart, connected by parallels, also of granite, in an elliptical shape, connected by trunnions, and at east, west and north west points. they are gates [the south gate had already collapsed], mere parallelograms, each forty feet high at the end and nine feet wide inside the perpendicular. It was as if Buddhist architects were determined to do everything the hard way. Distant. When several small stones did the work of a large one, they chose a large one. They carved temples out of rock, erected pillars that looked as if they had been overturned, and here again they treated the sandstone as if it were wood. The colonnade railings were connected to the posts by tenons and tenons, and the lintels of the great doors were shaped to anticipate a curve. But Fell, like all subsequent visitors, was soon captivated by the sculpture. The catwalks are divided into four almost equal compartments. In the lower part are perpendicular statues of porters & In another compartment there is a representation of the

Monument [thestupa] [thestupa] surrounded by figures in groups, some standing, some sitting cross-legged, some bowing, all with hands folded, and in the act of worship & In another is a small convex convex body in a boat , The bow is the head of a lion and the stern is the outstretched tail of a fish, over which hangs a long cable. In the boat are three male figures, two rowing behind and the third holding an umbrella over the convexity. The ship is at sea in a storm; figures swim nearby, trying to save themselves from drowning by holding onto poles. Someone about to drown desperately tries to climb over the side; everyone's facial features fully reflect their dark and melancholy situation. In another compartment are the sacred tree and the altar, surrounded by groups of male and female figures, some playing drums, others cymbals, others dancing; and, in short, a more emotionally expressive sculpture can hardly be imagined. Fell did the best he could; but how could anyone "inexperienced in the power of description", of "description", give a very, very faint idea of ​​the grandeur of such astonishing structures and exquisitely finished sculptures? He wasn't even sure which religion the site belonged to. The top of the hill was lined with statues. He thought he recognized the recognized Brahma of the Hindus and Parasnath of the Jains, but the dominant figure was undoubtedly the Buddha. If Sanchi was a Buddhist, where were the Buddha's followers today? Today? The answer was almost everywhere, everywhere: Ladakh, Ladakh, Nepal, Tibet, China, Burma, Thailand and Ceylon, Ceylon, except India. Buddhism circulated throughout the subcontinent, but was unknown in India. To Jones and his colleagues, immersed in their Sanskrit studies, it seemed that Hinduism had preceded the country. Stupas Stupas were believed to be dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva and inspired by the Egyptians. "If Buddha was a sage or a hero," wrote Francis Wilford, "the founding founder of a colony or a whole colony incarnate, whether black or fair," he was certainly "Egyptian or Ethiopian." Jones agreed. He identified Sakyasinha, one of the epithets of Buddha, with the Egyptian god Sesostris. But he also subscribed to the popular belief that Buddha was just another name for the Norse god Woden, who in turn was the Mercury of the Romans. Buddha was the son of Maya and Mercury, the son of Maia. And there was an even simpler equation; Wednesday, or Wodenstag, Wodenstag, from the Germanic languages ​​was Buddhwar, which Buddhwar, or Buddha's day, from the Sanskrit languages ​​and also Mercredi, also Mercredi, or or Mercurii dies from the Latin languages. This speculation lasted until the 19th century. It was only from non-Indian sources that a true and wholly unexpected picture of the origins of Buddhism began to emerge. William Chambers, the man who first reported the rock temples of Mahabalipuram, read a French account of Thailand and noted the important identification of the Thai god known as Pout or Codom with the Ceylon deity known as Buddha or Gautam. He also suggested that this little beak or codom had once been worshiped in parts of India. This was confirmed by Francis Buchanan, a naturalist and surveyor who visited Burma in the late 1790s. There he made a useful study of Buddhist rituals and reported that the Buddha was an Indian from Bihar. Ten years later, Buchanan's research took him to Bihar: it wasn't long before he found more evidence. In Boddh Gaya, whose name is a clue, he explained that the extensive ruins, including the pyramid temple, were clearly of Buddhist origin. The Buddha statues were scattered within a 15-mile radius of the neighborhood and were now objects of worship for Hindus. Indeed, the temple itself was now in the hands of Brahmins. But they admitted to being confused by their origins. From time to time, strange visitors from distant lands would descend upon them and reverently inspect the ruins grown up along with the ancient ruins.

books in your hands. Just in the previous year, 1811, 1811, he had such, "a man of certain rank with several assistants [who] came from a land called Tamsa-dwip-maha-amarapura-paigu' paigu', came from nowhere. He claimed that the site was once the residence of Gautama and that the temple was built by "Dharma Ashoka, the king of Pandaripuk". ) meant nothing to him. He also failed to realize that Boddh Gaya was worshipped, not as the abode of the Buddha, but as the place of his enlightenment. It wasn't until the 1820s that Buddhist scholarship really took off. Brian Hodgson visited Sanchi shortly after Captain Fell. His curiosity was piqued and he decided to take advantage of his unique position in a still partially Buddhist country as the only British representative in Kathmandu, began] a comprehensive and thorough study of this almost unknown subject." The Nepali monks were far from cooperative, but Hodgson soon amassed a hoard of Buddhist scriptures, and then found "an elderly Buddha Buddha residing in the town of Patan Patan" who was willing to reveal some of the sect's secrets. Hodgson prepared a detailed questionnaire and, based on the old man's responses, summarized Buddhist beliefs. But when he compared the questionnaire results with the textual evidence, he almost gave up. high . “I began to feel my lack of languages ​​and (to be honest) patience.” "Patience." His manuscript collection grew out of control. It was already the largest treasure in existence, containing two copies of the Tibetan Encyclopedia of Sacred Learning, totaling 367 volumes, each containing over 100,000 sheets, each sheet about two feet long. This collection was donated in trunks to libraries in London, Paris and Calcutta, and would form the basis of all future Buddhist study. studies. Hodgson's immediate problem, however, was that there seemed to be considerable divergence between Buddhism practiced today and traditional Buddhism as revealed in the texts. There was also no consensus on the question of the Buddha's birthplace; "but all the places mentioned are Indian." Apparently both teaching and practice have gone through a long process of change. On the other hand, it was interesting that, like Hinduism, Buddhism was still a living religion and thriving culture. For scholars accustomed to the idea that all classical civilizations were dead civilizations, it was a revelation that they still tended to be strong in Asia. You could really study the past through the present. Jones himself was struck by the idea that it was like discovering an enclave of Greeks who still spoke ancient Greek by reading Homer and consulting the Oracle of Delphi. Hodgson took advantage of this situation with his q-questionnaire, uestionnaire. For example, he was able to provide a guide to the stylistic conventions used in Buddha sculptures. And he provided an engraving of a modern Nepali stupa that clearly descended from Sanchi. Sanchis. Meanwhile, far away in the western reaches of the Himalayas, the Himalayas, another scholar was poring over the sacred texts of the Tibetans under very different circumstances. Alexander Czoma of Koros originally armed himself with a thick stick and set out on foot from his native Hungary to China. In 1822, two years and several thousand miles later, he met William Moorcroft, the legendary explorer of the western Himalayas. Moorcroft traveled through Tibet and was deeply attracted to Buddhism. He urged De Koros to undertake the study of Tibetan texts and provided him with the limited funds he needed (de Koros lived on Tibetan tea and his only possession was a single change of clothes). Moorcroft then headed towards Afghanistan and immediately disappeared; Thanks to the intervention of the Asiatic Society, however, de Koros continued to receive a modest stipend. In the clifftop monasteries of Ladakh and Kinnaur, he sat cross-legged through the cruel Himalayan winters, forgetting everything but the text in front of him. He

he compiled the first Tibetan dictionary and grammar and began to make important contributions to the elucidation of Buddhist mysteries. As Hodgson and de Koros were able to provide textual interpretations, archaeological discoveries became reality. In the early 1820s, inspired by Fell's suggestion that there might be hidden chambers in the Sanchi Sanchi Stupas, the British representative in Bhopal, Henry Maddock, attempted to open the Great Stupa. If it were indeed some kind of pyramid, it might contain treasure, or at least some clue to its origin and purpose. But Maddock was disappointed. The stupid stupa wasn't made of sealed chambers, but was actually a solid mass of masonry. j. He left with nothing to show for his work except a hole in the side of the monument, a pile of rubble, another collapsed door and an enduring reputation as one of the Raj's hooligans. Vandals Inspired by no nobler motives, another attempt was made to exploit Aastupa Stupain in 1830. This time the alleged tomb robber was among a group of former Napoleonic officials now serving under the independent Rajah of Punjab, Ranjit Singh. The stupa The stupa in question was a tall, domed building in Manikyala, near Rawalpindi, in what is now Pakistan. General Ventura, who was camped nearby and had no apparent occupation for his soldiers, ordered them to dig in the ruins. Twenty years ago a British mission thought he might be Greek; It was worth investigating. Like Maddock, Ventura initially tried to dig a hole in the side and only managed to bring down massive amounts of rubble. But with unlimited time and work, he took a different approach and began excavating from the top of the dome. Just a meter below he found his first coins. At intervals more followed, and then came small compartments with cylindrical boxes and pots of gold and copper, containing scraps of cloth, jewels and more coins. The coins, many of which were gold, had important implications for reconstructing Indian history. Ventura's initiative was considered a remarkable success, earning him a reputation as an archaeologist and some salable treasures. Other European officers in the employ of Ranjit Singh joined the fight, and a period of intense stupa ensued in Punjab and neighboring Afghanistan-Afghanistan, Nistan. raided So far, there has been little conclusive evidence, evidence, but it was starting to look like the stupas and their relics were Buddhist. Furthermore, the success of these new archaeological ventures has been a powerful incentive for budding archaeologists across the border from British India. In 1834, Lieutenant Alexander Cunningham, only twenty years old and newly arrived in India, became interested in the well-known Sarnath Stupa, on the outskirts of the city of Benares. Forty years earlier, in the days of Sir William Jones, an Indian developer had used the site as a quarry for a new market in Benares. He had unearthed a stone urn "of the size and shape of the Barberini vase" and a statue. The urn contained another, made of marble, which was presented as a curiosity to the Asiatic Society with its contents of some bones, some gold leaf and pearls. The statue was a seated Buddha. This was enough of a spur to investigate further, and Cunningham, an engineer himself, asked James Prinsep for financial support for his excavation. Of several mounds of ruins at Sarnath, the best preserved and most welcoming was the Dhamek Dhame k Stupa with its magnificent bands of sculptural ornamentation. Cunningham learned from Ventura's experience and decided to start at the top and ride a wave right in the middle. But the first problem was getting there; thestupa thestupa was 143 feet tall. On January 18, 1835, my scaffolding was completed and I was on top of the great tower. While cutting through the tall grass [there were also several trees at the top], I found two iron spikes, each eight inches long and shaped like a spear point. The next day I removed the crumbling brick tower and began to dig a pit or well about five feet in diameter;

a meter from the top I found a rough stone; and on the 25th of January, at a depth of three and a half feet, I found a plaque with an inscription. After Ventura's discoveries, this was nothing to be excited about; Cunningham continued. He made good progress at first, but twenty meters down he hit solid rock. Was that a camera case? Despite the expense, it looked too promising to give up now. The work of drilling the shaft through the solid masonry was very great, as the stones, which were large (two to three feet long, eighteen inches wide, and twelve inches thick), were all held together by iron clamps. Each stone usually had eight supports, four at the top and an equal number at the bottom, all of which needed to be cut before being moved. So I sent real stonemasons to extract the stones, and the work kept them busy for several months. And still no find. Only a man who gradually discovered his true calling in life could handle it. Finally, 110,110 feet below the top of the monument, the stone gave way to very large brick masonry. This continued the pit another eight meters down, when I came to flat ground below the foundation. Finally, a tunnel was made through the foundation masonry, but without success. Thus ended the opening of my great tower after fourteen months of work and at a cost of more than five hundred rupees. Cunningham was bitterly disappointed. All he had to produce was a stone with an unknown inscription. But that was better than nothing, and he sent a copy of the application to Prinsep. The letters were in Gupta Brahmi script and the set was identical to one recently found on a broken pedestal in northern Bihar. Prinsep thought he could read it; but it didn't make much sense, apparently some kind of incantation. Coincidentally, Alexander Czoma of Koros descended from the mountains at this time and was asked his opinion on a possible Buddhist connection. He immediately recognized it as the standard Buddhist formula or creed. So there was no doubt that the Dhamek Dhamekstupa was a Buddhist monument of the Gupta period and that the key to understanding the purpose and carvings of all stupa stupas lay in Buddhism. The Buddha was not only Indian, but his religion was evidently widespread in India and flourished there for several centuries. Translation of Ashoka's edicts would soon provide more dramatic evidence of this, and in 1838 he even wondered whether Buddhism perhaps preceded Hinduism or, as Prinsep put it, "whether Buddhists or Brahmins could claim to precede Hinduism". Your Eminence." History of Indian Civilization". The Sanskrit of ancient Hindus appears to be much older than the prakrit used in Buddhist texts. However, in terms of architecture (architecture), rock-cut temples, structural pillars or stupas, and inscriptions, the evidence seemed to speak in favor of Buddhism. The same seemed to apply to sculpture. During the excavation of Dhamek Stupa, Stupa, Cunningham met an old man who had taken part in this mining operation on a neighboring mound forty years earlier. Not only did he remember where the stone urn was discovered, he also took Cunningham to a place where he remembered seeing an entire underground room filled with statues. I immediately began an excavation at the site indicated by Sangkar, and at a depth of half a meter below the surface, I found about sixty vertical statues and bas-reliefs, all together in a confined space of less than ten square meters. . Superstition apparently prevented earlier excavators from disturbing this collection, and Cunningham was able to capitalize on the first major discovery of Sarnath sculpture. He

he selected the inscribed or best-preserved figures, including a large Buddha, and sent them to the Asiatic Society. The remaining statues, more than forty in number, along with most of the other carved stones he collected, collected, and left in the ground, were then taken away by the late Mr. Davidson and dumped in the Barna River under the bridge for verification. cutting the bed between the arches. Although he was an engineer himself, he did not condone such behavior. It was his first encounter with the iconoclasts, but Cunningham would not be his last. Fortunately, this was not the end of Sarnath's riches either. Few places in India have produced so much archaeological data and carvings. Cunningham himself made further discoveries, and excavations paid off amply in the 20th century. j. In 1904, the remains of another pillar of Ashoka were found, along with its miraculously preserved capital, the Sarnath Lion Capital - Sarnath - the most famous piece of Indian sculpture and now the symbol of the Republic of India. But what was so special about Sarnath? Why did the Buddha's followers put so much skill and money into decorating this special place on the outskirts of the holiest Hindu city? As the stupa it contained contained no relics or ashes, it was clearly not the burial place of a Buddhist saint. So what was it? Cunningham was initially confused. But in 1836, the year he left Sarnath, two eyewitness accounts of Buddhist India were published. Everything has been clarified. Up to this point, the only first-hand account of ancient India was that of Megasthenes by later Greek and Latin authors. Unfortunately for students of Buddhist history, Megasthenes burst onto the Indian scene during the reign of Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka's grandfather; Thus, he was only two generations away from witnessing the rise of Buddhism under royal patronage. Now, by an equally circuitous route, a Buddhist account of India in the early fifth century AD has come to light; and was soon followed by another from the middle of the seventh century. Such were the travel accounts of Fa Hsien and Hsuan Tsang, Chinese Buddhists who traveled across India in search of sacred manuscripts and to visit the sites of the Buddha's life. The travelogues were purchased by French orientalists, translated in Paris, and annotated by Prinsep's former boss, Horace Hayman Hayman Wilson, who was now Oxford's first Professor of Sanskrit. As befits pilgrim monks, the two Chinese were reserved in worldly matters. But it was significant that Fa Hsien's visit coincided with the Gupta period to which so much sculpture and architecture (including Cunningham's Dhamek Dhamekstupa) was attributed. Buddhism was apparently still on the rise among the Guptas 700-700 years after Ashoka, although Hindu beliefs were also widespread. widespread. What was also most impressive was the fact that at that time there was peace throughout North India. Crime and oppression were equally unknown, and Fa Hsien was free to travel from one end of the country to the other. Compared to the state of the Roman Empire at the time, India seemed like the friendliest place in the world among the Guptas. When Hsuan Tsang visited, things had changed. to change. In the seventh century, Buddhism seemed to be in decline; Many of the shrines were in ruins and, in fact, Buddhists were persecuted in Kashmir and Bengal. The streets were no longer safe, and although Hsuan Tsang had great respect for King Harsha, who was trying to restore some of Gupta's lost glory, there was clearly a social and cultural decline. All this has been of the greatest interest to historians; but for Alexander Cunningham the main

The point was that Buddhist India had come to life. "It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of these trips"; he wrote: "Formerly, all attempts to unravel the mysteries of Buddhist antiquities were mere conjectures." The purpose of the stupas was unknown, as were their meaning and even the names of the shrines and cities they adorned. Now everything was clear. These eyewitness accounts explained the nature of the sites and described their locations and arrangements with such clarity that they were equivalent to a map of Buddhist India and maps of all the important shrines. Sarnath, for example, was a truly remarkable place. It was none other than the deer park where the Buddha had preached his first sermon. Fa Hsien found four stupas and two monasteries there. By Hsuan Tsang's time, it had grown considerably. significantly. There was a huge monastery, 1,500 monks, lakes and gardens, and below the stupas, the stupas, one 300 feet high. Hsuan Tsang also noticed the carvings and reported that Ashoka placed the oldest stupa and the oldest stupa and pillar. Cunningham could only fantasize, but what would he have accomplished if he had all this information a few years earlier? More importantly, what about all the other Buddhist sites mentioned by Chinese travelers? "With what pleasure would anyone not follow Fa Hsien's route from Mathura to his shipment to Ceylon?" Now he had the opportunity to identify many of the hills and ruins that dotted India. Indian archeology had the opportunity to start from scratch, and Cunningham was excited about the idea.

CHAPTER SIX The old fighter

Sir Mortimer Wheeler, the last British director of the Archaeological Bureau of India, singled out three men as pioneers in the study of Indian history and civilization: Jones, Jones, Prinsep and Cunningham. Of the three, only Cunningham really knew India. Sir William Jones was the founding genius and figurehead, Mr. Secretary, Secretary Prinsep, the organizer and scientist, and Alexander Cunningham, the discoverer and fieldworker. During more than fifty years in India, he traveled from the humid jungles of Burma to the arid border foothills of Afghanistan and from the remotest reaches of central India to the Tibetan lands beyond the Great Himalayas. He probably walked more miles on Indian soil than any of his contemporaries. Not only was he the "father of Indian archaeology", but for a quarter of a century he was the Indo-Indian archaeologist. And all at a time when the British seemed to have turned their backs on Indian civilization. Cunningham had arrived in 1833 as a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers. His father, the Scottish poet Allan Cunningham, enlisted the help of his old friend Sir Walter Scott to secure commissions for his two sons in India. For a man who wrote "It's good, good, and it's bad, too good for me," India was an odd choice for his children. But the Cunninghams were not rich, and a career in India, while no longer just a shortcut to wealth and fame, offered many opportunities and had already become highly respectable. After three years in Benares and the excavation at Sarnath, Cunningham was recalled to Calcutta to serve as ADC to Lord Auckland. On the governor-general's feast, he undertook the annual pilgrimage to Simla and made his first visit to the Punjab of Ranjit Singh. Emily Eden, the lively sister from Auckland, found the young "AC" alert and affable. With an eye for the pictorial, he sketched the antiquities that stood in his way; Meanwhile, the ADC worker was looking for coins and inscriptions and offering curious explanations about their history. For Emily Eden, this was just a minor eccentricity, although such behavior now seemed decidedly wrong to others. A cold wind of intolerance and disgust for India and its civilization swept through the British ranks. That deep sense of wonder felt by B von and Jones, shared by men like Fell, who first discovered the monuments of India, and are still cherished by Prinsep and Cunningham, was no longer in vogue. All that was left was a passing fondness for the pictorial exhibited by Emily Eden; and that was too trifling to hide a deeper indignation and disgust. The Orientalists, who not long before had been hailed as the equal humanists of the Renaissance, had fallen from grace. Warren Hastings's ideal of a partially Indianised civil service was discarded and the Indian Raj slowly made its way into the British Empire. Three new influences were at work. On one side were the evangelicals, appalled at the idea that Christians could take seriously the idolatry and inadequacies of a pagan culture, who saw in India an unlimited field for missionary activity and insisted that it be part of a Christian government. . you are obligated to promote it. Then there were the utilitarians, who flocked to India as their main territory to implement their cherished reforms aimed at "the greatest good for the greatest number". That's what civilization was all about, and as progress and utility didn't seem to play any part in India's so-called supposed civilizations, they hardly deserved any serious attention. James Mill, father of John Stuart, published his History of India in 1818.

The Society and Religion of India has become the standard work: required reading for all serving in India. Eventually these two opposing themes came together in the growing crescendo of national superiority. The British were no longer surprised by his success in India. It was clearly ordained, either by the Almighty, as evangelicals wanted, or by history, as utilitarians preferred. Even the Mughal Emperor no longer needs to be treated with respect. He was respectful, a joke, just like Ranjit Fiftyprince Jahre, formerly certainly bestowed Tipu Sultan, but Ranjit Singh, the only oSingh. The only native who still managed to deal a heavy blow to the English was laughed at in the living room. Had he not urinated in the presence of the Governor General? General governor? The word nigger was catching on; "No, pardon ten thousand, not niggers, I mean native, native, son, son of the land, land, oriental, oriental, Asiatic," Atkinson wrote in the 1850s. He caricatured a highland judge whose interest in these people amounted to a strange and old-fashioned eccentricity. British society became more exclusive; The Memsahibshad Memsahibs arrived in droves, the club was about to appear. Old "Brahmin" cars were just an embarrassment for the service. The inevitable collision between the Orientalists and their new opponents was noted in 1835. Thomas Babington Macaulay gained the support of his Auckland predecessor during his brief stay in India, withholding government funds from all institutions using languages ​​other than English. Macaulay Macaulay celebrated his famous minute in support of a measure that would amount to banning Sanskrit and colloquialisms and imposing English as the sole language of instruction. I think it is no exaggeration to say that all the historical information collected to form all books written in Sanskrit is less valuable than that found in the meager abbreviations used in English preparatory schools. In any branch of physical or moral philosophy, the relative standing of the two nations is almost equal. The question before us is simply whether we should teach all languages ​​[Sanskrit and Arabic] in which, by common profession, there are not books on every subject worthy of comparison with ours; yes, if we can teach European science, we must teach systems which, by common profession, whenever they differ from those in Europe, they differ for the worse; and if, if we can encourage true philosophy and sound history, we publicly support medical teaching that would disgrace an English blacksmith: astronomy, astronomy, that would make girls laugh in an English public school, history, history, abundant in kings. ten meters high and domains thirty thousand years long—long—and a geography composed of seas of syrup and butter. Later, in the House of Commons, he turned his attack on Hinduism. In no part of the world was there ever a religion more injurious to the moral and intellectual health of our race. Brahmanical mythology is so absurd that it necessarily degrades any mind that accepts it as true; and with this absurd mythology is connected an absurd system of physics, an absurd geography, absurd geography, astronomy and everything is ugly, imaginative, grotesque and ignoble. As this superstition is the most irrational of all superstitions and the least elegant of all superstitions, it is the most immoral of all superstitions. Macaulay chose his soil carefully. Furthermore, there was no doubt that he had India's welfare in mind. Indeed, many, including Indians, argue that he was right when he insisted that the country's development was only possible through the introduction of the English language. But however noble his motives and judgment may be, the callousness and callousness of his rhetoric is inexcusable. Even now, reading it makes you cringe. Now. It must have made that impression.

about orientalists, not to mention the Indians, it's scary. And along with the boast of British superiority in everything from morals to medicine, the expression of such views can only have hurt the sahibs themselves. It was in this context that Prinsep and Cunningham worked in the 1830s. It is not surprising that their discoveries had so little impact outside the world of science; or that Prinsep was so eager to ask Lord Auckland for help in obtaining a copy of Girnar-No's inscription. Also, wonder that Cunningham waited so long before turning to Indian archaeology. In response to repeated representations from the Asiatic Society, Markham Kittoe, the coal prospector, was given some limited archaeological missions in the late 1840s. But the funds provided were not sufficient. Kittoe could spend little time on other tasks and was soon dead anyway. In the words of a later governor-general, the governor-general, "the system seems to have lost sight of itself two or three years after its creation". Assumption'. Meanwhile, Cunningham continued to correspond with the Asiatic Society. In 1839 he was sent to investigate the sources of the Ravi and Chenab rivers on the border of Kashmir; There he took the opportunity to collect inscriptions. In 1842 he was in central India but was called to Punjab to serve in the First Sikh War. In 1847, now a captain, he was sent to Ladakh or Indian Tibet to head a frontier commission. Thus, like Hodgson and de Koros, he had the opportunity to study Buddhism in business. He also toured the antiquities of the Kashmir Valley and returned with no frontier -frontier- the Tibetans did not appear -appeared- but with a camel laden with Buddhist statues, three unknown Sanskrit dramas and the "oldest dated inscriptions". previously found in India." He arrived just in time to take part in the Second Sikh War and later served in Gwalior and Multan. Around this time, his brother, Joseph Cunningham, was appointed political agent in Bhopal, in central India, India., the state that had Sanchi; The opportunity was too good to miss. In January 1851, Alexander Cunningham was again among the stupas. The stupas He was very impressed by the famous doors: their bas-reliefs The bas-reliefs " have a design more original and a more varied subject than any other example of Oriental sculpture I have ever seen." As at Sarnath, he dug a hole in the Great Stupa and again found no relics. the other two stupas on Sanchi Hill. and the many others nearby stupas and cave temples.At Astupa Stupa, just a few yards north of the main stupa, Cunningham Cunn Ingham was finally rewarded nsed. Beneath a huge five-foot square stone slab, its shaft lies Two stone chests entered. Inside each box was a small soapstone relic casket topped by a thin black ceramic saucer. Inside each coffin were bone fragments and beads. But the most dramatic discovery was that the boxes were engraved. One was called Sariputasa, the other Maha-Mogalanasa. Maha-Mogalanasa. These were two of the Buddha's foremost disciples; it was like finding the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul. Paul. Cunningham finally experienced the thrill of handling mysteries undisturbed for two millennia. And because of this identification, Sanchi, which had disappeared from Buddhist memory centuries before, became a place of Buddhist pilgrimage again. Cunningham published his findings in a book, The Bhilsa Topes and Topes, and took the opportunity to graciously champion the cause of Indian archaeology. The money saved by not funding the publication of Sanskrit works could well be spent on researching other stupas. other stupas. If the British public needed some convincing of the value of India's Buddhist heritage, why not take the two destroyed Sanchi Gates back to England and have them rebuilt in the British Museum, "where they would form the world's most impressive objects in the Hall of India? Antiques." '? Thus, the weight of anti-Oriental prejudices fell on Hindu literature.

Cunningham tried to make it clear that archeology deserves separate consideration and that Buddhism as a whole is less objectionable than Hinduism. Buddhist Buddhist sculpture was never obscene, and as Buddhism was dead in India, encouraging pagans was out of the question. But the time was not yet ripe; Cunningham would have to wait another ten years. In 1856, now a lieutenant colonel, he was sent to Burma to establish a public works department. Whilst there he conquered the rebellion of Britain or India, Macaulay's rhetoric may be well rewarded; and thirty years of insensibility. Mutiny, Nacional has not changed its hardened attitudes. But he showed that the British need to be a little more forgiving, a little less open. An interest in native culture could now be forgiven, even applauded, for its political expediency. The mutiny's most obvious effects were the end of the East India Company and the Mughal Emperor. India was now the direct responsibility of the British government and Queen Victoria was its sovereign. In these circumstances, a more responsible approach to national heritage was to be expected. Most times the government tried to evade this responsibility, but the preservation of national monuments could no longer be completely ignored. If places like the Taj Mahalahal were left to decay, "the brightest jewel in the imperial crown" would begin to look downright shabby. kitsch In 1861, Cunningham, now 47 years old, retired from the army with the rank of major general. He had never stopped pushing for an archaeological nomination and now, at the end of his career, he finally got a positive response. Officially, he explained his plan to Lord Canning, the first viceroy. During the 100 years of British rule in India, the government did little or nothing to preserve the ancient monuments which, with almost no written history, are the only reliable source of information about the country's early state. Some of these monuments have stood for centuries and are likely to last for centuries; but there are many, many others, who daily suffer the effects of time, who will soon disappear completely, unless they are preserved by the accurate drawings and faithful descriptions of archaeologists. In the research I propose here, I would follow in the footsteps of the Chinese pilgrim Hsuan Tsang, who crossed India from west to east and back in the seventh century AD. Chinese pilgrims observed both Hindu temples and Buddhist sites. Cunningham suggested doing the same. But his Buddhist research orientation was something he would be heavily criticized for. Native American studies, which began with Jones with a strong literary and Hindu orientation, has now strayed heavily into Buddhism and archaeology. But given the evangelical legacy, the legacy, it's hard to imagine that the government would be willing to fund a specific study of, say, Hindu sculpture. It is to Cunningham's credit that he managed to address these questions. On the short list of places for immediate investigation, which he attached to his letter to Canning, was Khajuraho. His other important point of recommendation was that he had little to do with archeology as we know it today. Cunningham did not intend to dig, or even to preserve, but simply to study and draw. In accepting the recommendation, Lord Canning expressed concern over the neglect of architectural remains. By negligence I don't just mean the inability to restore them or stop Deca's decline; Yes; for this would be a task which, in many cases, would require an expenditure of manpower and money far greater than any Indian government could reasonably muster. But an increasingly cheap task has been neglected, namely, the study and recording of g for the instruction of

future generations, many details that could yet be saved from oblivion and that shed light on the early history of England's great dependence. dependency. Clearly, a more ambitious plan would never have been approved. From Canning's point of view, the beauty of a survey was that it cost very little, should only last a few years, and would not commit the government to anything. Cunningham Cunningh managed to keep it for a quarter of a century. He did some form of conservation and exploration and ensured that the responsibility of serious conservation was never so smugly dismissed. The criticisms he left of India's monuments as he found them should be directed at this government and not at the new Archaeological Service. Cunningham took to the field in December 1861 with a modest caravan. Bihar was his first destination. At Boddh Gaya he confirmed his Buddhist associations. It was actually the site of Buddha's enlightenment. Buddha's enlightenment. He found the pillars and railings similar to those at Sanchi, which were later rebuilt at the instigation of Lord Curzon, and after much controversy he dated the temple itself to around AD 200. North of the Ganges, he visited Hodgson's three A-Ashoka Shoka pillars, and tombs were found next to one of them, containing huge lead coffins nearly ten feet long containing "unusually long human skeletons". Dated around 1000 BC. BC, these were the oldest discoveries ever made on Indian soil. The following year he ascended the Ganges and Jumna to Mathura and Delhi; then the Punjab, where he discovered the ancient city of Taxila; then Central India; then back to Bihar, Benares and Allahabad. And so it goes. With a brief hiatus in the late 1860s, the old general trudged across northern India for 25 years. There was so much to record, so many new pages; a week here, a week there, she could never pay more. There was a boom in building roads and especially railways. Rock was scarce on the plains, and contractors seized every piece of stone and masonry they could get their hands on. If Cunningham was never able to focus his energies on major excavations or sustainable conservation work, he could at least try to block contractors. Any saved site can be a saved site. He arrived late at Sultanganj, Sultanganj, where ruins "blocked many miles of route"; The only good thing that added to the devastation was the discovery of a famous bronze Buddha. Too late in Rajaona, Masar and Tiwar. Too late at Tigowa too, where at least thirty-six temples were completely destroyed by a 200-car railway contractor; His name, which is well remembered, was Walker. But Cunningham was incredibly meticulous, and much of the wealth of surviving archaeological remains is owed to him. In the process, he got to know North India better than any other contemporary. A little dour as he approached seventy, highly possessive of his own discoveries and jealous of his unquestioned supremacy, Cunningham and his Archaeological Survey became an institution. One can imagine the little caravan descending on a group of forgotten temples. Tents are pitched as the old general emerges hunched over from a carved mandapam. mandapam. His tweed smells like bat droppings; manure; but a quick "bathtub" and he's back to work, recording the day's findings at a wobbly, rickety field table. As the sun sets behind the trees and the parakeets squawk and return to their roost, the lamp is lit and the general gives instructions to start early in the morning and retire to bed with a copy of Hsuan T's Tsang. Angle For a man whose career seems to have revolved around the great Buddhist shrines of Sarnath in 1835, Sanchi in 1851 and Boddh Gaya in 1862, it was entirely fitting that his last major find was yet another stupa. Marching across the country towards Nagpur one day in November 1873, he stopped to investigate a suspicious location in the remote village of Bharhut. The site turned out to be a flat pile of rubble, but with a collapsed section sticking out.

Railings almost identical to Sanchi's mortise tenon and colonnade. Beside it was a pillar which Cunningham immediately recognized as a beam. Three months later he was back in Bharhut and spent ten days, a long time for the restless Archaeological Survey, digging into the mound and uncovering the heavily carved stones. The curious carvings were a source of wonder to people who visited the site by the hundreds every day. But the inscriptions aroused even greater curiosity when word spread that he was supposed to read them. With each new discovery they asked me to say the words which were the subject of writing, and great was the disappointment when I simply gave gifts to the Stupa or the names of the Guardianyakshas, ​​Guardianyakshas, ​​Devatas and Devatas and Nagas known gave. Nagas. Few natives of India believe in disinterested and disinterested excavations for the discovery of ancient buildings&. His only notion of such excavations is that they are really intended for a search for hidden treasure, and from the incredulous eyes of many people I have no doubt that I was seen as a crook who carefully concealed the inscription's revelations. .related to the position of buried treasure. The stupa itself The stupa itself was gone, stone by stone removed to provide building materials; The village of Bharhut had 200 houses, houses, each built with stolen bricks. Many of the handrails were also spread: they were spread: they made excellent beams and beamed ceiling lintels. A crossbar from one of the doors was found embedded in the wall of a local fort; another was in use seven miles away as the stone on which washers beat their clothes. On his third visit in 1875, Cunningham summarized these pieces, offering compensation if necessary. He was known to buy a cornfield if he thought there was anything worth digging up in it; the complexities of rural etiquette were now second nature to him. But he also acknowledged that attacks would resume once the Archaeological Service turned its back on them. In that context, he recommended that the door and banister, which he painstakingly rebuilt, be quickly transferred to a museum. Judging from the inscriptions, which were in an early form by Ashoka Brahmi, and the more archaic carvings, Bharhut predates the Sanchi Gates (Cunningham thought 250-200 200 BC, although today it is believed to be 150-100 100 BC). more like). probably). Faced with this advanced age, the government agreed, although not without protests from some sectors; "The scheme carries with it a certain whiff of hooliganism", wrote one of Cunningham's correspondents; "Fantasy Taking Away Stonehenge". But in the end the old general was right. When he returned to Bharhut in 1876 after the most important items had been removed to the Indian Museum in Calcutta, he found that "all the stones that could be removed were carried away by the people as building material". Material'. Indian sculpture is poorly served by the artificial light and atmosphere of the museum. The sculpture needs the strong contrast between light and shadow provided by the Indian sun to come to life; Architecture needs the vastness of its rural setting and the wide blue sky to assert itself. The beauty of Sanchi Sanch i gates is in their intricate silhouette and the way light filters through their massive superstructure. As the sun and shadows play on the delightful curves of the famous Yakshi (Nymph [Nymph and Tree Spirit]) at the East Gate, she seems to lean even further into space, while the gentle elephants behind her sway so gently. But the Bharhut Sculptures don't have that life, Cunningham saved them from oblivion but wouldn't be happy leaving them in a museum.

CHAPTER SEVEN Buddha in a robe

Bharhut's gate and bars were particularly vulnerable, the massive stones had already broken into manageable pieces when Cunningham discovered them. Fortunately, that doesn't apply to Sanchi's two missed goals. Cunningham suggested that they too be placed in a museum, in this case the British Museum. This was rejected on the grounds that transporting such large pieces of stone would be expensive (even for the government) and dangerous for the sculptures. So they stood still. But fifteen years later, the French government approached the Begum Be Gum of Bhopal, who nominally owned this place: how would they feel if one of the destroyed gates was removed to decorate the boulevards of Paris? The Begum's reaction is not recorded, but that of the Indian government was swift enough: nothing was more likely to dispel official indifference than the appearance of a foreign bidder. Sanchi was declared inviolable and Major Henry Hardy Cole was sent to stop such offers by obtaining plaster casts of one of the gates. That in itself turned out to be a huge operation. With three pioneers specially trained in the latest method of "making elastic forms out of gelatin", twenty-eight tons of material, and sixty oxcarts, Cole set out to sculpt 700,700 square feet. The final 112 castings were duly placed in museums in London, Edinburgh, Dublin and Paris. Thanks largely to the interest of the Asiatic Society (Society) in the national heritage remaining in India and available to its members (members), comparatively few sculptures made it to Europe. But there were exceptions, and none were more celebrated than another of Bhilsa Hill's masterpieces - Hill - the Torso of Sanchi. In 1881, the government finally recognized that something more positive needed to be done for conservation. Major Cole took over as National Trustee and for three years he did valuable work, especially at Sanchi. The two collapsed gates were rebuilt into their original positions, the breach in the Great Stupa (caused by Maddock's operations) was repaired, and vegetation was removed from the entire site. Much of the broken sculpture was recovered and stored during this work. Not so, however, on a particularly handsome male torso who arrived in England under the influence of the British agent in Bhopal, General Kincaid. He was C. Cole's father's superior during the Sanchi operations, but claimed that the torso was legally handed over to him by the Begum. Indeed, this may have been the case, but if such gifts had been universally accepted, the waste of India's treasures would have been considerable. Furthermore, it was not government policy to allow its employees to accept gifts. Kincaid appears to have kept quiet about the torso for five years, then offered it to the Victoria and Albert Museum for display. It was shown in the 1890s and quickly caused a stir. In 1910, there were rumors that other museums in Europe were negotiating with the owner. "Rather than risk riots if it became known that Germany had bagged Germany's upper body", the government approved its purchase for an ungenerous £80. Sanchi's torso is now one of Victoria and Albert's most prized possessions and the most revered masterpiece of Indian art outside India. There is something hypnotic about this stylized yet extremely graceful pose, something deeply sensual in the swollen flesh that gently submits to the rigid adornment of the necklace and belt. But despite its fame, its origins baffled experts until recently. lately. It was 1971 when her partner was discovered.

the broken statue originally unearthed by Major Cole. From the couple one can deduce their identity - identity - the Bodhisattva Avalokiteswara - Avalokiteswara - as well as their original position and date - date - around 900 AD. Until then, it was generally acclaimed as a classic piece of Gupta sculpture (4th-5th centuries AD). Prior to that, it was considered a typical example of what Kincaid called "Indo-Greek art" of the 1st century AD. Perhaps Nada 'Indo nix more clearly illustrates the gradual development of European understanding and appreciation of Indian sculpture. And of particular importance, first of all, is the fact that its demand for serious attention, its acceptance into museums, was based on the assumption that its inspiration was marked by Greek, even Hellenistic, influences that influenced Indian sculpture. the 19th century. . To find out how Greek ideas influenced Indian art and who these Indo-Greeks were, it is necessary to go back to the 1830s, that most productive period in Oriental studies, and to Prinsep and his colleagues. Colleagues. It is also necessary to present one more source of material for the reconstruction of Indian history, the history of ancient coins. Colonel James Tod, the man who discovered the Girnar inscription and most other West Indian antiquities, is generally credited with introducing Indian numismatics. During his long stay among the Rajputs in the 1820s, he casually amassed a collection of around 20,000 coins. Every conceivable size, shape, denomination, and metal seemed to be represented, and many were clearly very ancient; some even carried the then-undeciphered Ashoka script. Obviously, if such a collection was representative, then there were enough old coins to warrant serious study. If one could read their legends, identify their symbols and portraits, and trace their distribution, much could be learned about the dynastic history of India. Death came first, he organized his collection into large groups and wrote them down as best he could. Coins from the most important dynasties from the time of the Guptas to the Muslim conquests were well represented. In fact, the medieval history of India has largely been reconstructed on the basis of numismatics. Tod's collection included some coins that, according to the scriptures, predated the Guptas. And there were one or two that looked nothing like the Indians, because they had double inscriptions, one indecipherable and the other clearly Greek. When General Ventura discovered a hoard of these coins at Manikyalastupa, Manikyalastupa, interest increased. It was known from classical sources that after the invasion of Alexander the Great in 326 BC. his conquests in northwest India were lost; but a Greek kingdom was also known to have remained, even prospered, in northern Afghanistan or Bactria for many decades. The coins that have now come to light look like the work of these Bactrian Greeks. In addition to the series with double inscriptions, there were some particularly fine specimens, perhaps the most magnificent ceremonial coins ever minted in antiquity, bearing only a legend of the Greek leg. End. "King Demetrius", "the great King Eucratides", "King Euthydemus", they declared; and there he was, a handsome patrician profile with dramatically classical features and a hat like a centurion's helmet, with just a touch of suntopi. A naked and muscular Hercules was often seen on the reverse side. Besides, Demetrius, Eucratides, &c. all of them were confirmed as kings of Bactria by classical authors. Spurred on by these unexpected discoveries, General Ventura and his fellow officers in Ranjit Singh's service scoured the Punjab for more stupas and more stupas, bombarding Prinsep with their findings. In just a few months, the Asiatic Society's coin collection increased tenfold. And still they kept coming. British travelers to Afghanistan and Central Asia contributed to the floods, most notably a mysterious figure calling himself Charles Masson. Masson claimed to be a US citizen, a citizen, which wasn't as unlikely as it sounds: Ranjit Singh was employed

several Americans. But in Masson's case, like the name, the nationality was assumed. In fact, he was one of the outcasts of British India, a deserter from the ranks of the East India Company, whose real name was James Lewis. Masson's origins are shrouded in mystery, as is his later life, but for ten dangerous years, most of which he lived and traveled in disguise among Afghan fanatics, he played a role of great importance and considerable audacity. In British India he was court-martialled on his return; in Afghanistan a knife in the back if exposed. Yet somehow to survive, to get to Kabul, to recognize and identify the single strong maelstrom of raging Afghan politics, to ingratiate yourself, to earn a pardon, a pardon from the British for acting as informers. Almost in passing, he also revealed to the outside world the archaeological wealth of the Kabul region, discovering one of the most important sites in Asia. In 1832, he heard "strange stories about the innumerable coins and other relics" found on the Begram Plain, forty kilometers from Kabul. Trying not to arouse suspicion, but "intensely excited", Masson joined the investigation. Residents denied any knowledge of antiquities and spoke only of the danger of bandits. But finally an elderly and probably desperate Mohammedan produced a small, misshapen, and utterly worthless coin. Masson paid two countries for it and the floodgates opened. [It] caused others to appear until the Hindus dared to bring their old fund bags, from which I chose those suitable for my purpose. I had the satisfaction of obtaining about eighty coins of all kinds in this way, which leads me to expect brilliant results in the future. The owners' fears and scruples were overcome&. Before the onset of winter, when the snowy plain is closed for research, he had accumulated 1,865 copper coins, except for a few silver coins, many rings, seals and other relics. In the following year, 1834, the collection that fell into my hands was 1,900 copper coins, among other relics. In 1835 it amounted to almost 2,500 copper coins and in 1836 to 13,474 copper coins. In 1837, when I had a good command of the plain and could constantly station my people there, I received 60,000 coppers per coin, with the result of which I was very pleased. It must be considered one of the greatest numismatic finds of all time. Masson also found and explored some fifty stupas in the same area and gave his collection in exchange for a small donation to Ex-Costs, Pens, the Asiatic Society. But even that was not the extent of his contribution. Because unlike Ventura, Masson was more than a field worker. Though a man of modest education, he soon studied his coins, and it is to him, along with Prinsep P. Rinsep and the young Cunnin Cunningham, Gham, that we owe their early identification. Generally speaking, coins with Greek legends spanned a period of 400 years and showed a gradual decline in Greek influence. The beautifully modeled coins of Alexander's successors gradually gave way to less imposing representations and inferior engravings. in the engraving Hercules was replaced by elephants, lions or bulls. Royal names became less overtly Greek, noble Greek profiles replaced by a running wind god with spiky hair and Mithraic lineage, with symbols drawn from Buddhist and Hindu mythology and with an odd figure of a bearded warrior and boots, legs apart. In these hybrid coins, which are as non-Indian as they are non-Greek, Masson and Prinsep quickly realized that they had found an important and heretofore neglected aspect of India's past. It was known from classical and Chinese sources that waves of barbarian invaders swept Afghanistan and northwest India during the centuries between the Mauryan empires of Chandragupta and Ashoka (3rd century).

BC) and the empire of the Guptas (4th century AD). Identifying these various newcomers and putting them in the right order was a big problem. But it seems that the Bactrian Greeks were the first culprits. They imitated Alexander, occupied in the 2nd century BC. the Punjab and Punjab fell deep into the Ganges and Indus basin. Then came the Scythians from Oxus, who invaded the Greeks in both Bactria and the Punjab. Around 50 B.C. The Scythians or Sakas controlled Punjab as far as Delhi. They, in turn, were succeeded by Parthians from Persia by about 25 or more Kush Kushans, i.e. from a Peshawar tribe originally from Chinese central Asia to the deserts and jungles of central India. Matching the various invaders with the various series of coins and then populating each dynasty with the kings represented on the coins became a difficult game for Masson, Prinsep and Cunningham. Cunningham in particular was extremely possessive of his list of newly discovered rulers who, year after year, pieced together this most confusing period in Indian history. With Masson as the protagonist, Prinsep as the dedication, and Cunningham as some inspired guesswork, they too deciphered the unknown writing that accompanied the Greek legends. Unlike the Gupta and Ashoka scripts, it was read from right to left like Arabic and was obviously derived from Aramaic. In 1872, Cunningham discovered a new inscription on the Ashoka rock also written in this script. The rock was located at Shahbazgarhi, in the foothills north of Peshawar, so this Kharosthi script, borrowed from the Middle East, was considered as old, if not older, than Ashoka Brahmi. Whether the art of writing was introduced to India from outside or an indigenous development remains a matter of debate. But obviously many ideas and influences entered the Indian subcontinent from the northwest. For the most part throughout history, the Northwest Frontier has been open. While the Bactrian, Saka, and Kushan empires did occupy the Khyber Pass, the steady wave of conquests systematically eroded cultural barriers and spilled a rich homeland of Persian and Mediterranean skills and ideals onto the Indian plains. The most obvious example is the coins themselves. In the days of the Maurys, Indian coins consisted of simple nuggets of metal marked with a simple die and had been in circulation since ancient times. But the idea of ​​a minted coin containing a design or portrait and a caption only dates from the time of these invasions. The development of a specifically Indian coinage is clearly evident on West Indian coins, where distinctly Indian outlines begin to appear around the 2nd century AD. By the 4th century, the distinctive gold coinage of the Guptas was in circulation throughout northern India. It has been suggested in the literature that Sanskrit drama owes something to Greek influence; Indian playwrights like Kalidasa may have inherited some of the conventions of Greek comedy performed in the Bactrian court of Punjab. In architecture there is a more obvious connection. The Jandial Temple in Taxila, Pakistan has Ionic columns and a similar layout to the scaled-down Parthenon. It could hardly seem less Indian, and indeed it is not; It was built by the Parthian invaders in the early 1st century AD. C. and was probably used by the followers of the Persian god Zoroaster, worshipers of fire. But the essential point is that this temple is the oldest temple built on Indian soil as opposed to a rock-cut temple. So did the ancient people of India learn about architecture from the invaders? The answer is certainly no. They built on a grand scale with wood and brick for centuries. Megasthenes Megasthenes' description of the gigantic royal palace at Pataliputra is in itself sufficient to prove the point p. Ointment. But Hellenistic buildings like Jandial had some impact. In the Himalayan valley of Kashmir, the

The foreign style took hold, producing a distinctive and enduring school of architecture that used classical columns, trefoil arches, and gabled pediments. However, in stonework and carving, foreign skill left a real impression in India. Craftsmen and masons seem to have moved even more freely in the ancient world than did ambassadors. Cunningham was probably the first to notice that Ashoka's columns, with their bell-shaped capitals, bore a striking resemblance to the columns of Persepolis in ancient Persia. The sophisticated modeling shown on Sanchi's Sarnath and Sanchi's Achaemenid lion capitals must suggest an already well-developed style in which Ashoka borrowed from Persia both the idea of ​​columns and the masons who carved them. At Bharhut and Sanchi, Cunningham found even more evidence of foreign artisans. He thought he recognized Kharosthi script on the best carved reliefs from Bharhut and explained the varying quality of some Sanchi reliefs by assuming that the most finished panels were the work of imported craftsmen. As if to prove his point, he discovered at Besnagar, a few miles from Sanchi, Sanchi, a small pillar with an inscription saying it had been erected by a Greek named Heliodorus in the 1st century BC, the time when the buildings were built. Few, least of all Cunningham, would deny that the inspiration for both Ashoka's columns and Sanchi's reliefs was Indian: they owe as much to earlier indigenous skills in wood and ivory carving as to Greek stonemasons. However, actual Indo-Indo-Greek sculptures (called Gandhara, after the name of the region between the Indus and Kabul) were an entirely different matter. In 1836, Lieutenant Colonel Stacy, one of Prinsep's most faithful collectors, was presented with what appeared to be enormous writing carved from a single rectangular block of local sandstone. It was found near the city of Mathura, between Agra and Delhi. There were vivid reliefs on the front and back, and it was their unmistakably classic appearance that prompted Stacy to immediately inform the Asiatic Society. The obverse depicts the drunkard Silenus [Bacchus's alcoholic adviser]; He lies down on a low seat or throne and is supported on either side by a young Greek man and woman. Two secondary characters are on their knees; the posture of the silenus, the tilt of the head, the lips and the limp state of the limbs give an accurate picture of a drunk. The figures of the boy and the girl are also in good condition. The whole is obviously the work of a skilled artist who, in my opinion, could not have been a native of India. On the other side were more bacchanalian figures. Females have shown some concessions to Indian tastes, especially in the affectionately exaggerated breasts; but they were fully dressed, clothed, an unusual circumstance in itself, and their clothes were distinctly Greek, a pleated tunic and billowing curtain that touched the floor. How on earth did such an unlikely piece appear on the banks of the Jumna? Prinsep immediately suspected that there might be a connection with Indo-Greek coins. But I had serious doubts about that. The discovery of a carving with an apparent reference to mythology and Greek mythology may be less surprising after the elaborate display of coins depicting Greek legends and a combination of Greek and Hindu deities found in Upper India and the Punjab. In fact, however, the latter offers no explanation for the former. Silenus, Bacchus, Dionysus - Dionysus - none of them appeared on coins, nor was there any Hindu god with which to identify them. Furthermore, the Bacchic cult does not seem to have played a role in Greek Bactria.

Thus, Stacy's source remained an unexplained mystery. Secret. Only after the British annexation of Punjab in the late 1840s was anything comparable found. As always, Cunningham was at the forefront of new discoveries. Returning from his failed frontier commission in Ladakh in 1848, he set out for western Kashmir in search of Fa Hsien's route through the mountains. In the hills north of Peshawar he found the ruins of a monastery with Corinthian capitals. The statues were just as classic, and he brought a bunch of camels. Further excavations carried out at the same site in the 1850s, the entire collection was sent to London for the Great Exhibition at C Crystal Palace. Sadly, he died in the famous fire before being photographed. Europe had to wait another ten years to get a good look at Gandh's Gandhara ara sculpture. dr. Gottlieb Leitner, educator, ethnologist, explorer extraordinaire and one of India's most maligned eccentrics, never resisted a sensation. As a teacher in Lahore, he spent his holidays wandering the northern hills, and it was in the Swat Valley that he first encountered Gandharan art. Although he was neither an archaeologist nor an art historian, he immediately recognized that a controversy was brewing. He returned to London in 1868 with several boxes of statues. It has since been established that, despite their classical features, these statues and the sites they came from were largely Buddhist. There were exceptions, the strange figure straight out of classical mythology or Roman history, history, but even Stacy's Silenus was identified with the Buddhist yaksha, Kuvera. Not that that made the phenomenon any less disconcerting. A robed Buddha, a Buddha crouching on the acanthus leaves of a Corinthian column, a mustachioed bodhisattva in Athenian sandals? It was all so absurd. But for the first time the evidence was undeniable. As Buddhist scholars had already noted, strict iconographic conventions governed any depiction of the Buddha. Among them were such distinguishing features as the bulge on top of the head, the elongated earlobes, and the suggestion of a third eye in the center of the forehead. All of these were meticulously incorporated into Gandhara's sculptures; While the figure may look like a good replica of Apollo Belvedere, there is no doubt that it was actually the Buddha. But that raised the most intriguing question of all. The sculptors of Sanchi, Sanchi, Bharhut and Boddh Gaya carefully avoided any depiction of the Buddha himself. An empty throne, the sacred Boddhi tree, a footprint or some other symbol has always been preferred. There are no known examples of the Buddha depicted in human form before the 2nd century AD. However, it was known that around 100 BC the Greeks were invaded at least 200 years earlier. So who carved these Buddhas, and if not the Greeks, then who made these classical shapes? Speculation and controversy boiled over in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Broadly speaking, there were two main schools of thought. In India, Cunn Cunningham, Ingham, who recalled the clear Bactrian influence on Indo-Greek coins, clung to the idea that the Greeks must somehow be behind all Gandharian art. He suggested that the Bactrians, who settled in the second century B.C. in Punjab, bringing with them its ideals and its craftsmen: the seeds of classicism were sown and lasted long after the decline of Greek political power. He also chose an early date, around 50 BC. BC, by the arrival of the Kushan invaders. The Kushans, and in particular their king Kanishka, are known to have embraced and promoted Buddhism as fervently as Ashoka. Stupas Stupas and monasteries were suddenly in demand, and what could be more natural than a revival of the latent skills and ideals of their Greek predecessors? Accustomed to representing their deities in human form, the Greeks automatically tried to represent Buddha; the Kushan, converts to Buddhism they didn't know better, welcomed the news. Therefore, the sculptors of Gandhara invented the Buddha image and there is no doubt about it.

Indian sculptors took up their idea over time. Cunningham had the advantage of having discovered many of the sculptures and seen most of the others. In India, his hypothesis was widely accepted; Major Cole, who surveyed Swat in 1883 and 1884, fully agreed. He even revived the idea that the seeds of Hellenism in the Punjab were sown not only by the Bactrian Greeks, but also by Alexander. In England, however, it was a different matter. When it came to Indian art, Cunningham now had a strong rival in Ferguson, the historian of Indian architecture. Fergusson never visited the Punjab James and left India before the major Gandhara finds. He had seen the Leitner collection and studied every available photograph; but, understandably, his first complaint was that Cunningham confiscated all the finds and turned them over to Indian museums. The exceptional classical character and beauty of these sculptures are of such prime interest in the history of Indian art that it is of the utmost importance to determine their age, if possible. There is not at present enough material in this country [Great Britain] to enable the general public to form an opinion on any arguments that might be advanced on the subject; Nor will they be able to do so until the government is persuaded to spend the paltry amount necessary to bring some of them home. They are practically lying where they are now; here they could hardly be surpassed in interest by any recent discoveries of the same kind. However, that didn't stop Fergusson from forming his own opinion on the matter. Drawing on his considerable knowledge of classical architecture, he made the important observation that Gandhara sculpture owed as much to the Romans as the Greeks. Indeed, novelties such as a figure nestled in the foliage of a Corinthian capital were rather late developments in provincial Roman art (around the 4th century AD). Fergusson recognized that Gandharan art in its early stages may have owed something to the Greeks, but that it covered a much longer period than Cunningham suggested, until the seventh century AD. C., and therefore contemporary with the empires of Rome and Byzantium. How Roman and Byzantine ideas reached northwest India without leaving their mark on the lands in between, Fergusson could not say. But he suggested that, historically, East-West-West contacts occurred on a much larger scale than is generally believed. Stacy claimed that her discovery of Silenus supported Sir William Jones's belief that the gods of India and Greece were somehow interchangeable. Prinsep, and now Fergusson, recalled the tradition that Saint (Doubtful) Thomas had visited the court of Gondophares, one of the Parthian kings of Gandhara. Fergusson also suggested that if the Bhagavad Gita Gita appeared to contain Christian teachings, that too was no coincidence. In short, if Fergusson's theory were correct, almost everything in Indian art and culture that appealed to Victorians could be explained as evidence of Greek, Roman, Byzantine, or Christian influences. Little wonder, then, that Gandhara art was the only Indian art taken seriously in the 19th century. "The Gandhara sculptures," Vincent Smith wrote in 1889, "would be recognized by most persons qualified to form an opinion as the finest specimens of fine art ever known in India." they were Buddhist and therefore comparatively harmless in contrast to Hindu art. And they were controversial, controversial and a separate attraction, but this controversy also opened up the possibility of an ingenious and comforting explanation for everything that seemed valuable in Indian civilization. As a result, classical influences on Indian artistic audacity were greatly exaggerated during a design period. fashion change Where Cunningham observed: "an observation and an exaggeration." freedom from but

Execution which no Oriental artist has yet shown', Fergusson 'a beauty of supreme interest' and Cole much 'delicacy and good taste', Ernest Havell in 1890 saw only 'inferior craftsmanship and insincerity and want of spirituality'; the Buddhas and bodhisattvas of this period are mindless puppets, degraded types of the Greek and Roman pantheons, uncomfortably present in the attitude of Indian asceticism. It is true that Havell was as biased against the Gandharan school as Cunningham or Ferguson were for it. The problem for everyone was that no aesthetic-aesthetic assessment was worth clarifying. until the chronology of Gandhara art, and therefore the inspiration behind it, only came to light with the necessary evidence with the excavation of Taxila in the 1920s. This great site with its Greek, Parthian and Kushana cities was discovered by the Cunningham Archaeological Poll; but, as usual, the old general hurried off, having done little more than verify his identity. Identity. It fell to Sir John Marshall, Cunningham's successor, albeit after an interval of twenty years, to exploit the discovery. The wealth of sculptural and architectural remains in each of the ancient cities provided the data for a comprehensive classification of all Gandharan art. Fortunately, the truth has made justification possible for almost everyone. all. Cunningham would have been pleased to know that the school's beginnings date back to the 1st century BC. and represent a revival of Hellenistic art; also that the Kushan period was indeed the most important and that the Buddhas of Gandhara were among the earliest representations of the enlightened ones. However, Fergusson may have taken solace in the news that he was right about the longevity of the Gandhara school: Marshall identified a quite different later school, which lasted into the fifth century. He was also right about Roman influence; Gandhara's classicism seems to have been carried over from the West in various ways.

In the 18th century, the great Aurangzeb Angzeb Mosque dominated the Benares waterfront at Panchganga Ghat. Built on the site of a massive Hindu temple, it has helped highlight the lack of pre-Islamic architecture in the holy city. Yet Varanasi remained a center of Hindu learning, where early Orientalists sought clues to India's past. (Watercolor by Robt. Smith, 1833.) 1833.)

James Prinsep consults Hindupandits Hindupanditsin at Sanskrit College, Varanasi. The institution, founded by one of Warren Hasting's protégés, was the first to attempt the systematic collection and study of classical Indian literature. (Lithograph by Sir Chas. D'Oyley.) D'Oyley.)

The Rock of Girnar in Gujerat, "turned into a book by the 'iron pen'", was discovered by Colonel James Tod in 1822. Prinsep used it to decipher the writing and establish Ashoka as the most important figure in history. (Watercolor by Thos. Postans, 1938). 1938).

A few kilometers from Madras, the temples of Mahabalipuram (seen here in a painting by Thomas Daniell) have wowed scholars and visitors alike. Because they were not architecture but sculptures, each carved and carved from a single gigantic rock.

"Few ancient remains have aroused greater curiosity." The engineering skill associated with the excavation of West Indian cave temples suggested Egyptian involvement, while their sculptural elegance has been attributed to Greek influence. It was not until the 1830s that Henry Salt's 1808 Karli lithograph was recognized as Indian Buddhist Buddhism and OfinElephanta (Bishop Heber's drawing) as Hindu.

Local Brahmins have looked after the ruins of the Boddh Gaya Ga temple since Francis Buchanan first identified it as a Buddhist. From ancient Chinese texts, Cunningham discovered that it was actually the site of Buddha Buddha's enlightenment. Rehabilitated, it is now an important center of Buddhist studies and a place of universal pilgrimage. (Watercolor by 'J.C.M.', 1814.) 1814.)

The stupas of Thestupas of Sanchi, and in particular the carved reliefs that cover their doors, turned out to be one of the most revealing discoveries. When Buddhism was first discovered in 1819, the Indian origins of Buddhism were still unknown. Alexander Cunningham pioneered this field of study and was the first to undertake a systematic study of Sanchi. But it wasn't until the 1880s and 1880s that the site was cleared and partially rebuilt. (Watercolor by William Simpson, 1862.)

A major obstacle to any Victorian appreciation of Indian sculpture was its unabashed sensuality. Theyakshis, Theyakshis, trees and tree spirits of fertility, once adorned the stupefied railings of the Buddhist Buddhist stupa at Mathura. However, an exception was made for artifacts from the Gandhara school (1st to 5th century CE) in the northwest. Here, Greek and Roman influence led the Buddha to wear understated attire and a Bodhisattva equipped with classical features.

Hidden in the jungle, the great temple complex of Khajuraho (10th (X-XI) centuries AD) was rediscovered in 1838 but little publicized. "The sculptor sometimes allowed his motif to grow a little hotter than was absolutely necessary for his work," wrote the first visitor with clever understatement. Varied and ingenious are the explanations and explanations given to the Mithunas Mithunas (love associations) and apsaras apsaras (dancing (dancing) girls) - covering the walls of almost every temple in Khajuraho.

this monumental classification of India Fergusson, who described In as an attempt at "Indo-Aryan" rule, abandonment of North India, temple architecture, a curvy sikhara, a curvy James sikhara (tower). (Tower).

Thesikharatook Thesikhara has taken many forms, its favorite being this pineapple shape typical of Orissa. The Jagannath festival in Puri has been considered one of the greatest attractions in India. (Drawing by one of Mackenzie's cartoonists. Cartoonist.)

Much of India's architectural heritage first became known through the travels of surveyors, explorers and cartographers. cartographer. The Inspector General of Colin India encouraged the antique dealers and expected his Mackenzies the surveyors, here as land surveyors, to first examine and sketch all the important buildings. (Drawing, possibly of a temple in Vijayanagar, by one of Mackenzie's cartoonists.) Cartoonist.) Having spent twenty years with Taxila, Marshall could hardly be expected to accept Havell's blunt aesthetic indictment. In Gandhara, as in any other art school, there were good guys and bad guys; there was development, maturity and decay; it has been tried and imitated. In the reliefs on the panels, the compositions were often unusual and the figures charming. The craftsmanship was sometimes of the highest quality; the bust of the Bodhisattva (from Mardan and now in the Peshawar Museum) was superb, "the beauty of the hunt as clear and precise as that found in any school of sculpture, Eastern or Western." But there was also a lot of it that was substandard and tasteless. The clear beautiful expression and noble facial features that attracted the older generation sounded a lot like "despicable beauty". Furthermore, India was now recognized as having an art of its own that was infinitely more fascinating.

CHAPTER 8 A little more heat than necessary

Included in the list of sites submitted by Alexander Cunningham Cunningham to Lord Canning in 181861 as worthy of immediate investigation by the Archaeological Archaeological Survey were two sites of great importance for the study of Indian sculpture. The first was Khajuraho, of whose notorious site a single account appeared in the Asiatic Society in 1839. In fact, it had been discovered twenty years earlier. Cornet James Franklin, a military surveyor and brother of the great polar explorer, discovered the temples in what was then a dense jungle and duly recorded them as "ruins". Unfortunately, Franklin's handwriting was not so clear: cartographers confused his "ruins" with "mines" and Khajuraho was believed to contain nothing more exciting than old tin mines. The truth was left in the hands of Captain T. S. Burt, one of Prinsep's itinerant engineers and the man who obtained the first authentic facsimiles of the inscriptions on the pillars of Allahabad. Traveling through central India in 1838, he heard from one of the men hired to carry his palanquin "of the wonders of that place - Khajroa, near Chatpore, as he called it". On double marches, or rather on horseback (the bearer must have regretted his indiscretion), Burt mimicked what he thought were hours enough for an inspection, arriving unprepared just as the sun was breaking over the jungle. I was very pleased with the venerable and picturesque appearance presented by these various ancient temples when I saw them. They spread their sun-scorched tops over the trees in all the pride of their superior size and age&. My first inquiry after breakfast involved ancient inscriptions, and a nearby temple was immediately identified as the owner of one. I went there and indeed there was an inscription in Sanskrit character #3 on the pillar of Allahabad [Kutila]&. It was the largest, prettiest, and most legible inscription I had ever seen, and with great pleasure I began to transcribe its contents onto paper. A dedicated antiques dealer, Burt went about his business in ink and damp cloths. Like the athlete who bends down to study a pug's signal while the leopard invisibly watches above, he was still blissfully blind to what lay ahead. He wanted a date and found it - 1123 1123 in the Samvat era, which meant 1067 AD. I looked at these monuments and could not help expressing a feeling of admiration that this magnificent antiquity had been erected by a people who continued to live in such a state of barbarous ignorance. It is evidence that some of these men must have been of a higher caste than others at the time. He would soon regret those words. Like many of his contemporaries, he believed that Indian culture had been degenerating for centuries. At first he thought he had found in Khajuraho an example of the heights he had sought. But when he innocently stopped to examine the carvings, he worried: 1067 must have been the beginning of the Age of Decline. I found &7 Hindu temples, very beautiful and exquisitely carved as far as workmanship was concerned, but the sculptor sometimes allowed his subject to be a little hotter than was absolutely necessary for his work; In fact, some of the carvings here were extremely lewd and lewd, which surprised me at first when I found them in temples supposedly built for good causes and for the sake of religion. But the religion of the ancient Hindus cannot have been very chaste in inciting people to plan under the guise of religion.

the most disgraceful displays to desecrate their ecclesiastical erections. The palki-bearers, however, seemed to take great pleasure in these novelties, which they found very agreeable, to which they called the attention of all present. Burt must have been extraordinarily innocent if he was genuinely surprised by the famous apsaras-seductive nymphs-nymphs-and the mithunas mithunas-the lovers (and sometimes quadruplets)-of the Khajuraho sculptures. Since the 17th century, the British have known of the so-called Black Near Temple Konarak Orissa, which has figures of similar figures, albeit more, although blurred by erosion. The Black Temple on the banks of the river in the Bay of Bengal was usually a landing point for ships bound for the Hughli River and Calcutta. When he appeared, ancient Indian hands pushed young "griffins" aside to whisper allusions to Hindu sexual customs. However, Burt appears to have been genuinely outraged. Embarrassed, he turned away from the porters tugging at his sleeves and tried to concentrate on the architecture. At Khandari Khandariya ya Mahadeo Temple, the noblest of "architectural structures", he decided to climb onto the roof to inspect the construction of the imposing spiers. The only access was from the inside, illuminating the holy and not so holy images. From the vertical side wall I ordered one of the bearers to rise first, and then, seizing the leg of one god and the arm of another, the head of a third, &c., I was happily, though not without inconvenience, activated around the bottom, top of the wall to reach, where I found an opening in the ceiling big enough to crawl through. T. When I went up to the roof, I found that my only predecessors apparently had been the bat and the monkey some years ago, and therefore the place was not the most fragrant of all places in the world. Still wary of the mithunas, mithunas, but excited about the subject, Burt toured the entire complex. "I will express my opinion that they are probably the best collection of temples gathered in one place in all of India." incarnation as a wild boar. According to his own calculations, this statue, a monolith, weighed sixty-eight tons. The female figure, representing the male and normally carried on the boar's tusks, was absent. Since Burt was surrounded by female figures, his despair at this discovery is surprising. “I would have gladly given a hundred rupees [£10] to see her well.” She. "As he walked, writing down his thoughts as he walked, his style became lighter and lighter; he was about to attempt a description of the Mithunas. mithunas But at last he shuddered, and before climbing back into his litter, he contented himself with with a lively account of another "church erection", on top of which is the representation of the principle of life. Now let us measure the height of the Lord. The natives protested that I entered without removing my boots, which would have been uncomfortable; so I stood at the door and saw for a porter measuring the height with my cane; it was 2⅓ of its height, or eight feet, and its diameter 1⅓, or four feet. It weighed about 7.5 tons and is considered by far the largest lingam from India. The following report on Khajuraho appears to be that of Cunningham. The general finally arrived there in 1865 and, though a little less naive than the high-ranking Burt, he was certainly lewd not to be more explicit; "All these [sculptures] and most of they are disgusting

obscene'. However, you must have paid a little more attention to them. At Khandariya, Mahadeo counted and measured 872 sculptures, most of which were two and a half to three feet tall. "The overall effect of this magnificent luxury of ornamentation is extremely pleasing, although the eye is often distracted by the multitude of details." He also agreed with Burt on the date. He studied the writing of all visible inscriptions and concluded that all the temples date from the 10th and 11th centuries, "a date I would otherwise be more inclined to assume, given the gross indelicacy of the principal carvings". He also attributed this to the patronage of the Chandel Rajputs of Chatterpore, who were one of many Rajput clans who valiantly resisted the Mohammedan invaders. In Cunningham's opinion, it was the fact that Khajuraho was miraculously preserved from the iconoclastic Mohammedans that gave it its true importance. “The remains are more numerous and better preserved than those of any other ancient city I have ever seen.” The site, tucked away in an extremely remote stretch of land, had been abandoned by the Chandel Rajahs before the Mohammedan advance; then the jungle choked him as fast as the volcanic lava of Pompeii. Although it was never a particularly ancient or sacred place, the splendor and profusion of its temples, its incredible profusion of sculptures and reliefs and, above all, the impeccable perfection of every detail, gave an idea of ​​the splendor of the most ancient and sacred cities. before the Muslim conquest. In all of North India there is hardly a statue that has not been defaced by Islamic invaders, hardly a temple that has not been vandalized. In Delhi, the desecration and destruction were total. So did Mathura, the other site on Cunningham's list of particular importance for Indian sculpture. More sculptures have surfaced since the discovery of Stacy's "Silenus". There. “Recently the remains of a large monastery were discovered on one of the ancient hills outside the city. Numerous statues, carved columns and inscribed column bases have come to light.” According to Fa Hsien, Mathura was a thriving Buddhist and Jain center and, as the scene of Krishna's youthful exploits, an important Hindu pilgrimage site. In fact, it is still the last one. But today, not a single building in the Mathura area dates from the 17th century. The stupas, the stupas, the monasteries, the temples, they were all razed to the ground by the invaders. Fa Hsien reported twenty Buddhist monasteries and 3,000 monks, considerably more than Sarnath. In his time, the domes of the stupas were covered with gold leaf and the railings and their reliefs were painted in bright colors. Monasteries and temples were covered with frescoes, and stone carvings could hardly compete with the multitude of gold and silver images. (One such piece of solid gold that Mahmud took from Ghazni in 1017 weighed half a ton and contained a single sapphire weighing three and a half pounds; Mahmud's shipment also included five other solid gold figures with rubies for eyes and one hundred images of silver, one of which was heavy enough to represent a single load for a camel.) To get an idea of ​​what the place must have been like, one must also populate it with priests and pilgrims, princes and ascetics, moving around in procession. from shrine to shrine; the brown and ocher robes of the monks, a scarlet shawl, an iridescent dhoti dhoti that blends into the sea of ​​white cotton and glossy brown torsos. Even women in ancient India were naked above the waist, waist, naked, naked, that is, except for jewelry. And all the while the air should be pulsing with the sounds and smells of worship - worship - ringing of bells, burning incense, singing and shouting, the smell of a million marigolds and the murmur of a million prayers. Moving from this image to the silent rooms of what is now the Mathura Museum, one is struck by the double tragedy of Indian art. Aside from a few pieces the Buddha sent to other museums, here is all that remains of Mathura's glory: perhaps a dozen or Boddhisattva Allisto

partially broken, some pieces of railing, an architraves or two, a "Silenus" like Stacy's, other miscellaneous statues and a battery of Hindu deities. And as if destruction by a single group of aliens wasn't enough, the reconstruction of that past by another group of aliens initially completely ignored all aesthetic values. The carvings in the Mathura Museum Museum are mostly carved from the not-too-exciting Sikri sandstone, a lifeless reddish stone flecked with white. Deprived of the sun and displayed for inspection rather than effect, they invite a purely antiquarian and archaeological approach to Indian art. This is how Cunningham and his contemporaries saw them, and this is the stigma that Indian art carries to some extent. Sir William Jones would have been horrified. horrified, he had always insisted that Indian civilization was worth studying for its own sake and that Sanskrit literature, his specialty, withstood comparison with all that Europe had to offer. But Macaulay's rhetoric put an end to all that. The only justification for studying Indian culture now was the light it would shed on the past. An aesthetic, emotional or spiritual appreciation would have to wait another half century. Cunningham first visited Mathura in 1853. He returned with the Archaeological Survey in 1862, 1871 (twice), 1876 and 1882; No other place in the country has received as much attention. His own discoveries and acquisitions were numerous, including Parkham's Giantyaksha Giantyaksha (tree spirit) dating from the Maurya era, the oldest figurative sculpture then found in India. He also excavated the first of Mathura's famous grid pillars, each adorned with one of those voluptuous yakshi (female tree spirits), the progenitors of the Khajuraho Apsaras Apsaras. The combination of an enlightened district collector and an ambitious local cleanup and rebuild program resulted in a steady stream of discoveries. coins and inscriptions and assessing the significance of the finds, he soon realized that this city had played a crucial role in the development of sculpture "In the Northwest of the Northwest, I found that ancient Buddhist statues are made of Sikri sandstone, which makes it look like Mathura must have been the main manufacturer for the supply of Buddhist sculptures in North India." unique buddhist sculpture. Hindu, Jain and purely secular pieces soon surfaced. There we find more finds of Gandhara art - art - another "Silenus" and a beautifully dressed female figure, sometimes identified as Queen Kambojika. There were some classic pieces of Gupta Gupta and medieval art, including two nearly perfect standing Buddhas. And there was a huge warrior, with legs spread and boots, just like the figure first seen on some of the Indo-Greek coins, now identified by an inscription as the great Kushan king Kanishka. One of the advantages of Mathura's art over Gandhara was that most pieces bore inscriptions, even dates. From the Colossus of Parkham from the 3rd century BC. Mathura's discoveries spanned a period of 1,000 years and therefore provided a unique insight into Indian art from its inception to the eve of the Muslim invasions. Its geographic location between the classically-influenced northwest and the heartland of India also made it an ideal location to study the interplay of foreign and indigenous styles. Here the curly, elegant, well-dressed figures of Gandhara met the smooth, bejeweled yakshasand and the broad, extravagant akshis of the subcontinent. The female figure of Gandhara (Queen Kambojika) and a more or less contemporary figure in the corner of the newly discovered Sonkh entrance provide two completely different ideals of womanhood. To be fair to Cunningham, we went pretty easy. no known aesthetic criteria for women could be applied to the Indian figure. He was very rough there, never, trying very hard to deform and get into the pose.

so blatantly provocative. Indian sculptors seemed to have eschewed their own experience of human anatomy to create something simple and uniquely erotic. Where was the artistic subtlety in that? where is the grace and dignity of women? The abdomen had received as much attention as the face; one could only describe the character, as well as the inspiration behind him, as raw. Professor Westmacott's judgment of 1864 may well be valid throughout the 19th century. There is no temptation to go into detail about Hindustan [Indian] sculpture. It does not help to trace the history of art and, as a phase of the fine arts, it diminishes its undervalued quality. But fortunately, albeit belatedly, some brave minds questioned him. The aesthetic valuation of indigenous art owes a lot, and a lot, to the indigenous people themselves. The Hindu renaissance and the turnaround of Indian nationalism. But it also owes something to Lord Curzon, the first British ruler of India since Warren Hastings to admire Indian civilization, and to his contemporary, the first man to attempt an exhibition of Indian art, Dr. Ernest Binfield Havell. Havell is not a capitalized name in the annals of the British Raj. He came to India in the 1890s as Chancellor of the Madras College of Art and left some twenty years later as Chancellor of the Calcutta College of Art. But during this period his work and writings exerted considerable influence both in India and abroad. . "Whenever I talk about Native American Indian art," Sir William Rothenstein of the Royal College of Art told him, "I assume you understood its qualities before the rest of us." Understanding his qualities meant understanding his inspiration, his ideals. , its symbolism and its techniques. Havell's premise, then decidedly new, was that "no European can understand or appreciate Indian art unless he frees himself from his Western prejudices, makes an effort to understand Indian thought, and enters into the Indian perspective". It meant rejecting all comparisons with European art and all theories of classical or foreign influences, and approaching the whole concept of art from a different angle. A good starting point was the Indian approach to carving sacred images. Take, for example, the two most famous Buddha images in Mathura. The first, a seated figure in red sandstone, dates from the Kushan period, making it contemporary with the best of Gandhara sculpture. But there are no signs of Gandhara's influence there. The body is not made of muscle and bone, but simply slightly swollen flesh. The sculptor did not try to capture reality: the hair and bun look more like a kind of hat than real hair; even the smile isn't exactly convincing. thing. The same applies to the standing Buddha of the Gupta period. Period. In the following centuries, Mathura-Mathura artists adopted some Gandhara conventions, for example, curly hair conventions and flowing drapes. But there is still no flirting with visual reality; his ideal remains the same. The curls are reduced to scallop locks, and the draping is an abstract pattern of flowing lines that accentuates the body rather than obscuring it. Technology has evolved; There is more refinement in the features, more finished modeling. But still, this is not a very convincing picture of a human being, let alone a superhuman one. And there, of course, was the secret; it must not be a man European art remained mainly figurative: its ideal, according to Havell, was simply the imitation of nature. But Indian art was conceptual and aimed at realizing "something more refined and subtle than ordinary physical beauty". The image that the Indian sculptor created came from his mind; Advertisement; he didn't need a model with goosebumps posing awkwardly in his studio. His achievement was not alternating between capturing real life and art, fiction. but liking an abstract ideal. It was a bit like the difference between non-fiction books. But it's not the birth of life, he protested

traditionalists. beauty must be truth; To distort the facts, to give a female figure mountainous breasts or a man sixteen arms, showed that the artist was primitive or perversely depraved. On the contrary, Havell said to the Indian sculptor; The truth is far more subtle, subtle and elusive, and beauty will never be found in the mere perfection of reality. The Gandhara sculptor, following the classical approach, took an ideal human figure, added the necessary bun, earlobes, etc., and named it Buddha. But the artist from Mathura started with the Buddha. First, through study and meditation, he received the divine image in his mind. This required a high level of religious and spiritual development. He then strove to embody this image in a form that his fellow believers could recognize, strictly following various conventions and constantly consulting his original inspiration. The various canons about proportions, gestures, facial features, etc. they were so extensive that the space for individuality and innovation was certainly very limited. But at that time, the Indian sculptor was not interested in flaunting his own virtuosity or claiming immortality. He generally remained anonymous and, insofar as his creation was faithful to its original inspiration, this was as much a commentary on his spirituality as it was on his craft. Havell correctly seized on this approach to divine beauty as "the key to all Indian aesthetic thought". This did not lead him to defend idolatry, although he clearly showed that the creative process was equivalent to consecration. Instead, he focused on purely aesthetic objections to Indian religious art. A figure with three heads and four, six, or eight arms seems a barbarous conception to a European, though physiologically it is no less impossible than the wings that protrude from the human shoulder blade in the European representation of angels. But it is complete nonsense to condemn such artistic allegories a priori because they do not correspond to the canons of classical art in Europe. All art is suggestion and convention, convention, and if Indian artists can suggest divine attributes to Indians of Indian culture, they have achieved the purpose of their art. Just as angels were given wings or halos, or the Holy Spirit represented as a dove, so Shiva and Vishnu were given extra arms to hold the symbols of their various attributes, or extra heads for their various roles. The fact that the body of a Buddha statue was invariably very generalized and somehow full was not because the Native American artist could not understand anatomy. It was full because the divine ideal owed much to yoga, the traditional discipline through which man could realize the infinite; A secret inner expression expressing transcendental calm and contentment was evidently a manifestation of the yogic community. So is breath retention, prana, prana, or spiritual inflation. In contrast to this, Havell showed how perfectly the Indian artist could handle movement. Using the example of one of the famous Nataraj (Dancing Shiva) bronzes from South India, he first examined its symbolism. No work of indigenous art lacks a wealth of allegories and symbolism, the ignorance of which has been and continues to be a major disadvantage for most non-indigenous people. But Havell has shown how an impressive collection of mystical and mythical associations need not detract from the beauty of the composition of - of - and for Indian, highly-enhanced beauty - enhanced. The Nataraj was concerned with the divine ecstasy of creation expressed in dance. There is none of the merely animal glee of the dancing faun, nor any hint of the dancing frenzy of bacchanalia. In its technical treatment, the figure exhibits the same broad anatomical generalization and peculiar type of torso that we have seen in Buddhist sculpture. No one, looking at the mastery of the structure of the human figure and the immense technical skill here demonstrated by the Hindu, can omit the details of his skill or knowledge as a sculptor to believe the smallest of the muscular muscular system.

Indian artists generally love to work on the details; but here, as with all his ideals of incarnate Deity, he deliberately suppressed them. The same goes for another favorite subject of Indian artists: animals. animals Havell chose as an example one of the great warhorses outside the Black Temple of Konarak; but he might as well have chosen an elephant elephant from the gates of Sanchi Gatewa, or from the relief of the great wall at Mahabalipuram, or a Nandi bull from Khajuraho. Kha juraho. None of them were anatomically realistic, but somehow the Indian artist went beyond appearances and captured the special character of each animal. The playfulness of the monkey, the elegance of the peacock, the shyness of the stag - the deer - are all eloquently portrayed in Indian art. Although Leonardo may have dissected a dog before drawing it, the Indian artist was not particularly interested in how a dog works; he wanted to get to the bottom of the dog's nature. Konarak's warhorse prancing into battle while an extremely powerful warrior walked beside him appealed to Havell because it also showcased the Indian sculptor's skill in handling martial matters. “Not even the Homeric grandeur of Elgin Marble surpasses the magnificent movement and modeling of this Indian Achilles, and the splendidly monumental war-horse, with its enormous strength and power, is not unworthy of comparison with Verocchio's celebrated masterpiece in Venice. . None of the fashionable equestrian statues in Calcutta and elsewhere could compare. Here was an area where the Indian artist should be nurtured and promoted. Havell appeared to many to be somewhat biased; he protested too much. But of course he was an art teacher and his concern was not just to validate Indian art but to actively promote it. He passionately believed that what he called the "Indo-Indo-Aryan master craftsman" was still a life force. Though suppressed by Islam's ban on all iconography and scorned by British ignorance and philistinism, the old skills were still there. A certain degree of recognition and patronage could spark a true renaissance. In Madras and Calcutta, Havell purged his schools of all Western influences and encouraged his young painters, sculptors and architects to rediscover their native culture. He criticized the sterility of Anglo-Indian art and architecture in particular. It was insane to continue erecting neoclassical, neoclassical, or now more commonly neogothic and Scottish baronial monstrosities, when the skill and artistry that produced the Taj Mahal and Rajput palaces were still there to rap. Havell completely rejected the idea that Indian culture had deteriorated beyond recognition or redemption. For Burt and Cunningham, this theory provided a convenient explanation for the eroticism of places like Khajuraho. Havell could only vaguely assert that the sensuous apsaras were nothing more than a conventional decorative motif and that the mithuna-mithuna pairs represented "the extravagance and eccentricity" to which the Indian artist was prone, such as the lofty ideals of his art in We' I'm letting you down. In other words, there was a high price to be paid for a certain degree of respectability and perhaps sponsorship. Anything sensual in Indian art should be ignored. The Indian artist had never applied as much skill and affection to any subject as he did to the female figure. But Havell barely mentioned it. Of course, there was nothing wrong with the female nude as such. However, the Indian artist was not satisfied with a naturalistic representation of a woman, nor with a realistic study of a horse or an elephant. Elephant. Just as it should present the essence of a horse, it should celebrate a woman's femininity. And in a society free of Western sexual taboos, that meant flaunting your sexual charms. Hence those magnificently voluminous breasts, hourglass waist and full, forty hips. No pin-up girls approached the nymphs. the provocative postures, the smoldering and ecstatic gazes, the languid gestures of the Khajuraho more gay than bold, slow more than walkers

gracefully about her female affairs, smoothing her hair, applying eye shadow, removing a splinter, approaching her lovers; then the kiss, the caress, the passionate love of the first encounter and the erotic experiences of mature affection. There is love and beauty, passion and joy, even teaching and inspiration; but something less dirty is hard to imagine. introduce. We can only sympathize with those generations of Europeans whose own sexual inhibitions prevented them from seeing things this way. Captain Burt was particularly offended that such sculptures would adorn a place of worship. This made the crime doubly terrible. Since his time, there have been many ingenious explanations for this: publicity for the services of temple courtesans, according to some, allegorical yearning of the soul for communion with the deity, according to others. Or shall I proclaim the vanity of human desires in the face of inner peace within the temple? any? Or did that mean, in turn, that Khajuraho had been a center for orgiastic rites of tantric worship? The question remains unresolved, and none of these explanations make much sense when confronted with the experience of the sculptures themselves. Although the Indian artist was never explicit in the sense of representation, he was rarely oblique or obscure. It is a testament that his art is not yet fully understood or appreciated, that one has to ask, rather than insist, whether he simply wanted to proclaim the supreme joy of carnal love. If this still seems out of place in a temple, perhaps the explanation should not be sought in the artist's mind, but in the viewer.

CHAPTER 9 Wild in human faith and warm in human feeling

In 1842, Lord Ellenborough, the most unpredictable and arrogant of India's governors-general, came up with the idea of ​​restoring the sandalwood doors of the famous temple of Somnath in Gujerat. They were taken to Afghanistan by that arch-vandal, Mahmud of Ghazni. Ellenborough's motives are never easy to pin down, but perhaps he thought such a gesture would help legitimize the current British occupation of Afghanistan. An Afghanistan. However, he counted without Macaulay. It was bad enough that British officials had helped to restore one or two temples in the past. "We adorn the temples of false gods," he told the British parliament, "we furnish the dancers, gild and paint the pictures." Let us now pass to "the most immoral superstition in which the symbols of vice are worshipped." , Ellenborough proposed extending what amounted to official sponsorship. Even worse, Somnath was a temple of Shiva Siva. Macaulay hoped not to have to explain to the House of Commons which "emblem of vice" was sacred to Shiva. "I am ashamed to mention the things he [Ellenborough] is not ashamed to publicly honor." In case the objectives are wrong and the idea is suddenly lost and the catastrophic defeat of British forces in Afghanistan. But it is interesting that Macaulay, while willing to denigrate all other aspects of Indian culture, avoided directly attacking its architecture. He preferred wild Hinduism instead, and if the temple had been a mosque it would undoubtedly have given Islam an equally difficult journey. Because, as even he would have admitted, Indian architecture was unique. Here was an aspect of Indian civilization which the sternest critic could not dismiss. Furthermore, masterpieces like the Taj Mahal were only 200 years old and the beautiful Dig Palace was built in the last century. The theory that Indian culture had been so liberally applied to sculpture and literature, literature, over the last millennium, the millennium obviously does not hold up. But why not? The first thing that caught the attention of the traveler in India was the extraordinary variety of architectural styles. For example, a twelfth-century South Indian temple would not look like a contemporary temple in, say, Khajuraho in central India, or Mount Abu in the west, or Orissa in the east. It was extremely difficult to distinguish all the chronological styles that appeared. Equally notable is the feature like curvilinear no-noof that suddenly appears out of nowhere as a small bulge in the roof that constantly evolves into the massive superstructure that characterizes Orissan temples. Instead, it is first encountered as a fully developed architectural feature. Also the onion-shaped dome, an equally striking feature of this period of Islamic architecture, suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Only in this case there was an obvious explanation: the dome may not be Indian. The Mohammedan conquerors must have brought the idea from Persia or Central Asia. So how much more was Islamic architecture, and in particular the famous Mughal style, of foreign origin? And could there be a similar explanation for the innovations and variations in pre-Islamic pre-Islamic architecture? In short, to what extent were the monuments of India a testament to indigenous civilization and the products of indigenous artisans? Questions like these occupied Alexander Cunningham a lot, but in the 1860s a rather unusual amateur had already taken up the subject. James Fergusson, the son of an Ayrshire physician, joined the family business in Calcutta in the late 1820s.

on the brink of financial disaster and Fergusson quickly and wisely set out to open an indigo shop in Bengal. Along with opium, indigo, a dye made from the leaves of a legume, was the crop of the early 19th century. Fergusson quickly made his fortune. He developed an interest in architecture just as quickly, making a series of architectural forays, and within ten years he had retired to England. Bishop Heber, traveling in India in the 1820s, did not have a high opinion of planters in general and indigo planters in particular. They were "largely confined to Bengal and I do not wish their numbers to increase". His behavior was a frequent source of scandal, both for his notoriously oppressive treatment of Native Americans and his quiet life. Many were Scots, most were drunks, and some retained the eighteenth-century custom of taking native mistresses. They were an embarrassment to the British administration and their contribution to the study of India's past was negligible. James Fergusson may well have been a notable exception, but the brotherhood of plants was certainly unlikely breeding ground for an art historian. It seems that he had no contact with Prinsep and the Calcutta Orientalists. Highly self-disciplined, brilliantly self-taught, and, lately, a little headstrong, capricious, he approached the Indian monument mess like a top executive determined to instill method and logic into the management of some struggling conglomerate. Schliemann, the discoverer of Troy and himself a classic example of the self-made man, dedicated his magnificent work at Tiryns to Fergusson as "the historian of architecture, equally renowned for his knowledge of art and his original genius." of some of its most difficult problems'. Problems'. At any rate, so vast a subject as the classification of Indian architecture was a huge field beyond Cunningham: he was too busy fending off railway companies, marching and counter-marching, and always obsessed with Buddhist-Buddhist heritage. "The Old Fighter" was also very disorganized, a victim of his age, the depth of his learning and his too narrow affection for the wide northern plains. What the guy needed was a problem solver, a man who could get the gist, who wasn't afraid to generalize, generalize, who wasn't ashamed to improvise; and in Fergusson it became this: no one could expect to visit every monument in India, so Fergusson took a shortcut. He embraced the latest technology and collected photographs. In his own travels, he had used the "camera lucida" as a tool for quick sketching; rafia itself took hold in India, India in the late 1850s or 1850s began to collect prints. As Cunningham sat at his camp desk in a cloud of mosquitoes, defending his weatherworn notebooks from predatory Indian crows, Fergusson gazed at his sharp photographs in a London home near libraries and museums. His forum was not the now persecuted Asiatic Society of Calcutta (recently renamed and therefore downgraded to the Asiatic Society of Bengal), but the Royal Asiatic Society, its increasingly prestigious equivalent in London. Through much travel and study, Fergusson soon became an equally respected authority on architecture in Europe, Egypt and the Middle East. This gave great weight and seriousness to his studies of India and allowed him to place India's monuments in a cosmopolitan perspective. respectively. Cunningham lived and worked in North India and Burma for a long time; He barely acknowledged the existence of architecture in areas like the south, where Buddhism had never been established. But no one could accuse Fergusson of narrow-mindedness. Furthermore, he had no loyalty ties to the Indian government. Cunningham could be scathing enough when it came to individual acts of vandalism: a district collector who made a habit of taking local antiques, his personal mainstay since the ThetoGupta period. The collection went into a vicious spate when he left with a

Mr. Broadley failed to mention two facts which I think owed partly to his ignorance and partly to his modesty. Modesty. The former must give credit for mounting the column upside down on its brick base, despite the two Gupta inscriptions. To the latter I would attribute the fact that he failed to mention that, in an effort to leave evidence of his own rule in Bihar, he covered the entire uninscribed surface of the pillar with a crudely carved inscription in which his name appears twice. How lucky that Mr. Broadley did not stay long enough to leave more "evidence of his rule" in other parts of India. India. But as an official and employee of the Indian government, Cunningham had to temper his tone in protesting official indifference and hooliganism. Vandalism. Not so Ferguson. Whenever an opportunity arose, he abused the Anglo-Indian civil service and the army in particular. He even called the Archaeological Service on duty. Cunningham's obsession with inscriptions often blinded him to the most obvious dates, his drawings were often inaccurate, his accounts disorganized and his architectural theories ill-formulated. Needless to say, Cunningham responded in kind. "My friend Mr. Fergusson," she called him, but little love was lost between the two Scots. Fergusson's early works concerned the rock-cut temples and sculptures of Sanchi and Amaravati. Cunningham soon got the measure of his learning; the man could not read a single Indian script, so it was not surprising that he had miscalculated the dates of all these monuments. Dating from architectural styles was all well and good, but it would only work if much more was known about them. Now it was safer to follow Prinsep's method, which is based on scripts. The controversy thus sown would soon have ample ground to thrive. In 1855 Fergusson published The Illustrated Handbook of Architecture in All Ages and Countries. countries. A sequel followed in 1862, and both works were revised in 1867 as A History of Architecture in All Countries from Early Times to the Present Day. It immediately became a standard work, and the second edition, published in 1876, contained a complete volume on the history of Indian and Oriental architecture, with 700 pages and 400 architectural illustrations, most devoted to India itself. Fergusson was anything but meticulous. He had a note of all known buildings, including 900 cave temples, and his photographs now covered "3,000 Indian buildings, with which constant use has made me as familiar as any object constantly before my eyes". Many places, particularly in Mysore, owe their fame to Fergusson's discrimination; though none have been discovered of him. Discovery. Although he was aware that there were still many buildings to be discovered, he did not like the idea of ​​archaeological exploration. His job was simply to analyze and classify; and the history describing the history of Indian and Oriental architecture Architecture constitutes the first, and by far the most important, attempt to offer a comprehensive study of this truly monumental subject. Beginning with the Pillars of Ashoka, Fergusson showed the dazzling panorama of Indian building over 2,000 years. He did this with a lot of learning and intelligence, and still managed to keep the subject very understandable for the general reader. My effort from the outset has been to provide a clear overview of the general principles that have guided the historical development of Indian architecture and [and] would have fulfilled a long-cherished dream had I succeeded in popularizing the subject through the reproduction of principles that are commonly understood. and thus helped to place Indian architecture on a stable footing to take its true place among the other great styles which have ennobled the arts of mankind. Popularizing the subject meant aesthetic hierarchies: Sher Shah Sassaram's class tomb was a prime example: a second-class (whatever that is) royal tomb.

meant). Furthermore, Indian architecture as a whole was not comparable to Greek or Roman. One of the principles to which he repeatedly returned was that he was unrivaled "for exuberant exuberance of imagination, lavish workmanship and elaboration of detail". It also remained a living art. Ernest Havell would find much to criticize in Ferguson's comments, but he could not help but agree when Fergusson compared "the perfect buildings which the ignorant and uneducated natives of India are producing" with "the failures of the most educated and educated architects." than what Europe constantly practices". , according to Fergusson, anthropology was fundamental to the understanding of the subject. Its classifications would, of course, depend to some extent on dates, places and religious associations, but in the end Fergusson suggested that the differences in Indian architectural styles had something to do with the diversity of racial groups that made up the Indian people. Thus there was Dravidian architecture, Indo-Aryan architecture, Pathan architecture, Mughal architecture and Rajput Rajput. All these terms should be racial, not regional or chronological. Even two other classifications, Buddhist and Jain architecture, were not simply religious definitions. Because Fergusson claimed that Buddhism and Jainism were adopted by a specific race or group of races, the Dasyus or aborigines. Indeed, one of the "principles of the scholarly study of Indian architecture" was that these Dasyus were responsible for all the monuments in India, along with the Dravidian peoples of southern India and laggards such as the Pathans and Mughals. Monuments On the other hand, the Aryans, who are often credited for their wealth of Sa Sanskrit literature as the cultural and religious pioneers of Indian civilization, made no contribution. (The term Indo-Aryan, used for one of his classifications, was for convenience only; he would have preferred 'Dasyu' but admitted that it would not make sense to most people.) The oldest Aryan scriptures, the Vedas, do not mention anything. of temples, and it has long been a mystery that the oldest and holiest cities in northern India, Benares and Allahabad, do not have a single building more than 500 years old. Cunningham believed, of course, that these sites were once home to temples in abundance, but that all were destroyed by iconoclastic Mohammedans. This was certainly the case in Delhi, where an inscription says that the Qutb Mosque was built from the ruins of twenty-seven temples. It was strange, however, that in Benares there was nothing to indicate an ancient building tradition. Fergusson preferred to assume that meant there never was. He tended to be less severe with Mohammedans: the Europeans had been equally destructive, and the Hindus, because of their carelessness and indifference, probably more than both. But all these factors combined can hardly explain why there is not a single inscribed stone or mutilated statue of pre-Islamic origin in all of Varanasi. Given the Aryan people's lack of interest in enduring architecture, it was not surprising that the great centers of Hindu building were not on the Ganges plain (where the Aryans originally settled), but on its banks and on the Indian peninsula. Allowing for some idiosyncratic variations and excluding caves, Fergusson divided his photographs of temples into three main groups - Groups - Dravidian, Dravidian, Chalukyian and Indo-Aryan. Describing each of them, he chose a simple prototype and traced its stylistic evolution towards what he considered the best or best known example of the style. Neither the southern nor the far southern Dravidian temples presented the most difficult problem, they were integral buildings that had the course of history. Most were built

over the past 400 years, some from living memory. They were the largest and most imposing temples in India. But "the fact is that nine out of ten Dravidian temples are a haphazard collection of parts arranged without a plan, as dictated by chance at the time of their construction." These were not individual buildings, but groups of scattered groups, in which the main sanctuary was lost in a labyrinth of corridors, porticoes, courtyards, bazaars and pools. Cities within cities, their distinctive architectural feature is not the temple itself but the walls that surround it and, above all, the gigantic gopuramsor gopurams, or gates. If the gopurams of Madurai, Tanjore, Kanchipuram - Kanchipuram - Fergusson Fergusson had known more than thirty examples - examples - they would have been a few centuries older, they would have been counted among the pyramids as architectural curiosities. Rising hundreds of feet above the flat coastal plains, plains like the sacrificial towers of a Rider Haggard kingdom, they attracted the attention of all early travelers and surveyors and were painted extensively by artists such as the Daniells. But Fergusson was one of the first to point out that they were an evolution, over perhaps 800 years, of a style first seen in the Raths Rathsor or Boulder temples of Mahabalipuram. The rectangular pyramidal shape, the multi-storey building now adorned with a series of sculptures and the barrel-shaped roof were anticipated in the small Ganesha rath rathand and the larger Arjuna. Fergusson wasn't sure where such structures ranked in the architectural hierarchy. The French used the temple walls as fortifications in the 18th century, and later British surveyors discovered gopurams as practical gopurams for mounting their theodolites. But it seems doubtful that its original purpose was anything more than a labor-intensive grant program. Fergusson thought that the people of southern India, the Dravidians, lacked noble sentiments: "Their intellectual intellectual status is and has always been mediocre." mediocre'. Everything that millions of working hands have done over the centuries has been done, but hardly for any greater reason than using labor and overcoming difficulties to amaze and amaze us; but true architecture cannot exist without a greater motive: much of the decoration is very elegant indeed, and the evidence of power and work strikes the human imagination, often against our better judgment, and nowhere is this more evident than in these Dravidian temples. Yet we look in vain among them for a manifestation of those lofty aims and noble results which are the greatness of true architectural art, and which generally characterize the best works of the true styles of the Western world. Similar criticisms were made of what Fergusson called the Chalukyan style, although in this case ornamentation was used to much greater architectural effect. The three classic examples of the style were at Belur, Somnathpur and Halebid. All of these locations were tucked away in a remote area of ​​Mysore's home state, which explains why the style was little known compared to Red. Fergusson of course did not discover this style, but he deserves credit for bringing these magnificent buildings to public attention. In contrast to the rectangular plan of Dravidian and Indo-Aryan temples, the Chalukyan was invariably star-shaped. But an even more distinctive feature of the style was its layered horizontality. Deep cornices delimit the different facades with strong bands of light and shadow; numerous friezes, steps and cornices continue this effect on the ground; The entire structure extends over a flat, dead expanse of stone terraces, bordered by more friezes and cornices. The effect is emphasized by the fact that the temples of the pyramids of Halebid and Belur have flat roofs. The Fergusson should have low turrets, like those of

Somnathpur, but for some reason the temples were never finished. Perhaps, but there was nothing unfinished about the decor. While ancient Buddhists tended to treat sandstone like wood, the Chalukyans (Fergusson considered them more a race than a dynasty) treated their distinctive black slate or potstone like lace. The amount of work shown on each side of this back porch [at Belur] is indeed such, that I think never before was expended on an area of ​​equal extent in any building in the world; and though the design is not of the highest art, it is elegant and appropriate, and never offends good taste. From the brackets concealed under the large eaves, to the foot-high ghost elephant frieze, to the exquisitely decorated windows and windows, every surface was embellished with carvings "of wonderful finish and detail". It is said that all the deities of the Hindu pantheon are represented in Belur - Belur - and most of them multiple times. There must be over 500 elephants on the bottom frieze alone. Moving on to Halebid's twin temples, Fergusson's obnoxious behavior began to unravel. Here, the elephant frieze was 710 feet long and "contained no fewer than 2,000 elephants, most of them with riders and ornaments in such a way that only an Oriental could represent the wisest of animals". Above this was a lion frieze, then a scroll "of infinite beauty and varied design", then an equestrian frieze, another parchment, and a colossal relief, 700 feet long, g, depicting scenes from the Ramayana. the Ramayana. Above were animals and birds, another frieze, an ornate cornice, windows of perforated stone slabs and carved panels. On one side, instead of windows, there was a frieze of Hindu deities, deities four feet tall and up to four hundred feet long. It included at least fourteen groups of Shiva and Parvati and considerably more Vishnu. Some of them are carved with meticulous elaboration of details that can only be reproduced through photography and can probably be seen as one of the most wonderful displays of human work to be found even in the patient Orient. However, it should not be considered that this building stands out only for its patient diligence&. The variety of contours and the arrangement and subordination of the various facets in which it is arranged must be considered a masterpiece of design in its class. The artistic combination of horizontal and vertical lines and the play of contours and light and shadow far exceeds anything in Gothic art. The effects are exactly what medieval architects often sought, but never achieved with such perfection as in Halebid. Haleb ID. Ferguson compared the Halebid Temple to the Parthenon. One was the complete opposite of the other, and all the architecture in the world was somewhere between these two poles. The Parthenon was a product of the intellect, calculated with mathematical precision to such a degree of rigor and complexity that it bordered on artistic perfection. Halebid was the complete opposite. All the pillars of the Parthenon are identical, while no two facets of the Indian temple are alike; each turn of each parchment is different. No two pantries are alike in the entire building, and each part exhibits a joyous exuberance of imagination that defies any mechanical restraint. All that is wild in human faith and warm in human feeling is represented in these walls, but there is little of pure understanding. There was more intelligence in the imposing contours of the Third Temple style, which Fergusson called Indo-Aryan, although it is now commonly known as the Northern or Nagara style. The distinguishing feature of this style was the sikhara, the sikhara, the curving tower or spire, and therein lay Fergusson's greatest "I've been looking, architecture" and thought of it perhaps more than any other issue. His class associated with the Indians. But I certainly hadn't encountered a problem.

Solution. Their shapes ranged from an almost rectilinear pyramid in some early examples, to a shape like a bishop's cap, to the imposing Gothic spiers of Khajuraho, to something more like a fully grown pineapple in Bhuvaneswar. The curving tower was the splendor of Hindu architecture, as was the dome of Mohammedan buildings. But where did the idea come from? Fergusson explored several avenues without success. However, he was convinced, convinced that this was a purely Indian invention. Indeed, only Indian craftsmen could deal with it effectively, as only they could give their expressionless faces the ingenuity in ornamentation needed to break them up and brighten the effect. The temples at Khajuraho were a good example, but Fergusson had never been there and didn't want to rely too heavily on Cunningham's descriptions. Instead, he focused on other large temple complexes in North India, at Puri and Bhuvaneswar in Orissa. The outline of this temple [the Great Temple or Linga Raja at Bhuvaneswar] at first glance does not please the European eye; but once the eye gets used to it, it has a singularly solemn and pleasant effect. All in all, it is perhaps the finest example of a purely Hindu temple in India. The conical profiles of Khajuraho temples are certainly more palatable to Gothic arch and pinnacle-shaped tastes: from a considerable distance, the Khandariya Mahadeo could almost pass for a village church. However, temples in Orissa are very different. Its porches have stepped pyramidal roofs with inverted cornices that resemble a Chinese pagoda. And the Linga Raja and Rajrani sikharas have wings and ribs so intricate that, to the unsuspecting traveler, they look like they belong in a power plant. Fergusson spent most of his Indian career in Bengal and knew Orissa well. He confirmed that every stone in the Linga Raja's tower was engraved with a design and that the carvings were "of a high standard and great beauty of design". In short, his eyes were used to it, so it outraged his sense of "true architecture" far less than, say, the egopurams gopurams of a Dravidian temple. However, this was not the same as looking at Indian architecture with its Indian merit. For Fergusson, as for Macaulay, Macaulay, Hinduism remained "the most monstrous superstition the world has ever known". He did not try to dominate the symbolism and iconography of Hindu temples, simply taking a stand on what he saw as the universal values ​​of architecture. This dispassionate view illuminated the question of classification, and his three temple styles (Dravidian, Chalukyan and Indo-Aryan), although heavily subdivided, are still accepted today. But one can understand how maddeningly irritating these phrases must have been to Alexander Cunningham, Cunningham, whose scientific leanings excluded all aesthetic judgment. Havell's judgments also correctly emphasized that Fergusson's "true architectural styles", "true principles" and "universal values" were none of these. They were simply a rationalization of his European view. Of the many specific points on which Cunningham and Havell clashed with Fergusson, none was more controversial than the origin of the bow in India. From Hindu to Muslim - Muslim - or, as he preferred, "Saracenic" architecture - Fergusson Fergusson categorically stated that "until this time (around 1100 AD) the Hindus had never built arches". He put this into perspective by explaining that he was talking about the "real" arch, an arch built with wedge-shaped stones or voussoirs to reach the curve and with a keystone at the top. The ancient Hindus, of course, built small rafter arches using corbels and ledges to bridge the gap; but the true arch of staves was a purely Muslim invention. Cunningham was initially inclined to accept this. When the great Boddh Gaya found some arches and vaults of voussoirs (now rebuilt) in the walls, he agreed with the temple

Fergusson said this demonstrates that the main structure of the building could not be older than the 14th century. But Cunningham later found several other examples of the true arch in buildings that seem to have existed in the time of Hsuan Tsang in the 7th century. In 1870 he realized that Fergusson must be wrong again, and in 1892 the old general, now in his eighties, published a volume revisiting the story of Boddh Gaya. It used to be the firm belief of all European researchers that ancient Hindus were unaware of the bow. This belief no doubt arose from the complete absence of arches in all Hindu temples. Thirty years ago, I shared this belief with Mr. Fergusson, but during my last employment with the Archaeological Survey of India several buildings, doubtless very old, were discovered in which both vaults and arches formed part of the original construction. Cunningham listed three or four examples and showed that the Boddh Gaya Temple, although rebuilt more frequently and extensively than any other building in India, dates from the 5th century. predated the Muslim conquest. Havell agreed and took the argument further. Focusing on the pointed arch that was the hallmark of Islamic buildings, he asserted that not only did the ancient people of India know everything, but the idea was originally adopted by the West and Islam in India. A horseshoe-shaped pointed arch was a distinguishing feature on the facades of Buddhist cave temples, and a simple pointed arch has been found in the pictorial niches surrounding some of the Gandharastupas. Gandara stupas. As Buddhism spread westwards into Afghanistan among the Kushans, Kush and the bow went with it and the Arabs took notice of it. As an example of this east-west trend, Havell pointed to the facade of San Marco in Venice, which has a very Buddhist arch. But his ideas were highly conjectural. His concern was to stem the tide, restore balance; People like Ferguson attribute much of Indian culture to outside influences. Havell wanted to show that India probably gave as much as it received. One place that generated as much controversy and angst as Boddh Gaya was the well-known Qutb y Minar Mosque on the outskirts of Delhi. In the early 19th century, Qutub Minar was considered one of the wonders of the East, second only to the Taj Mahal. Due to the exaggerated conical shape, it seemed even taller than its 250 feet and, with its elaborate ribs and magnificent symmetry, it looked like the noblest monument of the victory of Islam in India. Today our tastes are somewhat distorted by familiarity with industrial forms. Qutub Minar has the unfortunate feel of a factory chimney and brick oven; a column of white smoke descending from its summit wouldn't look out of place. But no praise was excessive for Fergusson and his generation. It is no exaggeration to say that the Qutub Minar is the best example of its kind in existence. The rival that immediately comes to most people's minds is Giotto's Campanile in Florence. It is ten meters taller, but is crushed by the mass of the neighboring cathedral; and as beautiful as it is, he wants that poetry of design and the exquisite, exquisite work of detail that characterizes every Minar molding; & Seen from the courtyard of the Mezquita, its form is perfect and preferable in every respect to the prosaic square outline of the Italian example. As universal as the praise was, it was not clear who built it or whether it was attributed to Islam. Fergusson placed it firmly in his first category of Saracen buildings. He called them the "first pathans", although the dynasty to which Qutb-ud-din Qutb-ud-din belonged was Turkish and, as Havell pointed out, common and never a classic example of ideal builders. a conquering race of Conqu that

already imbued with strong architectural instincts, they could harness the consummate skills of the Indian craftsman and create something far beyond their limited imagination. In other words, the Indians provided the skills and decoration, but the foreigners provided the ideals and design. However, Cunningham was not so sure. In addition to numerous inscriptions, there was also a great deal of literary evidence for the Qutb. One work places the beginning of Minar in the reign of the last Hindu ruler of Delhi. Others have suggested that building and rebuilding - rebuilding - the Minar was very prone to earthquakes - earthquakes - took 150 years and that the top two sections were not added until the 14th century. Finally, in Volume One of the Archaeological Survey reports, he dismissed the idea that the original plan was pre-Mohammedan and pre-Muslim, only to find that his assistant took up the idea again in Volume Four. A hasty retraction was forced from the unfortunate Mr. Beglar, but this showed that the origins of the building had not yet been determined. What bothered Beglar and Cunningham was that, for a group of buildings that were supposed to celebrate the triumph of Islam, there was very little that could be called Islamic. The mosque consisted of a courtyard and a colonnade, in which the pillars were all stolen from Hindu or Jain temples, and in which the most striking object was the famous iron pillar, dating from the Gupta period and attesting to the success of an ancient Hindu dynasty. . famous. Even the magnificent arches, though massive even by Islamic standards, were built in the traditional Indian trabeat design. In these and in the minar, the ornamentation was typically and magnificently Indian, while the star-shaped plan of the minar was very reminiscent of a Jain temple. In fact, the real idea behind the Pillars of Victory was Indian and went back to the Pillars of Ashoka. There simply wasn't enough innovation to support Fergusson's hypothesis of an explosion of new and nobler ideals that would somehow free Indian architecture from its obsession with ornament and take it to a higher level. Apart from the introduction of Qur'anic graphics instead of animal friezes, the absence of new figure sculptures and the introduction of huge arches, arches, the buildings were purely Indian. One hundred years and three miles separate the Delhi of Qutb-ud-din (1206–10) 10) from that of Tughluk Shah (1325–51), 51), another former sultan. sultans. But architecturally they are very far apart. The fortified city of Tughlakabad and its founder's tomb have the cold, uncompromising air of a strict, foreign autocracy. The city walls are over eight feet thick, with loopholes and battlements, and made from some of the strongest stone ever used for building. A similar wall surrounds Tughluk's tomb, its sloping sides emphasizing its indestructibility. Everything is flat, rough, rough, solid, making him, in Fergusson's opinion, "the grave model of a warrior who can hardly be bettered". Fergusson called this style Late Pathan and thought it marked the final emancipation of Islamic ideals from their early flirtation with Hindu skills and tastes. Mohammedans made their way completely free of Hindu influence&. All bows are real bows; Every detail was invented for the place where it was found, and since then Mohammedan architecture in India has been a new and complete style in itself, evolving according to the natural and inevitable consequences of the true styles in all parts of the world. . These sequences are often expressed in biological terms such as budding, flowering, flowering, and decay. Late Pathan was the Saracen style in its infancy, the early Mughal period until the death of Shah Jehan, its classical flowering, and the late Aurangzeb Mughal period until its Rococo decline. In this "natural sequence", according to Fergusson, the only exception was the reign of Akbar (1556-1605). 1605). He alone of all Mughals showed a spirit of tolerance.

towards non-Islamic peoples and the willingness to adopt their artistic ideas. Hence the many Hindu features in his palaces at Fatehpur Sikri and Agra, the reappearance of the trabeat arch, fantastically carved corbels, ornate pillars and the peculiar serpentine supports so popular with Jains. These buildings were truly Indian, but Akbar was the exception. "The spirit of tolerance died with him," Fergusson wrote. "There are no traces of Hinduism in the works of Jehangir or Shah Jehan." Jean. Unlike Fergusson, Cunningham was not very interested in Islamic architecture. He had reservations about Fergusson's various styles, but never advanced or presented any major theory about the relationship between Hindu and Mohammedan styles. Not so, Ernest Havell. While Fergusson saw the history of Islamic architecture as an emancipation from Hindu influences, Havell insisted that it was instead a swift capitulation to India's superior indigenous art. Akbar was not the exception, but the classic example. Its wide adoption of Hindu styles and promotion of Indian craftsmen marked the end of a brief experiment in non-Indic non-Indic forms (eg Tughluk's tomb) and the beginning of one of the greatest periods of purely Indian building. Holding the bull firmly by the horns, Havell turned to the classic era of Mughal architecture, the reign of Shah Jehan (1628-1658), 58) and, in particular, to none other than the Taj Mahal. The grand dome with subtle contours, the imposing minarets, the formal Persian garden, the sober inlaid and tracery work, the clustered domes - cupolas - nothing, nothing, surely could be more typically Mohammedan. But Havell was a determined polemicist and an exceptionally qualified scholar. His first point was that, whatever his inspiration, "every writer has noticed one thing about the Taj Mahal, and that is the difference from any other monument in any other part of the world." World'. Outside India there was nothing that came close to it, and inside India it was its supposed progenitor, Humayun's tomb in Delhi, or the other two white marble tombs, those of Itimad-ud-Daula in Agra and Salim Chishti in Fatehpur. . than one not to be comparable. Ferguson would have agreed, but not with Havell's conclusion that what made the Taj unique was its sculptural quality. Because there was no precedent for it in the strictly abstract art of Islam. If the inspiration for the building is to be found in sculpture rather than architecture, then it must be found in Indian sculpture. The purity of lines and subtlety of contours which distinguished him were precisely the qualities which distinguished the Buddhas of Mathura or Khajuraho Apsaras. apsaras.Fergusson Fergusson deplored the touch of effeminacy in Shah Jehan's buildings; but for many, this represents the great attraction of the Taj. As the burial place of Shah Jehan's beloved Mumtaz Mahal, it is the apotheosis of Indian womanhood, a radiant architectural embodiment of all things feminine, perhaps India's Venus de Milo. possibly. And only an Indian artist with his purely conceptual approach could have created such an obviously attractive building. It was such a measure of the Taj's uniqueness that some have even suggested that its designer might have been one of the Europeans employed by Shah Jehan. Havell, of course, hated the idea. It was just another example of foreigners trying to find non-Indian inspiration for whatever they want in Indian culture. He extensively examined the literary evidence and concluded that even the marquetry work, carnelian, carnelian and agate set in the most delicate floral designs on the white marble, was not, as is commonly believed, of Italian origin. It is true that the durawork of Pietro Durowork of Florence was very much in vogue at the time, but mosaic inlays had been used in India for centuries: James Tod mentioned a 15th century Jain temple with something similar. Furthermore, records have shown that embedded artists

all Hindus worked at the Taj. The gardens that contribute so much to the staging of the Taj were also the work of a Kashmiri Hindu. But at this point, Havell was ready to back off. There was no Indian tradition of formal gardens divided and subdivided with geometric precision by manicured paths and canals. From the densely shaded pools to the cheerful flowerbeds and babbling fountains, this was an oasis heritage, the expression of a warrior and valiant people who yearned for luxury and physical pleasure, a place where the austerity of Asia's deserts was forgotten. and leisure. with Omar Khayyam and a big cup of ice cream. Undoubtedly, the location of the Taj Mahal has a lot to do with its unique appeal. The shaded gardens and reflected waterways, the sober red sandstone flanked buildings, the dark frame of the grand gate and the backdrop of the river Jumna, the river, combine to make sudden navigation a vision in the reflection of marble. white is a dramatic experience. But it was the building itself that most interested Havell. He had studied the silpa-sastras silpa-sastras, the traditional Hindu building manuals, and believed that even the bulbous dome corresponded more to Indian ideals than to Samarkand's. There was even a sculptural representation of such a dome in one of the cave temples of Ajanta. Furthermore, the internal arrangement of the roof of four domes clustered around the central fifth dome conforms exactly to the Panch Ratna system, the Panch Ratna "Five Jewels" system, a system found in Indian buildings of all types is common. All of that alone wasn't enough to shake traditional views, but Havell wasn't done yet. In the 19th century, as today, there was a tendency to focus too much on buildings in Delhi and nearby Agra. For the most part, the Pathan and Mughal styles represented the entirety of Islamic architecture because they were the ones represented in Delhi and Agra. Fergusson, of course, knew better and devoted considerable attention to Islamic buildings in Gujerat, Bijapur, Gaur and elsewhere. But he did not try to fit them into his "natural succession" of Saracen architecture; they were simply provincial styles, of considerable value but of no lasting importance. However, Havell examined them much more closely and came to the conclusion that the architectural continuity before and after the Muslim conquest was not interrupted by political turmoil in northwest India; and that from these provincial centers came the ideals and artisans employed by Shah Jehan. In Gujerat, some of the mosques of the first Muslim dynasty are indistinguishable from temples; Also in Gujerat, both Hindus and Jains used white marble a lot. Across India, in Gaur, in Bengal, Mohammedans inherited the tradition of brick building from the Hindu capital which stood on the same site. Here were exceptionally versatile masons familiar with the voussoir arch. The extent to which they were later used throughout the Mughal Empire can be judged by the ubiquity of Bengali curved roofs, roofs, even at the Red Fort in Agra. In Bijapur, Mohammedans also inherited a local building tradition, as the great Hindu capital of Vijayanagar was nearby. European accounts of Vijayanagar before its destruction only point to its architectural wonders, but certainly the dome and pointed arch were in common use. It was no coincidence that the great construction period in Mohammedan Bijapur started immediately after the fall of Vijayanagar. Encouraged to focus on the dome, early Hindu architects created first the Bijapur Jama Masjid and then the giant Gol Gumbaz with one of the largest domes in the world. According to Havell, it was thanks to the skills of these master dome builders that Shah Jehan designed the Taj Mahal. Much has been speculated about all this. Fifty years had passed since Fergusson first put pen to paper, and yet the new material was still "religiously fixed and marked according to his scheme". By proving he could be wrong about the inspiration behind Moghul

Architecture Havell tried to question the very basis of its work. "The history of architecture is not, as Fergusson thought, the division of buildings into watertight archaeological compartments according to arbitrary notions of style, but a history of national life and thought." that they are Indianness.' or find their value in the synthesis of Indian life. Life'. Surely that was too much to ask of a 19th-century art historian. But it was true enough that any classification scheme must have its flaws; and Fergusson's greatest sacrifice was the centuries-old architecture of India. His classifications dealt mainly with sacred buildings, temples, tombs and mosques. Palaces, forts and public buildings, regardless of their style, were included in their various classifications. Possibly the most impressive and certainly the most romantic group of buildings in India, the Rajput palaces were therefore incongruously interspersed between newer and less respected Indo-Aryan temples and a preamble to early Saracen buildings. , as Havell correctly noted, it cannot be argued that in secular architecture Hindu and Mohammedan, Rajput and Mughal styles were one and the same. Furthermore, the origins of this style were entirely Indian. Experience the grand 15th century palace of Man Man Singh at Gwalior Fort. "One of the finest examples of Hindu architecture I have seen and the finest example of Hindu residential architecture in north-north India," said Cunningham. Babur, the first of the Mughals, apparently agreed. His official diary shows that he admired and coveted this building more than any other in India. In time it became the inspiration for all the palaces of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Mughal forts of Delhi and Agra and the Rajput forts of Orchha, Amber and Jodhpur.

"If our poets had sung them, our painters had painted them, our heroes lived in them, they would be the talk of the day in Europe." So wrote E.B. Havell, rightly, about the neglected forts and palaces of the Rajputs. In his amber design, Bishop Heber tried to convey the impression of an "enchanted, enchanted castle". Gwalior, "the Gibraltar of India", was the inspiration for the Mughal forts of Agra and Delhi. (Watercolor by Francis Swain Swain Ward, c. 1790).

The British responded to Delhi's Islamic architecture with good intentions, marked by questionable tastes and occasional challenges. The Qutub Mosque was cleverly designed, but its fame was crowned by a "dumb" canopy that "looked like a parachute". In Old Delhi, Shah Jehan's Jama Masjid was meticulously repaired in the 1820s, but nearly exploded in retaliation after the 1857 riot.

Humayun's Tomb in Delhi predates the Taj Mahal in Agra. late eighteen

In the mid-19th century, travelers found the Taj well endowed and highly revered; but Humayun's tomb remained abandoned and anonymous in the midst of a desert of ruins. The privileged position of the Taj, "the gate through which all dreams must pass", was proudly and proudly maintained by the British, though not without qualms as to whether such a masterpiece could be truly Indian.

Acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1910, the Sanchi torso owes its fame to its supposedly classical modeling. An example of "Indo lndo - Greek art of the 1st century AD", it was one of the few Indian sculptures to achieve aesthetic recognition. However, it has now been shown to date to the 10th century AD. C., a period once dismissed as artistically decadent.

No event contributed more to the European acceptance of Indian art than the discovery of the Ajanta Caves. Boasting the finest gallery of murals of any ancient civilization, they were quickly recognized as "Asia's greatest artistic marvel". Unfortunately, attempts to obtain them have done more harm than good (Drawing by B by and Jas. Burgess of a scene representing "The Temptation" in the Cave of Ajanta, XXVI. XXV I.)

General Sir Alexander Cunningham spent much of his career and long retirement wandering in search of India's Buddhist past.

Colonel James Tod, historian and supporter of the Rajputs, who also popularized the Jain temples at Mount Abu and established a coin collection from which much of West Indies history has been reconstructed. reconstructed. "In a Rajput I always recognize a friend." (Rajput miniature of Udaipur.)

Colonel Colin Mackenzie hired Indian scholars to search for historical material. The Mackenzie collection of manuscripts, inscriptions and coins remains the best archive for reconstructing the history of peninsular India. (Portrait of Thomas Hickey.)

BH Hodgson, for fifty years the doyen of British Indian scholars and "the supreme living authority on the native races of India," spent most of his life in the Himalayas living as an Indian sage.

Sir George Everest, the most controversial of all land surveyors, who completed the south-north triangulation of the subcontinent, also extended his measurements across the Himalayas, allowing the first accurate triangulation of their peaks. The Supreme takes his name.

E. B. Havell, director of the Calcutta School of Art, rejected conventional wisdom about the Indian artist and advocated that his art be based on conceptual rather than representational ideals. (Portrait of one of his students.)

Sir William Jones was "the father of Oriental studies". His discoveries in philology, philology, history and literature provided the first evidence that India possessed a classical civilization that rivaled Greece and Rome.

Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India from 1898 to 1905, was the first to recognize that India's architectural heritage constitutes "the greatest galaxy of monuments in the world" and that their maintenance and restoration should be an imperial responsibility.

The discovery of India's past was complemented by the excavation of an urban civilization dating from 2500-2500-1500-1500 BC. added a protohistorical dimension in the 20th century. The 'Harappa' or 'Indus Valley' culture, the 'Valley' culture, though widespread and highly developed (see figurine of a 'dancer'), will likely remain a mystery until pictographic writing (such as found on stone seals -soap, if our poets sang them [Havell wrote of Rajput palaces], our painters portrayed them, our heroes and great men lived in them, their romantic beauty would be on everyone's lips in Europe, many treatises on architecture would have been written. he was equally impressed when he visited the Amber Palace a century before. and the romantic quaintness of the Apa, and the rarity of finding such a building in such a place, I can compare nothing with Amber. The idea of ​​an enchanted little tree crossed our minds, I think, and I couldn't help thinking what great use Ariosto or Sir Walter Scott could have made of such a building. Even Ferguson was not unaware of the romantic appeal of Rajput palaces. attitudes and lack of affectation. But there was no place for her in his plan of things. There are about twenty or thirty royal residences in central India, all with views and beauty; some by their length, others by their location, but each would require a volume to describe them in detail. He was content to describe only the most obvious examples - Gwalior, Gwalior, Amber, Udaipur and Dig-Dig - and could only mention the two great palaces of Orchha and Datia. Havell went into detail, noting how these buildings seemed to grow organically from the rocks on which they stood, "without half-hearted pursuit of effect". so especially her

romantic appeal; but there is also a grandeur and elegance in the details that make Mughal palaces pale with sheer beauty. Here Hindu architecture was more masculine and noble than its Islamic counterpart. Sir Edwin Lutyens, the architect of New Delhi, called Datia Palace one of the most architecturally interesting buildings in India. It is also one of the most impressive. Conceived as a single entity, unlike Mughal palaces, it towers over the city of Datia like the work of an extinct race of giants. Each side is about 100 meters long and rises so subtly from the bare rock that it is difficult to tell where nature's work ends and man's begins. The impression is one of immense power, and only the skyline of domes and flat domes hints at the treasures within. There, the first two floors are cool, dark retreats in hot weather; then suddenly you enter light and a fairytale land of colonnades, terraces and pavilions. Paintings and mosaics adorn the walls, and the porches are screened by several hundred feet of ornate stone windows. Datia was built by Rajah Bir Singh Deo in the 17th century. Orchha's palaces were also his work, and here are more painted halls and speckled pavilions, as well as some of the finest carved dogs. But in this case, the scene is ruined, ruined: miles and miles of dilapidated stables, neglected gardens and forgotten temples. Somehow it feels more in keeping with these now-abandoned masterpieces. Several thousand people visit the Mughal palaces of Delhi and Agra every day; hardly a soul bothers the rats and bats in Datia and Orchha. Havell's passion and Lutyen's admiration haven't changed a thing. It says so much about the defining and enduring character of James Fergusson's work that they have yet to find their true place in the scheme of Indian monuments. monuments

CHAPTER TEN A topic often talked about

Sixty miles west of Datia and Gwalior, the long hilltop fort of Narwar stands on cliffs covered with bushes and bushes. A pretty whitewashed village sits on its hillside, from which a wide path paved with red sandstone flagstones winds its way up the hill. The steps are low enough for cavalry to step up and down, and the pinnacle at the top is big enough for an elephant to enter. Today, only one leaf remains of the large riveted door, which rests precariously on a single hinge. Beyond, the imposing staircase is littered with cow dung and shoots of vegetation from every crack in the stone. A disconcerting image of devastation unfolds to the left and right of the flat top. Trees grow through the stone of the nameless corridors, their roots lifting the stone floors. A row of columns tilt sideways like frozen dominoes in autumn. In the thorny undergrowth, a hole no bigger than a rabbit's reveals vaulted chambers blackened by bats. And in a sunny pavilion jutting out of the cliff where the last mosaic of mirrors is peeling from the stucco, shepherds camp among their flocks, fire smoke darkening the painted ceiling, shards of mirrors crunching underfoot. Narwar was a Mughal Rajputin palace in the 16th century and became one of the Six Great Forts in the 17th century. It dates back to the 18th century Rajputs and was still in use at the end of the century. But when Cunningham visited in 1864, it was deserted and the vegetation was already under control. Today its interest lies in the fact that much has never been done to preserve it: it remains as it was 100 years ago. The actual ruins that have escaped the attention of the archaeologist and the conservationist, the conservationist, have a special appeal. The past seems to get closer to her. In Narwar, nature has dominated, not tourism. Lizards hover over the white marble of the royal baths, and a vulture perches, its wings covered, on the highest dome. Here, away from the manicured gardens and two-rupee entrance fee, one feels the romantic beauty of utter desolation and the true thrill of archaeological discovery. In the 19th century, the state of disrepair of places like Narwar was the norm rather than the exception. Thomas Twining, the young man privileged to dine with Sir William and Lady Jones in Calcutta, visited Agra and Delhi in the 1790s. around, eventually covering the land. everywhere as far as the eye can see. Houses, palaces, tombs in various stages of decomposition formed the impressive scene. The wilderness through which we had passed was joyous compared with the sight of the desolation before us. After walking a kilometer through dilapidated streets devoid of a single inhabitant, I saw a large mausoleum a short distance to our right. I walked towards her through the ruins with some of my soldiers, leaving the rest of my people in the way. Descending and ascending a few steps, I arrived at a large square terrace flanked by minarets and centered on a beautiful mausoleum topped by an elegant white marble dome. I had not seen anything so beautiful except the Taje Mehal. It was in vain to look for someone to satisfy my curiosity. The city that was once the most populous and magnificent in the East could no longer tell me which king or prince had received this precious tomb. But the name "Humayun" in Persian letters on black marble, preserved intact by chance or respect, made it probable that it was the tomb of that eminent monarch.

It was actually the tomb of Humayun, son of Babur and second of the great Mongols. But this masterpiece of Mughal architecture, then only 300 years old, was so little appreciated that even its identity was the subject of conjecture. A decade after Twining's visit, the British settled in Delhi. This in itself was no guarantee of a more enlightened conservation of the monuments. But the Islamic monuments of Agra and Delhi were safe from the terrible ravages of the railways. Their different fates in the 19th century had much more to do with fluctuations in official policy. At first, the British resident and his team in Delhi were very impressed with the environment. The ruins of all these ancient Delhis - Indraprastha, Qutb, Tughlakabad, Ferozabad - were poignant reminders of the ephemeral nature of government. Even in Shahjehanab ad Shahjehanabad (now Old Delhi), the signs of decline were already there. A Mughal emperor still lived in the Red Fort and court rituals were meticulously observed. But the reality of power and sources of wealth had disappeared. The imperial treasury was milked by several hundred dependent relatives and henchmen; the palace itself has become a slum for all these vagabonds. In 1825 Bishop Heber found the Diwan-i-Am, the pillared audience hall choked with wood and the imperial throne so sunken in pigeon droppings that its mosaics were barely visible. Pipal trees sprouted from the walls of the little pearl mosque, and in the diwan-i-khas, the private audience chamber, half the precious stones of the floral inlay had been exalted from its white marble. "Everything was desolate, dirty and deserted", and in the formal gardens, "the tub and fountain were dry, the inlaid floor covered with wood and garden debris and the walls smeared with bird and bat droppings". bats'. The bishop's next stop was Agra. As he approached the city, he passed the huge tomb of Akbar at Sikandra, "the most magnificent building of its kind that I have seen in India". Unlike the other Mughal tombs, Akbar's Akbar's does not have a central dome and consists of five descending floors dotted with small vaulted chattris. chattris.Fergusson, Fergusson, continuing his theory that only Akbar adopted Indian architectural styles, would suggest that they descended from the design of a Buddhist monastery. Its other distinguishing feature is a colossal gateway with imposing minarets at each of its four corners. According to Twining, the upper sections of all these minarets broke "after being struck by lightning and knocked over"; but by the time of Heber's visit, money for repairs had been approved and an engineer was already on site. The 1820s saw the first surge of energy in this direction and efforts were also made in Delhi to restore some of the most important buildings. As garrison engineer between 1822 and 1830, Major Robert Smith was responsible chief. He was a respected artist and a great admirer of Mughal architecture. architecture. One of his first jobs was to repair the Jama Masjid, the great mosque built by Shah Jehan. Its skyline is one of the most dramatic in India and it was the enormous dome which, according to a contemporary, made the greatest demand on Smith's services. Services. Trees grew from cracks in the dome stones, and parts of the back wall had fallen away and been carried away by a heathen Hindu to build himself a dwelling; This part was also repaired. Major Smith is particularly well qualified for the task of restoring these magnificent relics of art, both because of his exquisite judgment and taste in the style of the works, and because of his recognized professional talents, which place him among the best of his peers. No doubt emboldened by this success, Smith moved to Qutub Minar. But here, inexplicably, that "good taste and good sense" seemed to leave him. In 1803 the building was seriously damaged by an earthquake: some of the balustrades were torn off, the most important

The door collapsed and, worst of all, the main dome collapsed. Smith's job was to repair this damage, in addition to cleaning and landscaping the entire site. A sketch published in an earlier issue of the Asiatic Society's Journal is said to show the original dome; Smith dismissed it as "a great stone harp". Instead, he made according to his own blueprint, design, an octagonal stone pavilion, with a smaller wooden dome above the dome and a short pole above it. No sooner had the work begun than Bishop Heber visited the site and uttered his oft-quoted saying, "These Pathans built like giants and ended like jewelers." the Turks and the Indian jewelers.) But in 1829 Smith's work was completed, and he was immediately greeted by a violent storm of protest. "A silly parachute-like ornament that adds nothing to the beauty of the structure," thought one observer. According to another, the pavilion made everything look very heavy and the wooden dome was like "an umbrella in the shape of a Chinese". The Governor-General was very upset about the flagpole, "an innovation which, whether as a matter of taste or in regard to the sentiments of the Mughal court or the people of Delhi, is little praised". He'. Smith fought back. The emperor liked the pole, mainly because his own flag was flying on it. As for the pavilion, it was impossible to say exactly what the original looked like. Furthermore, the entire tower was a hodgepodge of inconsistencies, having been built by three different rulers and already extensively repaired. His design for the pavilion and dome was completely authentic, authentic, very, very similar to the decorative arrangements and arrangements found on the ceiling of the nearby tomb of Safdar Jang. This explanation cannot have convinced anyone. Safdar Jang's tomb is usually cited as a good example of what happened to the Mughal Mughal style when it became a seed. Ornate, even colorful, and a particularly sickly sandstone color ("too pot-meat color," thought Bishop Heber), it was a curious model on which to base a restoration of one of the oldest and most admired examples of Islamic architecture. . Perhaps to save Smith's feelings, no official action was taken; but the wooden dome would not last long. "Lightning struck him as if he were outraged by the desecration." It was not restored, and in the 1840s, when Smith left for England, the stone pavilion P-pavilion was quietly transferred to the gardens as a summer home. Alexander Cunningham first visited the site in 1839 after the wooden dome had collapsed but the stone pavilion still stood. "The balustrades of the balconies and the simple, light building on top of the pillar are not in harmony with the massive and ornate architecture of Pathan", he noted in his diary. He thought Smith's repairs were admirably executed, but the restorations were deplorable. Not only was the coronation pavilion wrong. Smith also added railings where they were missing and redesigned the collapsed driveway. He should have limited himself to repairing the original portal, but, in his own words, he "improved it with new moldings, frieze and repair of the inscription panel". The result, on which Fergusson and Cunningham completely agreed for the first time, is best described as "in true Strawberry Hill gothic style". The thin balustrades are "an even greater eyesore, being an integral part of every aspect of the building". Cunningham recommended replacing them with something more massive in the style of Tughlak Abbot Tughlakabad's battlements. Smith's balustrades could then "sell with advantage in Delhi, as belonging to the fragile style of contemporary garden shed architecture". Day'. Much more successful was Smith's landscaping of the entire site. Qutb, like so many others

of India's monuments, it was looted by curiosity seekers and occupied by squatters. Wooden huts and burlap shelters supported the walls of the great mosque; occasional visitors discarded specimens from the iron pillar and carried away the broken capitals. By clearing the entire site, laying grass, and providing gardeners and caretakers, Smith anticipated the work of the Department of Archeology in the 20th century. Its success can be measured by the decision of the resident, Sir Thomas Metcalfe, to build his country house next to the gardens. For this, Metcalfe had the macabre idea of ​​adapting an ancient Mohammedan tomb, leaving the ground floor with his tomb intact, but transforming the next floor and the veranda into living rooms and the great hall under the inevitable dome into a dining room. . . From this strange mansion his daughter fled to Qutub itself. The ground on which the column and ruins stood had been planned as a beautiful garden and the site was kept scrupulously clean and in excellent condition. I have often, together with Colonel Richard Lawrence, brought a basket of oranges to the top of the Qutb column for a feast in this seclusion, but we have been careful to remove the peels, &c. ruins and buildings. Among Robert Smith's other works were some repairs to Shah Jehan's Red Fort. In addition to the imperial apartments and audience chambers so vividly described by Heber, the fort contained a small garrison of troops, nominally under the emperor's authority, but commanded by a British officer. he was recruited and commanded. For his protection, and because the site still had strategic value, Smith was commissioned to repair the walls and clear the land in front of it, a task he evidently performed with an admirable mixture of military zeal and architectural sensibility. Otherwise, little has been done about what Fergusson described as "the most magnificent palace in the East, perhaps in the world". As the emperor and his entourage still resided there, it was not directly British responsibility. In the 1830s, the first great wave of British vandalism, fueled by Macaulay's rhetoric and fueled by financial austerity, left the palace untouched. The emperor was denied the pension he considered necessary for the upkeep of the buildings, but there was no attempt, as at Agra, to sell his fortune. The second wave of anti-Indian vandalism came with the riot of 1857. This time, neither Delhi, scene of the British massacre and Indian resistance, nor the emperor, considered one of the main conspirators, were spared. The looting of the city when it finally fell, the looting of the imperial and family palaces. The desecration of the Theto Mosques, the darkest chapters in Anglo-Indian history A proposal to destroy all form of Old Delhi was ultimately rejected, but only "isolated buildings of architectural or historical interest" remained within the Red Fort. About half of the entire complex, including the extensive zenana quarters and beautiful colonnaded gardens, were simply blown up and reprogrammed as barracks. The excuse for this act of deliberate vandalism [wrote Fergusson] was, of course, the military, who needed to evacuate the Delhi garrison to safety in case of a sudden emergency. If it was correct, it would have been valid, but it isn't&. The truth of the matter seems to be this; The engineers saw that, by dismantling the site, they could erect without effort or expense a wall around the courtyard of their barracks which no drunken soldier could climb without being seen, and for this or other miserable reason the palace was sacrificed! The only modern act that can be compared to this is the destruction of the Summer Palace in Beijing. However, this was an act of war on the spot and possibly a political necessity. This was a deliberate act of unnecessary and unnecessary vandalism, hooliganism, which was highly discrediting to all involved.

Even the few architectural gems that have been officially forgiven have not escaped the attention of looters and award winners. The white marble Diwan-i-Khas had been stripped of its peacock throne by the Persian Nadir Shah in 1839, its silver roof by the Marathas in 1760, and much of its jewel inlay by thieves, according to Rding Heber. Now, the kiosks at the four corners of the roof have been stripped of their gilded copper lining by a price broker who claimed they were chattel. The marble pavement in front of the building and the colonnade that surrounded it ran in the same direction. At Diwan-i-Am, the inlaid panels behind the imperial throne were unique. They were made of black marble and, as the central panel depicted Orpheus and a group of animals, was almost certainly the work of a European. Competition must have been fierce to secure such gems. Captain (later Sir) John Jones was apparently the first to remove the precious plaques from the wall, and had what Fergusson sarcastically called "the happy and lucky idea" of arranging his loot in marble frames for the tables. He took two of them back to England and then sold them to the government for a not inconsiderable £500; They were displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Meanwhile, Diwan-i-Am itself was turned into a military hospital. As further proof that the fort was now just a military installation, the area outside the walls was cleared to a distance of 500 meters. No doubt this action was prompted by memories of the siege of Lucknow; With a firing range extending over 500 meters, a besieged Ged garrison should be safe from snipers and engineers. It is impossible to say how many buildings were destroyed; but the compensation paid was a staggering £90,000. At least one mosque has disappeared; but then the mosques were in a different category. The more sacred a building was, the more suitable it was for reprisals. Various ideas were considered as to the most suitable destination for the Jama Masjid. Some thought it had to be blown up, others that it had to be sold or turned into barracks. A more ingenious idea was to turn it into a memorial to the riot victims; the paving stones of the great courtyard would be inscribed with the names of all the mutiny martyrs (in English only, of course). But luckily no decision was taken. Five years later, the passions had subsided enough for him to quietly return to the Delhi Mohammedans. Other mosques had to wait much longer. Fatehpuri Masjid remained in infidel hands in the 1870s and 1870s and Zinat-ul-Masjid, after a dubious career as a private house and military bakery, was finally returned to its parish in 1903 by Lord Curzon. table Curzon managed the Auxiliary Gardens at Red Forts and brought Cole's black marble slabs also from V&toA.restore With designs made by ytoMajor H. H. in the 1880s and with the services of a specially hired Italian tiler, the slabs were laid in the Diwan -i-Soy in 1909 restored to its original position. Cole Cole would have been delighted, delighted, because it was he, first of all, who first drew official attention to the deplorable state of the palatial building. The roof of the Diwan-i-Khas was a scandal, as were the missing marbles of the Diwan-i-Am. Divan-I-am. In honor of a visit from the Prince of Wales, it had been "repainted black, red and gold in place of the original pattern, the central rose being transformed into a sort of hungry starfish, to an extremely striking and striking effect". Cole restored the original reds, blues and greens to a gold background and removed the starfish. Although Cole was appointed curator of ancient monuments, as was Cunningham, he was not directly responsible for conservation. His job, which lasted only four years, was simply to report on the work needed and encourage the local building authorities to go ahead with it. He could not always count on their cooperation, and it is noteworthy that his two greatest successes occurred in places where that department did not exist. One was Sanchi, the other Gwalior.

Two hundred miles south of Delhi and commanding the traditional route to the western and Deccan ports, Gwalior is everything a great natural fortress should be. It soars 300 feet above plains with crenellated walls marching along the contours and down towards the cliffs. The palaces sit on the edge of the abyss and massive gates dominate the only points of entry. This has always been a site of immense strategic importance and probably more disputed than any other hill on the subcontinent: it has changed hands more than twenty times since the 13th century and has been invaded three times by the British alone. Scattered across the flat top are Hindu temples, Jain caves, mosques and palaces, evidence of a long and unbroken history of civilization. If ever there was a place that deserved to be preserved and explored, this was it. But when Cole arrived there in 1881, the place was not yet famous or neglected. Only Cunningham had investigated him. In 1844, long before archaeological investigations began, he made some repairs at his own expense to the larger of the two beautiful temples at Sas Bahu. I found the Holy of Holies empty and desecrated, and the floor of the antechamber dug fifteen feet deep for the treasury. I filled this hole; and then I reinforced all the broken beams, mended the broken foundation, and added a stairway at the entrance so that the temple is now accessible and safe and likely to last for several centuries. This probably saved the fabric of the building, although Cole rediscovered his sculptures under smothered plaster, made by a zealous Muslim. Gwalior was beautified and desecrated by Mohammedans. Jehangir and Shah Jehan added palaces to those of the previous Rajput owners, but their ancestor Babur was the man responsible for defacing the Jain statues. It is true that the full frontal nudity and colossal proportions of these rock-cut figures caught the attention of iconoclasts. icon classes. On the other hand, they were a match for the most enthusiastic hammers and chisels: Babur had to be content with removing over a hundred hundred genitals and a motley assortment of noses, toes and ears. Undoubtedly, the roar of cannons during successive sieges also damaged the fort's antiquities. But it was the short time British troops held the site that inspired Fergusson to launch one of his most devastating attacks. We have worked mercilessly for just a few years to destroy everything that disturbs our comfort and convenience, although having the strong we have probably done more for their beauty and beauty and erased their memories than Mohammedans did for centuries. controlled or busy, was caused. Better was expected, but the fact seems to be that the powerful have no real heart in the matter, and the underlings are free to do as they please, and if they can save money or be bothered, there is nothing in India. , who can escape the effect of their apathetic ignorance. Gwalior's misfortune was the same as that of Delhi: it was taken by mutineers in 1857 and its cannons turned against the British. Their fate was also the same: a garrison stationed in their palaces and a large barracks erected at the foot of the fortress. For his information, Fergusson relied heavily on the French traveler Louis Rousselet, who visited the fort in the 1860s. The English [wrote Rousselet] are busy reducing the need for archeology and eliminating this precious source of history. India. All buildings to the left of the east gate have already been reduced to rubble and the same fate awaits the rest, and even that

Jain sculptures. When I returned in December 1867, 1867, the trees had been felled, the statues smashed by the workmen's pickaxes and the ravine full of rubble for a new road to be built by the English - English - the palaces of the Tomars and Chandelas [Rajput clans ], the idols of Buddhists and Jains. Rousselet caved to Gallic hyperbole, but Cole's sober account of 1880 was no longer reassuring. A concrete parade ground now stretched over the rubble to the left of the main gate. The buildings on the right were spared, but the first, the magnificent Man Singh Palace, was used for Commissariat business. The two small courtyards, perhaps the most elegant of their kind, had been whitewashed and divided by hideous partitions. Next door, in the Karan Palace, the Bara-dari, so admired by Babur, was used as a mess with its dome. “I regret to report,” wrote Cole, “that stone carvings, pieces of colored tiles, and other fragmentary relics were carried off by travellers, while whole columns were brought some years ago to decorate the gardens of Morar [the barracks] and stones were found. they even found their way to the afterlife. Fortunately, Cole's visit coincided with the first pangs of conscience. The British Resident was eager to make amends and Commander Keith of the Royal Scots was sent to restore as much as possible under Cole's direction. Address. With a donation of £100 from regimental funds, he had just rescued the Teli-ka-Mandir, a 9th-century temple of particular interest as it did not fit any of Fergusson's classifications. But one thing was certain: it wasn't going to be a cafe. Business. Major Keith found alternative accommodation for the regiment's 111th and began clearing the place. At Cole's suggestion, the temple grounds were turned into a rudimentary museum where all the statues and sculptures still scattered around the fort could be gathered and protected. The most poignant relic is the gate, a strange monument for having been painstakingly constructed by Keith from fragments of buildings demolished by other Contenders just twenty years before. His penance also included stripping Man Singh's palace from the dividing wall, carefully scrubbing all the whitewash off, and ensuring that none of the beautiful tiles were removed from the outer walls. Six years later, the British garrison withdrew from Gwalior and the fort reverted to the local maharajah. The tragedy of Delhi and Gwalior was that their forts also contained their palaces; The British found it difficult, or simply inconvenient, to distinguish between the two. The same thing happened with Allahabad. Not only was Ashoka's Pillar demolished to create fortifications, but the fort's most prized structure, the Forty Pillar Fortyway Pavilion, was demolished because "its material was needed to repair the fortifications". Another pillared building, also from Akbar's reign and known as Zenana Hall, was saved, only to be converted into an armory. The spaces between the columns were walled with brick, and in Fergusson's day "anything that could not be conveniently cut away was carefully plastered and whitewashed, and concealed with moldings and fittings". accessories'. And it was the same story in Fort Agra Agra. There the magnificent Diwan-i-Am was turned into a weapons arsenal and "as similar as possible to those in our shipyards". The Akbari Mahal became the prison and the Salimgarh kiosk the canteen. At least one of the white marble pavilions overlooking the river - river - perhaps from which the captive Shah Jehan looked desperately downstream in his Taj Mahal - Mahal - was requisitioned as the officers' quarters. With the marble and its delicate floral inlays generously whitewashed, it was considered a house of elegant simplicity. Sir John Strachey, Governor of the North West Provinces in the 1870s, changed a lot

A plaque was discreetly placed in Shah Jehan's palace by Lord Lytton and dated 1880 to commemorate his conservation work. He specifically mentions only the Taj Mahal, although Fergusson reports that his work has focused on the fort. Here the worst abuses were remedied and the first steps towards recovery were taken. On the other side of the Jumna and a little upriver is the tomb of Itimad-ud-Daula, another gem of white marble and mosaics. There, Major Cole, more used to dealing with Indian invaders than Europeans, found a group of British officers comfortably accommodated. True to type, they also covered the walls - walls - and especially the magnificent paintings - paintings - with regular whitewash. Cole arranged for them to be evicted, removed their various partitions and doors, and drew the most elaborate diagrams to show how the paintings would be restored. Whether the Taj Mahal was also the victim of such nasty and disrespectful treatment is not as clear as one might expect. Lord Curzon painted the most glaring picture of past transgressions, bestowing the full weight of the Viceroy's patronage on India's most iconic building. English walkers were known to "spend the afternoon cutting fragments of agate and carnelian from the cenotaphs of the emperor and his queen". There were parties in the gardens and balls on the marble terrace; thejawab thejawabto the east of the tomb (matching the mosque on the left) was rented for honeymooners and the minarets were in high demand among suicide bombers. One can imagine empty champagne bottles floating in the fountains, an orchestra playing liwan, liwan y and a passionate underling enjoying a cigar at Shah Jehan's tomb. No doubt there was some truth to all this. The gardens were certainly used for picnics and events; after all, that's what they were built for. Likewise, the Jawab was conceived as visitor accommodation. Young Thomas Twining stayed here in the 1790s. In the afternoon I walked through the noble terrace and lush gardens of my lovely residence, of which he seemed to be the lord, to the derwanderwanand and his men, who escorted me through the outer door, they had returned to their posts, saw no one. Arriving where he belonged, save for a few gardeners among the orange trees. I also visited all the nooks and crannies of the Tage and enjoyed a feast that I thought was too big&. Nothing in architecture can top the beauty of this structure seen from my gazebo in the corner of the large terrace. The deep respect shown by Twining can be considered more representative than the acts of vandalism mentioned above. That respect was more than outweighed by official preoccupation with Curzon's structure. Building Furthermore, provisions for its maintenance were already evident in the 18th century. William Hodges mentioned that the proceeds of certain lands were reserved for this purpose; and another artist, Thomas Daniell, found the building "in very good repair" in 1788, although the following year the roof beams were knocked down by lightning and the dome also sustained "property damage". Wound'. In addition to the earthquake that damaged Qutub Minar, Agra was captured by the British in 1803. The Taj must have suffered as well, and it is likely that some of the marble slabs in the dome were loosened by this tremor. By 1810 the situation was so dire that the Governor-General, Lord Amherst, was able to demand a report on "the nature and extent of the repairs which the Taj might require to keep it in that perfect state which the reputation of the . "British Government and respect for the feelings of the people." The responsible committee existed for fourteen years and probably repaired the damage caused by the earthquake. by the government." According to Emma Roberts, who visited Agra five

Years later, the bishop became too ill to appreciate all its beauties; He considered Agra to be the most beautiful city in India and compared the government's considerable spending on the Taj Mahal Mahal with the neglect of the city's other monuments. monuments In 1838, Mrs. Postans reported that the Taj 'is' too valuable a jewel for the British government to lose, and a sum had been set aside for its repair and preservation. The American Bayard Bayard Taylor came to a similar conclusion in the 1850s: “The building is perfect in every part. Whatever damage it may have sustained is so well restored that all traces of it are gone." And, perhaps most convincing of all, the harshest of critics, James Fergusson, found nothing wrong with the official position on "Chief d' oeuvreof art work from the reign of Shah Jehan.'rule.', it is curious to find recent works on the Taj that claim that it was miserably abandoned, almost dismantled, in the 19th century. This alarming accusation apparently stems from the notorious efforts of Lord Bentinck, Governor-General in the early 1830s and Macaulay's patron, to balance the accounts of the Honorable East India Company. It is certain that the marble floor of the bathroom of the palace of Shah Jehan in Agra Fort was excavated and raised state. The bath itself was removed by one of Bentinck's predecessors, who presented it to George IV Bentinck, thereby destroying an already imperfect dwelling. Moreover, when the auction turned out to be a complete failure, the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bfurther sales was immediately abandoned. But even if it had been a success, it seems highly unlikely that Bentinck would have turned his attention to the Taj Mahal. And there is certainly no evidence that the wreckage crews were ready to start operations yet. Callous and arrogant, as no doubt they used to be, the sahibs realized that what Kipling called "the ivory door through which all dreams pass" was something apart. They admired him unreservedly; in fact, I loved it. He. This cannot be said of any other building in India, and by the 1890s, despite Fergusson's indignation, despite the valiant efforts of Cole and some less enlightened governors like Strachey, India's architectural heritage was a long-standing source of embarrassment. and embarrassment. "The funds, or rather lack of funds, expended on the preservation of India's monuments must be the subject of frequent comment," warned the 1894 edition of Murray's Handbook to Murray's Handbook for Travelers in India. All of India. This often left sporadic attempts at preservation, forcing governments to put efforts through outside local building departments - departments that often exhibited pressure that "severely damaged the monuments". Cunningham's Archaeological Survey had been too academic, Cole's curatorship too short, short and underfunded; It was time to think again. In 1899, Lord Curzon, the newly arrived viceroy, made his way to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, where he examined the government's archaeological records in a manner that must have warmed the heart of every Orientalist. There were periods of supine position and activity. There were times when it was argued that the State had exhausted its duty or had no duty at all. There were those who thought that once all the important monuments were indexed and classified, someone could sit back and let them fall apart slowly and elegantly. Others argued that railways and irrigation did not leave even half a lakh rupee [£3,750] a year for the facilities needed to oversee the world's most glorious galaxy of monuments. Curzon London had submitted reorganization proposals before the end of the year

of the almost extinct Archeology Service as a Department of Archeology subordinated to a General Director. Responsibility for the study, exploration and preservation of India's monuments would now be imperial rather than provincial; and the sum of at least £7,500 must be available from central funds to supplement contributions from provincial authorities. The program was approved in 1901 and in 1902 John Hubert Marshall, a Cambridge graduate who had been involved in Minoan excavations on Crete, took over as the new general manager. He was only 26 years old and would hold office for 26 years. A law for the protection of ancient monuments had to be written, new department staff, including an increasing number of indigenous scholars, were recruited and trained, and excavation of selected sites was accelerated and publicized. But Curzon and Marshall's concern was to provide a comprehensive, exhaustive, systematic and ongoing scheme of handicap conservation. Skin irritation. The best way to get an idea of ​​the scope of the task is to look at what was actually accomplished in the first five years. In the south, the main problem was vegetation. Numerous sites including the vast stretch of Vijayanagar have been cleared and developed with trails and access roads. The temples here, as well as the Kailasanatha in Kanchipuram, Kanchipuram, have been restored, although most of the Dravidian shrines are still used and maintained by their own Brahmins. In the West Indies, Curzon gained Jain support for the careful preservation of the temples on Mount Abu, and in Bijapur, Ahmedabad and Burhanpur structural repairs were made to many of the most important Mohammedan buildings. Across the land, the first serious attempt was made to save the site of Gaur from utter destruction by the jungle; In Bhuvaneswar, temples that were no longer in use were repaired and protected. At Konarak, the Black Pagoda was treated to protect it from the harmful effects of sea salt. While rubble and sand were being cleared from its base, the famous carved wheels and horses were unexpectedly discovered. They confirmed that the temple must have been designed as a solar chariot. Wheels are among the most elaborately carved objects in all of India, and it was the horses' tremendous power that convinced Havell that the Indian sculptor could work in both martial and religious themes. In central India, the ruins of the Muslim cities of Dhar and Mandu have been discovered and partially restored. The temples at Khajuraho were also renovated and the jungle cleared in collaboration with the local rajah. But central India was still largely in the hands of native rulers. The local archeology department knew how to advise and was quick, but the others, initiative and cost, must be theirs. One now famous as Gwalior Wellthem, kept mainta; Indiana; as Narwar received little attention. Diverse as diverse as the ministry's work was, it was by the buildings of the Mughal edifices of northwest India that its achievement was inevitably measured. Therefore, these have received a lot of attention. In Lahore, much promoted by Jehangir, the wall built around the Pearl Mosque when it was used as a treasury has been demolished, Jehangir's tomb has been renovated, and several other monuments of ugly recent additions have been removed. In Delhi, along with the refurbishment of the "Pathan" tombs of the Tughluk and Lodi kings, the Red Fort was restored as a monument rather than a barracks. Recent military buildings have been demolished, rubble from riot reprisals removed and the famous Diwan-i-Am marbles have just been restored. On the outskirts of Agra, the minarets of Akbar's tomb at Sikandra, cracked and broken since Twining's visit, were finally rebuilt; Within the city, Strachey and Cole's work continued. At the fort, more military structures were removed to reveal the full splendor of the Am colonnade of Diwan-iD iwan-i-Am, the river front of the so-called Jehangir Palace (it was built) by Akbar gem

Cunningham) was completely rebuilt, and the paintings, paintings and mosaics of the Daula tomb of Itimad-udItimad-ud-Daula were restored. And then there was the Taj Mahal. "If I had never done anything else in India, I wrote my name here and the lyrics are a living delight," declared Lord Curzon. He personally took a keen interest in its preservation and gifted the building with the magnificent lamp, made in Cairo and now hanging under the central dome. But it should be noted that Marshall found little in the tomb that required attention. He went back to work and restored the pine tree where Twining had stood and rebuilt parts of the garden walls; but his main achievement was the complete renovation of the red sandstone buildings around the courtyard in front of the main gate and along the entrances. Then there were the gardens. Curzon himself had a passion for Mughal gardens, and at the Taj, as at the forts in Agra and Delhi, Humayun's Tomb and Akbar's Tomb, their planting and care was carefully considered. Trees that had outgrown their beauty were cut down and new ones planted, flower beds filled with flowers and lawns neatly trimmed; The ponds and watercourses were repaired, fountains were made to play with. It was no longer the wild orange grove of the Twining days; A certain degree of formality was restored and the gardens were designed to complement rather than oppose the architecture. Gardening and landscaping were subjects particularly dear to the English. Opening views, stacking leaves and stacking colors were things they perhaps understood even better than the Mongols. Here was an area where British taste and know-how could do more than restore glory. While the precise geometry of the original has been carefully observed and its formal design restored, a bolder use of foliage and color has been introduced with a more varied and exciting planting scheme. Today, the Taj M Mahal Ahal is a more impressive experience than ever before. This is due not only to the mixture of Indian and Islamic ideals, but also to the inclusion of a peculiarly British feeling for the relationship between art and nature.

CHAPTER 11 The Hideout Behind the Elgin Marbles

In February 1824, while Robert Smith was designing the Qutub Minar and Bishop Heber was embarking on this gigantic tour of his diocese, a young lieutenant in the 16th Lancers was enjoying a well-deserved vacation in the West Indies. Instead of the meat pots of Bombay, Lieutenant James Alexander chose a difficult shooting location in Berar, on what was then the border between British and Nizam's territory of Hyderabad. Like most frontier regions, it was wild and rarely visited. The mountainous terrain, dotted with deep ravines, provided a perfect refuge for tigers, then as numerous as foxes. If he escaped from the tigers, Alexander was warned that "the hard-hearted Bhils" would surely catch him. The Bhils, an aboriginal tribe as fierce as tigers, have made the few roads dangerous with their bows and spears since the days of Ashoka. Alexander did not risk it: he purposefully camped in the villages, and in a small place called "Adjunta" he first heard about ancient caves. In such a desert, any hint of civilization or antiquity was enough to arouse curiosity. The next day, at dawn, Alexander climbed into the saddle and, with the help of a guide, rode through the mountainous terrain above the Tapti River. Several piles of stones, near which on a stony path many bushes were covered, near which rags were passed, pointing to the place where the tigers destroyed the unfortunate travelers, we suddenly found ourselves on the top of the steep Ghat Ghat . Ghator or passes. The scene presented to us now was extremely magnificent. The Candesh valley stretched out beneath our feet, stretching into the blue distance and surrounded by forested mountains. Jungle, small lakes and streams scattered in all directions, the most varied face of the valley&. Directing our steps to an opening in the deeply indented hills, we reached the mouth of the mouth of the valley, and when a faint whistle was heard above us on the left, it was quickly repeated on the opposite cliffs. It turns out that the bhils were hinting to each other that strangers were coming. The guide had strong symptoms of anxiety; but when he was rebuked and encouraged by the hope of a good gift, he went on. Some of the bhils appeared, peering out from behind the rocks. They were an extremely fierce looking race, all black, short in stature, and nearly naked. Our firearms prevented them from approaching us and we were not molested. The gorge that opened the way almost to the end, where the caves are located, stood out for its scenic beauty. He continued winding through the hills that rose in a considerable drop from the banks of the river and whose slopes were covered with sparse jungle. The hills began to close in on us with their wild and romantic features, and without common interest and with the most agitated expectation I looked towards the modest entrance of the first cave. There were about twenty-nine caves in all, stretching along the cliff face. ce Many had carved and pillared entrances like the well-known excavations at Elephanta. But when he reviewed them, Alexander Alexander was initially disappointed. The sculptures could not be compared to Ellora: there were fewer figures and were less ornate in general. On the other hand, there were paintings, paintings, acres of frescoes covering the walls and ceilings, ceilings, and these exceeded his wildest expectations. In most caves, to make up for the lack of copious Faille and Scu sculptures, there are LPtures

Frescoes, much more interesting because they show the dress, clothes, habits of life, occupations, general appearance and even characteristics of the natives of India perhaps 2,000 or 2,500 years ago, well preserved and colorful and displayed in brilliant hues, the brightness of which red is the most widespread, the sharp sect of Buddhists. Alexander observed a number of "spiritual representations" of battles and processions and admired the representations of horses and elephants. But whether it was able to capture much more in low light and just a few hours is questionable. It makes sense that he would dismiss aesthetic or technical assessments; after all, there was nothing to compare his extraordinary discovery to. He was also quite busy. The stench emanating from countless bats flying around our faces as we entered made staying indoors very uncomfortable for a long time. I only saw a cave with two floors or levels of excavated rock. In it, the Bhils destroyed the steps from the lower floor to the upper floor. Pistols cocked, we climbed a tree branch to the top of the chambers; and found the remains of a recent fire in the middle of one of the floors with large footprints all around. In the corner was the complete skeleton of a man. On the floors of many of the lower caves I observed tracks of tigers, jackals, bears, bears, monkeys, peacocks, etc.; these were pressed into the dust formed by the plaster of the frescoes which had fallen from the ceiling. Nothing conveys the plight of indigenous heritage more vividly than this portrait of primitive tribes and wild animals taking refuge amid the painted splendor of Ajanta. Here was one of the greatest artistic treasures in the world: the finest gallery of paintings from an ancient civilization that has ever survived. One can only gasp as we see peacocks pecking at the dazzling colors, tigers strolling softly through the porticoes and naked aborigines gazing up at these highly aristocratic displays of courtly splendor and lavish luxury. Forgotten for over 100 years, its conservation was as miraculous as its rediscovery was accidental. coincidentally, although Alexander's first account was from Ajanta, the existence of the caves seems to have been reported about five years earlier. Then as now, the mention of cave paintings alone wasn't enough to trigger an avalanche. Even after his account was published, few made much effort to visit Ajanta; and those who did were invariably taken by surprise. Instead of primitive paintings, they found truly classical art; instead of prehistoric hunting scenes, the most convincing and complete account of civilized life in ancient times. The result was a wonderfully candid account of the unsuspecting traveler's reaction, which PrinsepTypical published in full in the Journalisin of the Asiatic Society in 1836. Ralph interspersed with the verbal comments of his friend, Captain Gresley, while touring the caves. Written on the spot, the account has the immediacy of a recording. Ralph: These Ralph: Every day it gets harder to access these caves. You go through narrow goat trails with a drop of fifteen or eighty feet, feet less than 10 inches wide, with little to hold on to. One cave is inaccessible and several are approached at risk of death. Gresley: What? Gresley: What wonderful people they must have been! Consider the helmet. Now is that a wig or curly hair? They are mainly domestic scenes: seril-searil scenes; here there are males and females everywhere, then processions and portraits, portraits of princes always bigger than the others. The themes are closely intertwined; a medallion is twelve or fifteen inches high; below and above, touching closely, there are other issues. I didn't see anything scandalous. No, there is certainly nothing monstrous, except where we see a figure obviously intended for ornament, as

in the ceiling compartments. The ceiling - ceiling - yes, yes, everything but the floor and the larger statues, everything has been painted. It's done while the plaster is wet, it's fresh painting. I saw the operation walking around Rome. Well, Ralph, look here; Can you see this figure? No. Bring the torch closer. you can hardly see it better now. Let's light some dry grass. Now bring grass; put here. Now watch as the light is stronger; You can see the entire figure. This is a prince or a boss. it's a portrait See how well it's summarized - it is - yes, yes, I see; but add water, now the colors are more vivid. Here's a pretty face - face - a Madonna face. What for the eyes! She looks at the man. Note that these are all Indian faces, nothing, nothing foreign. I wish I could decipher this story; There's definitely a story. Here is a handsome middle-aged man, dressed in robes and cap like a monk or abbot, here beside him is a half-naked, copper-colored Brahmin with a shaved crown and a single lock of hair on his head. Here is a man handing you a scroll with something written on it. He is in a crowded courtroom - courtroom - he has come for a hearing. What can all this be? Ralph: This Ralph: This zodiac, as they call it, is very elaborate&. I think this is the best example of the entire series and obviously created by the same painters who worked on what we call “the Painted Caves” par excellence. Those medallions and lions on the ceiling are very beautiful. I think they are like fans on a turkey rug or what we see in a kaleidoscope - kaleidoscope - crowns, crowns and colorful radiant patterns. Here are five women whose feet point to the center of the circle -circle- but their heads are perfect. Are they angels? There are no winged and two-headed figures anywhere. The zodiac is incomplete. I think a third one is missing, and the bottom part of the circle could never be complete, because it must have been over the door of that cell. Gresley: Maybe Gresley: Maybe they covered the top of the door with something to complete the circle. Ralph: You Ralph: You admire it so much that you're willing to assume it must have been complete. Gresley: What Gresley: What a beautiful woman! Yes, the last one we see always seems to be the cutest. Here is another heavenly face. This man is her lover, lover, handsome guy. You have his profile looking to the left. How eager, anxious, full of burning desire. Demand. The woman has just turned her face towards him, looking at him with shy satisfaction and petulant flirtation. It is excellent. But here is another beauty, beauty, he pleads; His head is turned towards someone from above. Does she pray or pray? Pity the villains who destroyed these paintings. These pilgrims must have been monasteries and these paintings to attract crowds at festivals and festivals and bring them from afar. Gresley: We Gresley: We have to theorize - theories - we can't stay awake and not do that. Ralph's favorite theory was that the cave temples of Ajanta, such as those at Elephanta, Kanheri, and Ellora, were the work of ancient Egyptian conquerors. He did not say whether these Egyptians brought Buddhism with them or accepted it upon arrival. But both men were sure the caves and paintings were Buddhist. a Dr. James Bird, who joined them on the ground, disagreed. Believing them to be Jains, he brought in an expert scholar to read the inscriptions to prove his point. He also prepared a report on the site for the Royal Asiatic Society and intended to remove some of the wall paintings. Ralph was full of contempt. The inscriptions were a variation of Ashoka script that has yet to be deciphered; they surprised the expert. the pandit Furthermore, there was nothing to suggest that the caves were Jain. And as for removing the inks, inks, it was completely impossible, impossible except as a powder.

However, Dr. poultry; and "despite protests against the defacement of the monuments, this visitor managed to single out four painted figurative figures of the zodiac or shield". Signal'. Later visitors followed this sad precedent; sometimes there was even a caretaker who, for a small fee, gave everyone who arrived a souvenir fragment. James Fergusson, who visited Ajanta around 1839, was outraged and launched the first of many attempts to save the frescoes. To him we owe the now accepted denomination of caves -caves- "I counted them like houses in a street"- and the first clear statement about their Buddhist-Buddhist origin -origin- and dated to around 200 BC. to AD 650 Most of the paintings date from the Gupta period (5th, 6th and 7th centuries AD), but some date from the 1st century BC. Historically, they were as important to understanding ancient India as the Bharhut and Sanchi reliefs. But they were infinitely more vulnerable and fragile. If something had to be saved, it had to be quickly copied and brought to the attention of art history. On Fergusson's recommendation, Major Robert Gill arrived at Ajanta in 1844 and began a thorough search of all the paintings. Twenty-seven years later, he was still in action. In the history of British attempts to map India's past, Gill's dedication is unrivaled; unfortunately without success. His oil paintings of the Ajanta Ajanta murals were displayed at the Crystal Palace in London along with the first Gandhara sculptures to arrive in England. In December 1866 all were destroyed by fire; the exhibits had not even been photographed. With incredible perseverance, Gill returned to Ajanta to recommence his life's work; but he died instantly a year later. His place was taken by John Griffiths of the Bombay School of Art in 1872, and copying work continued for another thirteen years. Again the results were sent to London. London. They were displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum and again destroyed by fire. But this time they took pictures. Out of print In 1897, almost fifty years after their discovery, the Ajanta paintings were finally published and the art world could begin to form an opinion about them. It is highly doubtful that a more rapid recognition of their aesthetic value would have done much to preserve them. It is clear that already in the 1820s they were tragically mutilated and fell apart at the slightest touch. No doubt they continued to deteriorate; Although they were better protected from vandals, there was no known method to restore them. In fact, any attempt at preservation has probably been positively damaging. With the idea of ​​resisting monsoon humidity, toasted like the original to be brushed; Of his paints applied since Gil had applied a thick layer of varnish. That slightly dirty surface, already covered in dirt and smoke, has just created a dirty stain. In 1871, Clements Markham thought he was writing his obituary: Gill's varnish had "damaged them beyond repair and they are now rapidly fading". distant'. Although Griffith's work showed that this was not yet the case, another complication arose when John Marshall suggested a restoration attempt. Ajanta was within the territory of Hyderabad. In the native states, even the new Curzon Archaeological Department had to exercise caution and indeed it was Hyderabad's own Archaeological Department, established and founded in 1914, that finally got the frescoes. Thirty miles of road to the gorge were rebuilt and, attracted by the generosity of the Nizam, two Italian specialists, Professor Cecconi and Count Orsini, worked at Ajanta from 1920 to 1922. 1922. Analyzes of these pigments and the painting process which, incidentally, , revealed that they were not really frescoes. (The plaster was not painted wet, but rather wet during painting.) After many attempts, the old varnish, dirt and smoke were removed with alcohol, turpentine and ammonia. pure beeswax

Turpentine was then used as a fixative and cement and shellac mixtures were used to fix the old plaster. The result was a revelation: a photo book of the restored paintings led Burlington theBurlington Magazine to declare them "perhaps Asia's greatest artistic marvel". Suddenly, albeit belatedly, Ajanta's art gained worldwide recognition. In 1923, the great dancer Pavlova performed an "Ajanta Ballet" at London's Covent Garden, whose choreography was based on the gestures and poses of cave paintings. It was a fitting tribute, as training in music and dance was a requirement for original performers. Coinciding with the ballet, the Illustrated London Newspublished News published some pictures of the paintings with a lengthy introduction by Sir John Marshall. The Ajanta frescoes are, he explained, "one of the marvels of the East." That'. Few things impress more than one of these Ajanta lounges on a late winter afternoon. It has been in shadow all day, but around four o'clock the sun rises on the opposite hillside and slowly the figures emerge from the darkness, one by one taking shape and form, lighting up color after color under the touch of the light. bright warm sunlight. Unlike the Sistine Chapel frescoes, the Ajanta paintings are not the work of a single artist or a unified project. Gifts from donors who gave according to their ability were executed by many hands and at different moments -times-. Despite their different size, age, and excellence, however, there is a remarkable unity in their overall effect; for all Ajanta artists followed the same traditional methods of drawing, and observed the same moderation and restraint in their colors and tones&. There was no affectation in these images, no quest for ridiculous effect. Centuries of experience have taught artists that the true secret of mural painting is in line and silhouette, and they have brought their design to an excellence rarely equaled. But the sudden popularity of Ajanta art was not simply the result of new conservation and publicity techniques. Something much more fundamental had happened: in the first decade of the 20th century, Indian art as a whole finally found recognition. The role of the outspoken art professor Ernest Havell in the aesthetic appraisal of Indian sculpture has already been mentioned; and it was Havell who also inspired and initiated an appreciation of Indian painting. But first I had to practically revive the theme. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Indian painting meant miniatures, colorful, highly stylized and delicately executed illustrations of court life, birds and animals, hunting scenes and flowers. In the case of the Mughal emperors in particular, this was clearly an offshoot of the Persian miniature school. Many of the artists were Persians, drawn to India by Mughal patronage, and although the techniques were adopted by the Indians, the inspiration remained Persian and Islamic. By the time the British arrived in Upper India, Mughal patronage was in decline, as was Mughal art. The newcomers, educated at Gainsborough and Constable, saw little benefit from his apparent obsession with detail and miniaturization. Thomas Twining greatly admired Mughal architecture, but found little to commend Mughal painting. The merit of his design is almost limited to a very accurate imitation of flowers and birds. I have never seen a tolerable landscape or portrait of his execution. They are not very successful in the art of shading and seem to know very little about the rules of perspective. A contemporary of Twining, George Forster, also pointed out his ignorance of "the rules of proportion and perspective": "They are but imitators and correct workers, possessing only the glimmer of genius." But while this meticulous attention to detail and considerable imitation skills could hardly be classed as art, it did have its uses: in the early 18th century, many Indian artists were commissioned by British patrons to create souvenir folders.

domestic servants, etc. Not surprisingly, scholars like Cunningham and Ferguson were completely ignorant of what appeared to them to be pure applied art. Introduced by one group of outsiders and now adapted to the needs of another, it was of little interest to antiquarians; Indian painting belonged to the field of crafts along with enamel work and batik. The discovery of the Ajanta wall paintings and similar cave paintings in Bagh (Madhya Pradesh) also did not provoke a drastic reappraisal. On the one hand, there seemed to be no possible connection between a Buddhist school of wall painting that disappeared in western India in the seventh century and an Islamic school of miniature painting that appeared in northern India in the sixteenth century. The gulf between the two seemed impassable, and Ajanta could only be explained as a strange anomaly. For critics who ignored or denied that his paintings spanned some 700 years, the obvious explanation was that Ajanta was the work of foreigners. The refinement of technique, impeccable design and exquisite modeling can only be the product of centuries of artistic development. As there was no evidence of such a tradition in India, one has to look abroad. Anyone who seriously undertakes a critical study of the paintings of Ajanta and Bagh [wrote Vincent Smith in 1889] will no doubt find that the artists drew inspiration from the West and, I think, will also find that their style is a local development of the cosmopolitan art of the Contemporary Roman Empire. If there was Indo-Greek and Indo-Roman sculpture at Gandhara, why not Indo-Roman painting at Ajanta? One of the paintings apparently showed the reception of Persian envoys by an Indian ruler. This "proves, or goes beyond proving, that the Ajanta school of fine arts descends directly from Persia, and ultimately from Greece." Greece'. It was the same old story; and, as usual, provoked a violent protest from Ernest Havell. He showed that there was ample literary evidence for the existence of an ancient Indian school of painting, and he argued very plausibly that, in a country with such a climate as India, it is not surprising that so few actual examples have survived. Smith's suggestion that the painting of a Persian envoy showed that Persian influence was paramount was clearly nonsense. And although North Indian Buddhism was undoubtedly somewhat cosmopolitan, the title of Ajanta paintings to be considered Indian was “as valid as that of the schools of Athens, which should be called Greek, those of Italy, which should be called Greek. called Italian, and perhaps stronger than the Oxford schools to be considered English.' which is why this was avoided when Buddhism spread to Central Asia and from there to China, taking Ajanta's ideals and techniques with it. Less plausibly, he claimed that the Mongols borrowed Indian artistic traditions from the Chinese; Mughals or Mongols, Mongols, in India paid the debts of their ancestors and ancestors to Indian culture. In fact, Mughal painting went through the same process as Mugha he Mughal architecture. Initially laden with strangers, strangers, in this case Persians, Persians, ideals, ideals, it quickly emancipated itself from the sober formality of the Persians and was revived by the spirit of Indian art. Havell regarded all Indian miniatures as "Mongolian" and knew of no parallels other than an independent Hindu or Rajput school. Indeed, his brand of critics had little time for schools or styles of any kind. Unlike Fergusson, who dissected Indian architecture in "airtight chambers," Havell liked to emphasize similarities rather than differences. Rather than talking about a school of painting or sculpture, he talked about individual works of art. And when you consider how few he had available, his selection shows remarkable insight: most of his examples are still considered classics today. In painting, an Ajanta or a Mughal fresco

In miniature, he concentrated on what was common to both and therefore typically Indian: the bold but impeccable use of color, the simple precision of line, the mastery of expressive gesture and pose, the ability to evoke the state of mind. of spirit and a deep understanding of nature. Of course, Mughal art was more secular and naturalistic than anything else in ancient India. But it was also, according to Havell, conceptual in the sense that no themes were drawn from life. Take the famous photograph of a turkey commissioned by Jehangir. Of course, the artist would have studied the turkey and referred to it frequently. But the actual painting would have been the subject "remembered at rest"; hence the result, which says far more about a turkey, from the precise feather markings to the absurd arrogance, than any accurate painting of real life. It's a turkey as you imagine a turkey; but he could never win a Poultry Club prize. See with your mind, not just your eyes; emphasize an essential quality, not just the ordinary appearance of things; give the character movement and character, not just bones and muscles; reveal a valuable quality or effect in a landscape, not just physiographic or botanical facts; and above all to identify with the inner consciousness of the nature he represents, and to reveal the one harmonious law which governs nature in all her moods - moods - these are the thoughts which he [the Oriental artist] chiefly keeps within himself in memory, once he learns to use his tools with tolerable ease. Havell's first major work, Indian Work, Indian Sculpture and Painting, was Painting, published in London in 1908. Despite the author's harsh words about the ignorance of archaeologists, the protagonists, Sir John Marshall hailed it as "a magnificent protest against the nonsense about Indian art that we are used to encounter"; "and as far as an 'archaeologist' is concerned, he has my warmest sympathies." Among the critics was Roger Roger Fry, the leading art critic of his time. j. Havell, according to Fry, had proved his point. His illustrations alone were a revelation and many of the sculptures "must speak deeply to any impartial and sensible European". The art business could no longer be seen simply as a representation of things as they appear to be. “No longer can we hide behind the Elgin Marbles and refuse to look; We no longer have an aesthetic system that a priori excludes even the most fantastic and unreal forms of art. They must be judged by themselves and their own standards.” Two years later, Havell was invited to speak at the Royal Society of Arts. The meeting was tumultuous, but it marked a turning point for Indian art. It was presided over by Sir George Birdwood, an authority on Indian craftsmanship and a vocal advocate of the traditional and hostile attitude towards Indian-looking art. At their head were Walter Crane, the artist Rothenstein, and a dramatic young man who would become the greatest authority on Indian art, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy. And, of course, there was Havell. If Havell had a major flaw, it was his fiercely combative approach to the problem. According to The Times Times, his teaching career was marked by "vehement and relentless resistance to any vestige of European influence [and] constant denunciations of what he considered the total ignorance of Indian art and civilization on the part of his countrymen" . Seeing everything from the perspective of his Indian students, he tried to rekindle pride in his native art by denigrating everything that was not Indian, neither the sculptors of ancient Greece nor the painters of Greece, except the Italian Renaissance. But in London this "irrational exclusivity" tended to irritate his enemies and embarrass his followers. At the Royal Society of Arts, Havell's passionate defense of Indian art led Birdwood to his feet in a fit of spite. So now India must be credited with its own brand of "fine art". In seventy-eight years, Birdwood had not seen a single example to support such a ridiculous theory. India has never valued art for art's sake, and the best it had to offer was "ritualized and

usually monstrous representations of gods”. He turned to one of Havell's illustrations, a sculpture of the meditating Buddha. I am impressed by the photograph on my left, which shows an image of the Buddha as an example of Indian "beautiful art". Few of us have the faith of the new "symbolist" school in a symbolism that outrages artistic sensibility and decency, seeing art as virtually nothing more than a framework for its myths; And one can rave about algebraic symbols just as reasonably as about such examples of 'fine art'. This meaningless simile [the Buddha sculpture] in its immemorial fixed pose is just an uninspired bronze image lazily blinking from nose to thumbs, knees and toes. A boiled suet pudding would serve equally well as a symbol of passionless purity and serenity. Several speakers took offense at the suet pudding, and the controversy spilled over into letters and editorial columns in The Times. . More significant, however, was the reaction of young Coomaraswamy. His first book on Inhala art of southern Sinhala had already appeared, it was published, but since then he has been active in the cause of Indian art in general. Like Rothenstein, he acknowledged that it was Hav Havell's work that "heralded a new order of things". But it is his own work on Indian art, and Indian painting in particular, that formed the basis of all subsequent criticisms. Coomaraswamy's mother was English and he was brought up in England but cannot be identified in any way with the British Raj. His father was Sinhalese, sympathetic to the rising tide of Indian nationalism, and had made a career as an art historian in the United States. Although the study of Indian art itself was an investigative process for Coomaraswamy, he was able to expose it from the inside and not just interpret it from the outside. He was more one of India's cultural ambassadors than one of the West's cultural researchers. explorer. It suffices, then, to review his most important contributions to the understanding of Indian painting. Above all, he did for art what Ferguson did for architecture. A keen collector and connoisseur, he identified all the major styles and provided the criteria by which each work could be given an approximate date and place of origin. Jain miniatures, Bengali palm leaf (Pala) paintings and, above all, the whole field of Rajput art were practically discovered by him. But he also insisted on the continuation of the tradition of Indian painting and was much more persuasive about this than Havell. have ell The ceiling of the Kailasa Temple in Ellora shows frescoes from the 8th century. Although Tu is technically reminiscent of the found murals of Ajantatraces, his style, and particularly the long, pointed noses and exaggerated eyes, clearly anticipated similar modeling in Jain or Gujerati miniatures. The first of these miniatures was painted on palm leaves and dates from the 12th or 13th century. But the tradition of illustrating Jain manuscripts continued into the Middle Ages, and the earliest Rajput miniatures (16th century) owe much to the style and lyricism of Jain art. In this way, the great void in Indian painting was filled, if not quite filled. As for Rajput art, it seems quite incredible that until Havell's 1908 book, Buch, this vast, important and utterly delightful school had not even been identified. Of course, Rajput architecture fared little better, and the wall paintings of the Orchha and Datia palaces, though noted by Coomaraswamy, are now virtually unknown. Coomaraswamy's main task was to distinguish Rajput miniatures from the Mughal school. He recognized that there was much interchange between the two contemporary traditions, but whereas Mughal art was essentially secular, academic and factual, Rajput art was always religious, lyrical and poetic. The stylistic differences were also relevant: the Mughal tones were softer, the line art more

more accurate and more frequent shading. Coomaraswamy also founded the two main schools of Rajput painting - painting - first those of the Rajput states of Rajasthan and Bundel-khand; Bund el Khand; the second, that of the Rajpu Rajputt states in the foothills of the Himalayas (Pahari). He then divided them into individual principalities. Each had not only their own stylistic conventions, but also their favorite themes. Rich in allegory and symbolism, they gave Coomaraswamy the opportunity to demonstrate the importance of understanding Hindu literature, music, dance and iconography to any appreciation of Indian painting. Perhaps none of that had cut much of the ice at Twining and Forster. They still complained about the lack of perspectives and yearned for a great aquatic landscape. But the lovely couple Ralph and Captain Gresley would be happy to hear what Coomaraswamy had to say about Ajanta. His undisguised surprise and admiration had a lot to do with the fact that the figures in the frescoes seemed to exude sophistication and classicism. As desirable as a Mathurayakshi was, Mathurayakshi was someone whose conversation was perhaps narrow and suspicious in nature. Not so with the beauties of Ajanta; They seemed like a safe bet for any company. It was not just "nothing monstrous", but a lot of grace and refinement, as well as an irresistible charm. Coomaraswamy agreed. “One can hardly imagine a more conscious or refined art. Despite its invariably religious theme, it is an art of “great cuts, enchanting the mind with its noble routine”. and Kalidasa's poems, directly reflected the style and etiquette of India's more classical era. Age. The specifically religious is no longer intrusive, no longer antisocial; it manifests itself in life and in an art that reveals life as an intricate ritual that fits at the apex of every perfect experience. The Bodhisattva is born by divine right as a prince in a luxuriously refined world. The pain of impermanence no longer poisons life itself; life has become an art &

CHAPTER TWELVE A primal power

A distinguishing feature of India's classical past is that its origins have always defied investigation. Ajanta art, Maurya sculpture, and even the classics of Sanskrit drama seemed to be emerging as mature art forms. Clearly they must have had many centuries of development and experimentation; but all evidence of this was wanting. The dawn, yes, the long morning of Indian civilization was shrouded in mystery; and the earliest evidence referred to a time close to noon. The incorporation of wooden beams and partitions into some of the earliest cave temples suggests that they were preceded by a long tradition of wooden structures, all of which have long since fallen into disrepair. Stone carving was also probably a development from more ephemeral wood and ivory carvings. An interesting relic of this art, though unfortunately not pre-classical, is a small ivory handle from a mirror found in the ruins of distant Pompeii. The handle is carved in the shape of a very provocative female figure, unmistakably related to the Theyakshis Theyakshisof of Bharhut and Sanchi. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which preserved this fragment of what is undoubtedly an important ship, occurred in 79 AD, a date which, incidentally, provides a useful cross-reference for dating Buddhist reliefs. But other aspects of the problem were less easy to explain. explained. For example, what about the origins of Indian religions? Yakshi Figures Yakshi figures bear witness to early Buddhism. Buddhism tried to accommodate the ancient fertility cults associated with the worship of trees and snakes. Hence Fergusson's belief that Buddhism and Jainism were most popular among the non-Aryan peoples of northern India, the Dasyus, or aborigines. But who were these native peoples of the subcontinent, and how were they responsible not only for the iconography of early Buddhist art, but also for its execution? Also, what about the origins of Hinduism? India's prehistory generally began with the arrival of Aryan people around 1500 BC. Due to their literary traditions, the Aryans are credited with awakening Indian civilization. They brought to India a strong racial consciousness which, through the developing caste system, created a society able to accommodate outsiders without being dominated by them. They also brought with them Sanskrit, their Indo-European language of immense potential; and they brought Hinduism, Hinduism, or at least a religion to which the origins of Hinduism are often traced. But Vedic Hinduism (i.e. the religion of the first Aryan invaders as revealed in their Vedas Vedas) was a far cry from medieval Hinduism. Their gods were cruel, elemental, omnipotent, omnipotent, lords of fire and thunder, sun, water and wind. They were worshiped through sacrifices, invoked by hymns, but never represented by idols or enshrined in temples. The Aryans were an open people - men - horsemen and cattle herders; their religion consisted essentially in courting the elements. But what changed all that? Whence came the softening of these harsh-sounding people, the civilization of their way of life, the lull of their fear fantasies? Virtually the entire pantheon of Hindu gods, from the jolly Ganesh to the terrible Kali - Kali - and including Vishnu and Shiva - Shiva - were added later. Also fundamental concepts such as the representation of deities in human form, the personal worship offered to them and the sanctification of places of worship. Obviously there must be another important ingredient in the development of Hinduism. Another fascinating topic was the origin of Indian scripts. It had been Ashoka Brahmi

successfully identified as the oldest progenitor of most North Indian scripts. But by the time it was found in its earliest form on Ashoka's pillar and in cave inscriptions, it was already well developed and reasonably standardized. The idea of ​​carving inscriptions in stone seems to have been a Moorish innovation; but the script itself must have been used much earlier. Some authorities suggest that Ashoka Brahmi, like Kharosthi, the script used in ancient Gandhara, originated in Western Asia. Others claimed he was a native of India; and none with more conviction than Alexander Cunningham. Cunningham. Because in the course of his travels as an Archaeological Researcher he had found only one piece of evidence. In the winter of 1872-3,3, on a journey through the Punjab, he surveyed Harappa on the Ravi River. It was "the most extensive of all the ancient sites along the Ravi" and, according to Charles Masson, who discovered it on his way to Afghanistan, boasted the ruins of an enormous brick castle. Cunningham found piles of bricks, several mounds, but no castle. He wasn't entirely surprised either. Standing among the hills, he could hear the rumble of trains on the new Lahore-Multan line. More than 160 kilometers of tracks have been paved with Harappan bricks. Cunningham tentatively identified the ruins with a populous city visited by Hsuan Tsang. But he thought the site itself was much older. greater r. Pottery had a very archaic character; he described some giant stones of "very peculiar shape" as undulating "curly stone rings"; and paid particular attention to the recent find of a colleague of a colleague. meet. The strangest object discovered in Harappa is a seal of Major Clark, found along with two small chess-piece-like objects made of dark brown jasper. The seal is a smooth, unpolished black stone. It has a very deep engraving of a bull, without a hump, facing right, with two stars under its neck. Neck. Above the bull is an inscription in six characters that are completely unknown to me. These are certainly not Indian letters; and as the bull that accompanies it has no hump, I conclude that the seal is a stranger to India. Four years later, while writing a book about Ashoka's inscriptions, Cunningham remembered the strange seal with his unfamiliar writing and wondered if it was really as strange as he thought. Could these unknown hieroglyphs (or rather pictograms) be an archaic form of Ashoka Brahmi? He double-checked the print he'd taken of the seal and decided yes. Looking at the characters on the left, the first st may be an ancient form of the letter "I" as it approaches the archaic form of the letter, the third Ashoka appears to be a form of "chh" and the fourth just an actual "m" ", shape character. of a fish, the matsya. The matsya. The fifth should contain another vowel, perhaps an "i", and the sixth could be an old form of "y". Then everything would say "Lahmiya" [probably "Lakshmi", the Hindu goddess of wealth]. Active]. Cunningham was therefore the first to attempt to decipher what is now known as the Indus Valley script. He only had six characters to go on and he suspected they were ancient forms of Ashoka Brahmi. Today we meet several hundred different characters; however, despite the computer's investigation, the script remains intact and the possibility of a connection to Ashoka Brahmi is still open. Cunningham's identification of each character is certainly incorrect and the word is not Lakshmi. And yet, he seems to be back on track. The general intuitively felt that the little seal held the key to many of the problems surrounding the origins of Indian religion and civilization. The seal itself eventually found its way to the British Museum, where it was supplemented by one or two more that surfaced in the late 19th century. Century. However, no progress has been made in investigating its importance. It seemed likely that they would be forever.

unclassifiable remains of forgotten, pieces of an archaeological puzzle that were placed in the wrong box. Certainly Sir John Marshall attached no immediate importance to them. Knowing Cunningham's accounts intimately, he must have recognized that Harappa was a prime location for research on prehistoric India. But twelve years after his appointment as Archaeological Director, no one has visited the site. The new department's first priority was conservation; Excavations and investigations had to wait and, if the department's management justified their existence, could only be carried out in places where there was a good chance of finding significant finds. Therefore, the first excavations concentrated on Taxila, Sarnath, Sanchi and other Buddhist sites where legible inscriptions and carvings could be guaranteed. Finally, in 1914, 1914, when one of the department officials visited Harappa, it was just to inspect it. Although he recommended excavating the main mound, it was not until 1921 that work began. More pottery and more seals were discovered that year, as well as several stone tools. But the significance of these findings was still in doubt. They were too few and far between to indicate an entirely new civilization, and although they appeared to belong to a Chalcolithic culture (that is, stone and bronze but not iron), they gave no indication of their true age. But the breakthrough was imminent. A year earlier, a year earlier, R. D. Banerji, one of Marshall's Indian recruits, had traveled through the sandy deserts of Sind, 400 miles south of Harappa and near the mouth of the Indus. At a place called Mohenjo-daro, he stopped to examine a ruined Buddhist stupa and monastery, both built of brick, noting several other promising-looking mounds nearby. He thought they represented "the ruins of a village or community that grew up around the stupa" and, knowing the Department of Archeology's interest in Buddhist sites, recommended excavation. A test excavation began two years later. Distant. Banerji quickly discovered other ruins, but since they were all built with the same small bricks, he had no reason to believe that they predated the stupa. the stupa Then some engraved copper pieces and some seals were found. One of the stamps showed a unicorn; and all had figurative letters, which Banerji at once recognized as belonging to the same class as those on the Harappan seals. The hot weather had just started and nowhere in India is hotter than Sind. Banerji himself felt the strain and was expected to withdraw after this grueling season. But his curiosity was piqued. His small group redoubled their efforts and two new mounds were dug. Below the stupa, the stupa he identified four distinct strata. He dated the superior to the 2nd century AD. w.; the inferior, therefore, must be of a very considerable age. Banerji studied the seals and found their writing and remembered what he had learned from Marshall about the excavations in Crete. He was later proven wrong; but here at last was an indication that it was a real civilization and that it might be one of the oldest in the world, predating the earliest events in India's reconstructed history by two or three thousand years. In 1924, Marshall compared the findings from Mohenjo-daro Mohenjo-daro with those from Harappa and recognized that they "belonged to the same cultural stage and approximately the same age and were quite different from anything we know in India". The date of these "rather astonishing remains" was still a complete mystery, but in a report for the Illustrated London Newsin News in 1924, Marshall could not hide his excitement. Archaeologists were not often given, as Schliemann in Tiryns and Mycenae, or Stein in the deserts of Turkestan, to shed light on the remains of a long-forgotten civilization. However, at the moment it seems that we are on the verge of such a discovery.

on the Indus plains. To date, our knowledge of Indian antiquities has taken us little further than the third century BC. Now, however, an entirely new class of objects has unexpectedly been excavated in southern Punjab and Sind, which have nothing in common with hitherto known objects and which are not accompanied by any data that might have helped to establish their origin. age and origin. His report was illustrated with photographs of clay toys "to amuse the little prehistoric people of the Indus Valley", jewelry and trinkets "used by prehistoric Indian beauties", and, of course, the famous seals with his "pictorial writing unknown". ". Write'. After another season digging test trenches at Mohenjo-Daro, Marshall was ready to move on. An aerial view of Harappa was taken; another Chalcolithic site was found in Balochistan; and there was a report of another discovery in Rajasthan. From this and other investigations it is now clear that this Indus civilization must have developed and flourished in the West Indies for countless centuries and that it covered a vast area. Rather than Minoan Crete, Marshall suspected parallels with the Sumerian culture of Mesopotamia, which is now coming to the fore. It seemed possible that these two Chalcolithic cultures were contemporaneous; and how a seal from the Indus Valley, Iraq, among rubble dating to the third millennium BC. An approximation could finally be derived. For a time, Marshall called his new discovery "the Indo-Indo-Sumerian civilization," although he took it "simply as an indication of the narrowness of the Indo-Indo-Sumerian civilization." the cultural connection between the prehistoric Indus and Sumer civilizations, not as an indication that the peoples of these two civilizations had the same ancestors or spoke the same language". In fact, he was already sure that the Indus Valley Civilization was distinctly different from all others, and to avoid confusion, he soon preferred to simply call it the Indus Valley Civilization. Of the two main sites, Harappa appeared to be the largest, but it was far from the best preserved. Mohenjo-daro, on the other hand, was relatively intact: the sediments carried by the Indus River had submerged the ruins enough to hide them from railway contractors, but not so deep that excavation became prohibitive. So this is where Marshall would focus his resources. Eight hundred workers, a team of assistant coaches, and six department officials, including Marshall himself, arrived at Mohenjodaro Moh enjodaro for the 1925-26 season. A road to the site was hastily built; Offices, offices, workshops and residences proliferated; a museum was created. Mohenjo-daro Mohenjo-daro would become the jewel of the Indus Valley, Knossos in India. knosos. Needless to say, Marshall was now sure of himself. Floor. The discoveries themselves were not sensational, and he cautioned against expecting anything resembling the royal tombs of Egypt. Everything indicated that it was a less extravagant, more practical city. He was already impressed by its drainage system, a favorite subject of archaeologists and a not inconsiderable indicator of the prevailing way of life. The houses, unexpectedly spacious, each had its own well and bathroom, from which a drain connected to covered pipes that ran through all the streets and alleys. They were built of finely chiseled brick "with an accuracy which could scarcely be bettered". This implied a "social condition of the people of the people far in advance of that which then prevailed in Mesopotamia and Egypt". Egypt'. He was now also aware that the Indus Valley civilization was far greater than that of Sumeria and Egypt. In addition to covering all of present-day Pakistan, a westward extension along the Arabian Sea to Iran seemed possible. This suspicion was soon confirmed, confirmed, but even more impressive are the recent discoveries of its eastern extent. Meanwhile, deposits have been found in the Indus Valley, around the coast of the Arabian Sea, almost to Bombay, through the deserts of Rajasthan into the vicinity.

Delhi, along the banks of the Jumna and north to the edge of the Himalayas near Chandigarh. In 1926-1931, 31 Mohenjo-daro were systematically excavated. Harappa came later, and many other sites in the Indus Valley have been explored since then. However, the subject is far from exhausted and new discoveries could change the current interpretations of what turned out to be the most enigmatic of all civilizations. In recent years, speculation seems to have outstripped the glut of discoveries: Sir Mortimer Wheeler lamented that available evidence was being "beaten to death". For every ingenious suggestion made by archaeologists, the historian may raise a dozen objections and layman's counterproposals. Very little is known for sure. The large bathhouse at Mohenjo-daro may not be a bathhouse, the pier at Lothal Harbor is not a pier - dock - Lothai Lothai itself is not a harbour. Citadels may not be citadels, vast granaries may not be granaries. No building has been positively identified as a temple, the distinction between "toys" and "objects of worship" is far from clear, and the purpose of the seals that seem to tell us so much about Indus Valley religion is still unclear. Still, there are certain key features of the Indus Valley Civilization that are even more fascinating. The first thing that strikes any visitor to Mohenjo-Daro or Harappa is the extraordinary regularity of its street plans. The streets are all straight and they all intersect at right angles. In other words, they are planned cities, which not only represent the earliest known examples of urban planning, but until recently were virtually the only known examples in India. This regularity in design is common to all sites in the Indus Valley and gives the entire civilization an archaeologically disappointing but not insignificant uniformity. The stamps do not show local peculiarities and, in houses 1,000 kilometers away, the bricks used are identical, even in size. No other ancient civilization, and very few modern ones, followed such a consistent pattern. Another peculiarity was the apparent inflexibility and conservatism of the people of the Indus Valley. For perhaps 1,000 years there was virtually no sign of change. The script doesn't evolve, the tools remain the same, and the architecture is more organized than ever. In Mohenjo-Daro, the silt brought by the Indus floods meant I had to rebuild frequently. But the opportunity that presented itself was never seized: the houses were built on the exact same plan as the ones they replaced. This apparent conservatism has led archaeologists to conclude that the people of the Indus Valley were either highly unimaginative or at the mercy of a strict government or an orthodox religion. Often, all three explanations are put forward, creating an image of stern, downtrodden people, wealthy in their own way but lacking in noble aspirations and obsessed with home comforts, order, and cleanliness. Not a single building displays decorative effects; The outer walls are bare and windowless, giving the cities a bleak, soulless appearance. It's hard to imagine a people and civilization less Native American. This is partially confirmed by the recovered artifacts. Red. Indus Valley pottery is well made but remarkably simple. There are many rather clumsily made terracotta figurines and simple but primitive jewelry. In a very different class, however, there are a handful of figures and a few engravings on the seals. Here, suddenly, we encounter a level of artistry and awareness that belies any other generalizations about the Indus Valley people. It's as if it were the work of a completely different culture; but although there has been controversy about the origin of some of them, there can be no controversy about the seals, for example. And these few examples not only display seductively progressive art, but also clearly anticipate important features of later religious and artistic life in India. One of Marshall's colleagues took the "Ninth Lane" in the south-south sector of Mohenjo-Daro and arrived at LV House. Compared to the next "cozy home LIV"

Gate, LV was in shambles. But one room had a particularly well-paved floor. At one end of this floor is a small fireplace, next to which was one of the most interesting antiques unearthed during the period. It is a bronze statuette of a nude dancer with slender limbs, cast in a circle. It is 10 centimeters tall and in good condition except for broken feet. The figure is characterized by Negroid facial features and is executed with primal power. Whether this small, slender figure truly represents a dancer, and whether her facial features suggest she is of a Negroid or Aboriginal race, is anyone's guess. But the unprimitive shaping and highly effective exaggeration of her long, lean limbs is undeniable. With her head held high, her hand on her hip and her left leg forward, she could have passed for a thin mannequin or a nubile disco dancer. Small, pointed breasts and slender hips suggest a very modern ideal of female beauty, the opposite of the adult figure usually associated with Indian art. However, her nudity, except for the bracelet and necklace, and the careful modeling of her lower abdomen, anticipate similar conventions in later Indian sculpture. Perhaps, perhaps a touch of South Indian bronze in the exaggerated pose and toned limbs. Marshall was particularly impressed by her rear view, with her gently rounded buttocks and hips. But this was nothing like two even more incredible figurines, this time from Harappa. When I first saw them I had a hard time believing they were prehistoric; they seemed to completely overthrow all established notions of primitive art. Such modeling was unknown in the ancient world until Hellenistic Greece, and so I thought surely a mistake must have been made; that these figures reached planes some 3,000 years older than those to which they actually belong. If there was only one of these small stone torsos, or if both were found in the same location, this explanation might be valid, but in fact they were found some distance from each other. It was inconceivable that each of them could have independently forced their way two or three meters through the dense rubble. In addition, the two figures had peculiarities that made it difficult to associate them with any known sculptural school. One torso was of gray stone and the other of red stone, neither of which was used in any other school of sculpture. The technique of attaching the head and limbs separately to the holes in the base was also not used by Indian or classical sculptors. Indeed, we must realize that it is almost as difficult to explain them by assuming that they belong to the historical era as by assuming that they belong to the prehistoric era. [The Gandhara sculptures] give us the form, not the substance, of Greek art. Superficially, they resemble the Hellenic models, of which they are, as it were, copies. But they fall short of that genius characteristic of the Greeks, who delighted in anatomical truth and strove incessantly to express it convincingly. Now, with these figurines, it is precisely this anatomical truth that is so surprising; therefore, one wonders whether sculptors of a distant age on the shores of the Indus could have anticipated Greek art in this all-important matter. Havell would have appreciated the suggestion. He always maintained that the Indian artist handled anatomy very well, but went beyond simple naturalism. Marshall wasn't a bad connoisseur of Indian art either; Vincent Smith placed him alongside Havell and Coomaraswamy as a pioneer in his appreciation. Although the red figure "was a work of which a Greek of the fourth century BC could have been proud", the execution was typically Indian, as was "the assembly of figures with rather pronounced bellies".

The figure, evidently of a dancer, was more generously fitted with holes at the base. One was clearly designed for an erect phallus and the neck ones were supposed to be for three heads. Here, then, was what may have been an ancient representation of the famous Siva Nataraja, the dancing Siva of later sculpture and bronze. No doubt Marshall was encouraged to make this suggestion by the earlier discovery of a very curious seal. This shows a figure seated in the posture of a yogi. The figure has massive horns and a long, sad face that, on closer inspection, appears to have three faces. He also appears to be exposing an erect phallus, although this could be a pendant from his belt buckle. Several animals are depicted around her, and two deer are depicted under her low stool. For Marshall, it was "instantly recognizable as the prototype of the historic Siva". The cross-legged, bloated belly pose of one of Harappan's torsos indicated that the people of the Indus Valley were already familiar with yoga; and Shiva was the quintessence of the Mahayogi. It was also traditionally three-sided and still closely associated with the lingam, of which, incidentally, Indus Valley sites have produced several distinctive examples. examples After all, he was also the Lord of Beasts; hence the animals. The image of a deer below the throne would be the same convention adopted by early Buddhist sculptors to commemorate the Buddha preaching his first sermon in Sarnath Deer Park. In all, some 12,000 soapstone seals have been discovered. Although their script still defies resolution, they represent the most complete source material for the religion of the Indus Valley people. Horned, large-breasted, wide-hipped female figures prancing among the trees almost certainly represent the oldest of the Theyakshi; Elesakshi; apparently the cult of fertility associated with trees was already widespread. But the most common theme of all is animals: elephants, tigers, rhinos, buffaloes, and most importantly, bulls. police There are also numerous mythical beasts, some part human, part beast - beasts - such as later versions of Vishnu's boar-headed Varaha Varaha - boar-headed - others composed of various animal parts. parts. It seems clear that at least some must have been objects of worship and that the Indian custom of deifying animals was already widespread. Further evidence of Shiva worship can be seen in the frequent use of the bull, the bull Nandi being Shiva's 'vehicle'. ‗Vehicle'. Even more remarkable is the execution of these marine animals. Most are about an inch square. Leaving room for the script means that many of the designs are no larger than half an inch by three-quarters. They are cut in rotogravure with the simplest drill and chisel. And as an additional limitation, the artist must consider that he must further reduce his conception to the essential minimum so that the stamp is clear. But the results are often surprisingly effective. The famous humpbacked bull, with its massive ruff-like jowls, is a masterpiece in every respect. He occupies the narrow zone of genius where the purely figurative and the conceptual intersect; it has the universal appeal of, say, Sanchi's torso. Anatomically it looks perfect; but the artist has also been able to suggest the bull's great bulk and strength, and by styling the jowls and rotating the horns ninety degrees, he creates a composition that is also pleasing to the eye. The same abilities can be seen on Leaping Tiger, Armored Rhino, and Back-facing Deer. Marshall believed that the artists who could create these little design gems could also have created the most controversial Harappan torsos. But who were these people in the Indus Valley and what happened to them? On this highly controversial issue, Marshall was extremely cautious. He convincingly argued that they could not be Aryans and that Mohenjo-daro and Harappan predated the first Aryan invasions (1500 BC) by at least 1,000 years. But he didn't want to compromise if they could be Dravidians. From scholarships of the Dravidian language, which still survives in Balochistan,

The Dravidian peoples of southern India (now speaking Tamil, Malayali, Telugu and Kannada) are believed to have spread across most of the subcontinent. The most obvious theory, therefore, was that the Indus Valley Civilization was a Dravidian conquest and, although already in decline, was overthrown by Aryan invaders. This is the line taken by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, though it is by no means universally accepted. Climate change, a cataclysmic flood, the weakening of central authority, all these things may have caused or contributed to its collapse. But whoever the people of the Indus Valley were, the discoveries made by Marshall and his colleagues served to call attention to the non-Aryan element in Indian culture.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN New Observations and Discoveries

When William founded the Asiaticwith Society in 1784, he envisioned a much broader field of inquiry than what Jones is associated with Indology today. “You will examine that it is rare in the wonderful structure of nature; correct the geography of Asia through new observations and discoveries; it will trace the annals and even the traditions of the nations that from time to time peopled or devastated it.” In fact, things like literature, architecture and painting were at the bottom of his list. The natural and physical sciences played a crucial role in the discovery of India, and for many, that's exactly what it was all about. The revelations of all beetle and butterfly collectors, of all meteorologists and seismologists, would be beyond the scope of this book; These specialized studies contributed more to the advancement of their individual sciences than to the understanding of India. But to a very different class belong the wider areas of study given by Jones—Jones—geography, geography, ethnology, botany, and zoology. The government itself recognized this, committed considerable sums of money and, in the case of the geography of India, launched one of the most ambitious undertakings of the 19th century. Jones's insistence on scientific inquiry reflected not just his own extraordinary interests. Therefore, there were no “two cultures”. Scholars took a keen interest in both the sciences and the arts. The journals of the Asiatic Society contain no less, and perhaps more, articles on birds, plants and tribes than on buildings and inscriptions. When Jones died, his comrades-in-arms wanted to perpetuate his memory: instead of erecting a monument or establishing a brotherhood, they named a tree after him, the Asoca, the Asoca jonesia. Not Jonesian. No doubt the great man would have been deeply moved by this apt and humble Monument. From the beginning, the discovery of India was more than a historical-cultural exercise. Thomas Coryat, the eccentric Elizabethan traveller, told Emperor Jehangir that he had four reasons for visiting India. The first diplomat, diplomat, was supposed to see the Great Mughal; second, see an elephant; Elephant; third, see the Ganges ("captain of all the rivers in the world"); Fourth, get a passport to Samarkand. John Marshall - Marshall - not the 20th century archaeologist but his 17th century namesake - "the first Englishman to really deal with Indian antiquities" - was equally fascinated by natural phenomena. Insane. His observations on the pillars of Ashoka and Hindu mathematics are reinforced by studies of the sex lives of elephant-elephants, ants and 'maids' (found only in Mozambique, where the natives 'often sleep with them'). '). , and the salinity of sea water (according to Hindus, "one of Adam's sons drank all the water and then urinated again, making it salty"). For many early scholars, including Jones, Jones, the height of the Himalayas was as intriguing a mystery as Sanskrit antiquity. Cunningham was a noted ethnologist, Fergusson's early work was not about architecture but about the geography of the Ganges delta, and Prinseps Prin Seps was not about inscriptions but about the topography of the Benares area. The important role that surveyors and engineers played in the discovery of Indian antiquities has already been mentioned: Khajuraho was discovered by Franklin and the painted caves of Bagh by Frederick Dangerfield, another surveyor. But these were essentially accidental discoveries; discoveries; When cartographers arrived in central India, the level of professionalism required of them generally excluded other interests.

This was far from the case in the early days of the Survey of India. In the south, where mapping began, surveyors were encouraged to extend their investigations far beyond the purely geographical; Most of the antiquities of South India were first known in their accounts. In 1799, Sultan Tippoo of Mysore was finally defeated by the forces of the East India Company and their allies under Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington. The entire Indian peninsula was exposed to the British, and the new century dawned with a series of surveys designed to explore the interior of the highlands and establish cartographic contacts between the east and west coasts. This research took three different forms. Route surveys were carried out to obtain a preliminary image of the country and its main traffic arteries, as well as a preliminary investigation for carrying out subsequent surveys. A topographical survey filled in all the essential details for a map. A trigonometric survey intended to build a framework of well-established positions and establish the geographic proportions of the peninsula. dr. Francis Buchanan was sent from Madras in 1800 on a series of en route inspection trips north and west through Mysore and Kerala. This was the same book by Buchanananan, who later did similar research in Bengal and Bihar, and who at Boddh Gaya reached some important conclusions about the origins of Buddhism. A Scotsman by birth and a trained surgeon from the beginning, he typified that class of pioneers whose accomplishments were so varied that it is almost impossible to place him in one category. His research on Buddhism and Indian antiquities is more than complemented by his work as an agronomist, botanist and zoologist; He later founded India's first zoo and more recently was superintendent of the Calcutta Botanical Gardens. His scope of interest is reflected in his research goals in Mysore. These are detailed in the title of the resulting book, A A Journey Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar, made under the orders of the Noble Marquess of Wellesley, Governor-General of India, for the express purpose of research. . Research on the state of agriculture, art and commerce, religion, uses and customs; the history, nature and civil antiquities in the domains of the Rajah of Mysore and in the lands acquired by the Honorable East India Company in the last and previous wars of Tippoo Sultan.With Sultan. With such a title, an introduction was superfluous. Day after day, Buchanan recorded his observations. With a view to new cultures that could benefit British India, he paid particular attention to agriculture. He sent large quantities of seeds to Calcutta, and when no seeds were available, he carefully sketched the plant in question. In May 1801, when it was starting to rain, he was exploring the tobacco plantations west of the city of Mysore when he came across the first of the famous Chalukyan temples. He was unimpressed: the building lacked "neither grandeur nor elegance" and as for sculpture, "I have not yet had the good fortune to find a Hindu image that would be tolerable". The next day he arrived at Halebid. At least the main temple "exceeded any Hindu building I have seen elsewhere", and he greatly admired the polished pillars. But he still didn't like the famous carved friezes. Its walls contain a very complete description of Hindu mythology; who is as noble as is usual in the representation of human or animal forms; but some of the leaves are very neat. Using an inscription, he dated the temple to 1280 and correctly identified Halebid as the 13th-century capital of the Hoysala-Ballala dynasty. Then Bellur came. Again, the temple was too ornate for his taste; but his day was made easier by a chance encounter with some cochineal growers. Here was an unusual branch of cattle-raising which greatly intrigued Buchanan. very. Farmers, or rather shepherds, looked after their cattle

along the cactus hedges. As the scarlet bugs devoured a plant, one small colony would move on to the next. In a good year, farmers could expect to harvest nearly half a ton of dead, dried insects. With indigo rivaling opium as India's most profitable cash crop, Buchanan Buchanan can see a bright future for cochineal. As the rain became heavier and the trek more difficult, he reached Sravana Belgola three days later. This was the most important Jain shrine in South India. Even Buchanan, who had just returned from Burma, was much more attracted to Buddhism and its sister religion, Jainism, than to Hinduism. I really wanted to see "the colossal image of Gomata Raja". Towering above the lake and Jain temples, this statue is considered one of the tallest freestanding sculptures in the world. Ironically, Buchanan, Sravana Belgola's first visitor, lost. I was unable to visit this [the statue] due to an infection that had affected my eyes the day before and made the light red almost unbearably. I sent my painter and interpreter to inspect the mound. They reported that the statue was twenty meters high, and the painter made a sketch which, as the Duke of Wellington would comment, bore no resemblance to the original. The next day, Buchanan was worse. He was quite blind and had to be taken to the nearest military base for treatment. Three months passed before he was able to return to the field and complete his research. His three-volume account was published in 1807/1807 and remained the most authoritative and comprehensive description of Mysore throughout the 19th century. Century. It was reprinted in 1870 and remains a classic. Fergusson declared the colossal statue of the Jain saint to be "one of the most remarkable works of vernacular art in South India". Outside Egypt there is nothing larger or more imposing, and even there no known statue surpasses it in height. He thought it should have been carved out of an existing rock tower rather than erected on site. Coomaraswamy would agree, giving its date of 983 AD. However, the site appears to be much older and legend has it that Chandragupta Maurya and Ashoka visited it. According to Fergusson, Wellesley was the first visitor to see the statue. But Buchanan appears to visit Wellesley after Colin Mackenzie, head of the Mysore Survey and future Surveyor General of India. Mackenzie was certainly the first to measure it (fifty-seven feet, not seventy), and there is a famous portrait of him by Thomas Hickey, showing the statue of Sravana Belgola Belgola beside a "rod and basket" measuring marker, shows in the background. Mackenzie, like Buchanan, was a Scotsman of eclectic interests and exceptional ability. Son of the first postmaster at Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides, he served as a local customs officer for the first ten years of his career. But he was also a brilliant mathematician, and although he was a lifelong collaborator with John Napier (the inventor of logarithms), he was fascinated by the mathematical discoveries of the ancient Hindus. With that extraordinary determination that was taken for granted 200 years ago, he left the windswept landscapes of Lewis forever and, without certainty of passage or employment, set out for India in search of India's Hindu system of logarithms. It was 1783 and Mackenzie was 28, a little late to start a career in India. In Madras he was listed as an ensign in the infantry, but soon switched to engineers and undertook his first survey in 1784. Then there were many opportunities to be decorated as a siege engineer and surveyor. He served during the Third Mysore War (1790–992), 2), was present at the siege of Pondicherry in 1793, and served with the Nizam of

the troops of Hyderabad in 1795 and the siege of Colombo in 1796. Further surveys of the Hyderabad area followed, during which he made a detailed study of the famous diamond mines. He also related a remarkable temple he discovered at "Perwuttum" on the river Kistna. In the fourth and final Mysore War of 1798, he was immediately withdrawn from surveying duty. As Chief Engineer of the Nizam Forces, he fought alongside Arthur Wellesley. He was the only man with Wellesley during the famous episode in which the future Duke became separated from his men during a night's advance. I pay in advance. This incident was widely seen as a blot on Wellesley's prospects. Significantly, a contemporary rejected such heresy on the grounds that "any hint of a lack of courage [on Wellesley's part] must apply equally to Colonel Mackenzie Mackenzie, whose bravery and cold-bloodedness in action are proverbial". Wellesley himself considered Mackenzie indispensable. I will say nothing of Mackenzie's merits as a land surveyor; His works are strong evidence of this. He was under my command during the campaign and I have never seen a more zealous, diligent or helpful officer." Mackenzie played an important role in the final siege of the Tippoo capital and was appointed immediately after the war to take charge of the uprising of Mysore. The Mysore Survey was India's first large-scale topographical survey. It covered approximately 40,000 square miles and took nine years to complete. The methods Mackenzie developed and the organization and training of his staff became standard practice in expanding the survey throughout India. Success demonstrated that such an ambitious plan was within the realm of possibility. Starting at the state's northernmost border, Mackenzie and his associates covered the country with a carefully planned network of positions; from them, individual survey teams made small triangulations and then surveyed the terrain, adjusting roads, rivers and all other human features anas and physics involved in creating a map. For months these small detachments disappeared into the mountains and jungles. The "fever and chills" could bring down the entire team, and the rain would keep them confined to their tents for weeks. But the work continued; compiled reports and research sheets. Mackenzie himself was on the field for as many as two consecutive years; but as completion approached he became increasingly absorbed in producing the final maps and a seven-folio treatise on the conduct and results of the survey. These memoirs, memoirs, and indeed all of Mysore's research was notable for the information it collected on non-geographical issues. Unlike Buchanan, Mackenzie was not a naturalist; and the botanist, who belonged to the Survey Survey, could not keep his course. But even in the "Perwuttum Pagoda" account, Mackenzie displayed a deep and sympathetic interest in Indian antiquities and history. Three years later, he discovered the remains of Amaravatistupa, Amaravatistupa, the most important Buddhist monument in southern India. And at about the same time he secured the services of a Brahmin, Kavali Venkata Boriah, through whose study Mackenzie believed "a new avenue of Hindu knowledge was opened up." Throughout the Mysore reconnaissance period, Mackenzie not only directed the operations of its reconnaissance teams but also, through Bo Boriah, riah, a network of antiquarian scouts. They scoured the country for inscriptions, historical records, coins and architectural curiosities - curiosities - for which Mackenzie paid everything out of his own pocket - pocket - and their activities covered the entire Indian peninsula. Later they spread to Java, where Mackenzie worked between 1811 and 1813, 13 and to Bihar and Bengal when he became surveyor general in 1815. The Mackenzie Collection was by far the largest and most important historical treasure trove of materials accumulated during the XIX century. It comprised 156 8 manuscripts in 1568

various scripts and languages, 8,076 inscriptions, 6,218 coins, 3,000 copper tablets engraved with land ownership, and 2,630,263 drawings of sculptures and monuments. What this means in terms of shelf space is best seen in the Madras Library's 8,000 volumes - Library - just a fraction of the total, many of which made their way to Calcutta and London. No one, even with a Brahmin university on their side, could hope to translate and digest all this material; it would be 1828 before most of them were even catalogued. But for the first time, the government has not forgotten its importance. Even Lord Bentinck, who was not a big fan of Indian antiquities, was full of admiration. His [Mackenzie's] zeal, [Mackenzie's] zeal, perseverance, and contempt for all climates and dangers in the pursuit of this object were extraordinary. No man who has ever been to India had the same opportunity, paid the same expenses, or spent the same amount of time in these investigations. If it is possible to remove the impenetrable darkness in which this Indian system, its origin and progress, has been enmeshed, Colonel Mackenzie's efforts promise the best hopes of success. In old age, Mackenzie became something of an institution, like Cun Cunningham Ningham fifty years later. Confused by his devotion, the government continued to support his investigation. No one could fault his leadership in Indian research or criticize his Eminence as one of India's pre-eminent geographers. But he delved deeper and deeper into his antiquarian studies. In a historical sketch of southern India during the seventeenth century, he made a rare attempt to interpret some of his historical material. The Sixteenth also wrote a remarkably remarkable account of the Jains in 1797, on the basis of which he is sometimes credited with discovering this important faith. But basically his goal was to collect and preserve. He firmly believed that all the materials for a history of pre-Islamic India still existed. But they were scattered, forgotten and unread. They must be discovered and recorded quickly, before time erases the inscriptions and ignorance destroys the manuscripts. In the 1820s, James Tod in the West Indies and Brian Hodgson in Nepal held exactly the same belief and religiously followed Mackenzie's example. Buoyed by the sums paid to Mackenzie for his collection (his executors received £15,000 from the East India Company for the bulk), travelers from across India and beyond developed an interest in antiquities; The wave of coin collecting and inscription copying in the 1830s that led to the reconstruction of India's classical past can be traced both in Mackenzie's example and in Prinsep's warnings. proclamations In 1800, when Buchanan began his road survey and Mackenzie launched the first major survey, a third group of surveyors left Madras for the mountainous highlands of Mysore. The culprit was William Lambton, a Yorkshireman of uncertain origin, probably humble, who delayed his debut in India even longer than Mackenzie. He had only been in India two years and only in the rank of lieutenant, but he was in his late thirties. Somehow the military establishment had forgotten about William Lambton. As head of headquarters, he has spent the past thirteen years in the backwaters of eastern Canada. For example, while Mackenzie Mackenz studied Lo-logarithms-garithms in Stornoway, Lambton studied geodesy and astronomy in New Brunswick. And there he would certainly have stayed. But there was a review of regimental records and then a subpoena. By this time, his regiment had moved to India, under Wellesley, and was about to see surprising action in Mysore. Lambton was needed. First he went to Calcutta and announced his presence by submitting to the Asiatic Society an essay on the Theory of Walls Walls ('in which certain details are examined which have not been considered by fortification writers'); fortifications'); closely followed by another in The Effect of

Machines when they are in motion. Wellesley, Movement. Wellesley, understandably, wasn't sure what to make of the man or his accomplishments. But during the Mysore War he was impressed by both, and when Lambton confided in him the grand plan that was forming in his mind, Wellesley became one of his most staunch supporters. The scheme in question concerned a trigonometric survey which encompassed the Indian peninsula and could be continued "to an almost unlimited extent in any other direction". Address'. It is scarcely necessary to say [wrote Lambton] what will be the advantage of determining the great geographical features on correctly correct mathematical principles; for then, after the surveys of the various districts have been made in the usual way, they may be combined into a topographical map. In other words, a trigonometric survey would provide an extremely precise framework within which topographic and range surveys such as those by Mackenzie and Buchanan could fit. equipped The principle had already been established in Britain by General Roy's Ordnance Survey, which no doubt inspired Lambton. Whereas the topographic surveyor must carefully sketch and measure every inch of terrain, the trigonometric surveyor hops across the landscape from one elevation to the next. The highest precision was essential: the stations he erected would become the guiding stars of all future research. Although relatively few surveyors were needed, the instruments required were complex and cumbersome. Factors like the curvature of the Earth had to be taken into account, and one of Lambton's great ambitions was to determine just that at a latitude like that of India. The scheme, therefore, has both practical and scientific implications, of which Mackenzie, Inspector General of Madras, praised himself. But there must also be a political consideration hidden in the enthusiastic support that Lambton received from Wellesley and the Governor-General. The trigonometric survey had no immediate military or strategic relevance, was not essential for revenue estimation purposes, and was unlikely to lead to the discovery of useful plants, interesting buildings, etc. Unlike all other land surveyors, Lambton was not distracted by matters other than his triangles. But what the trigonometric survey did is cover all of India. In his assumption lay the germ of an idea that was soon to be translated into the reality of an all-Indian empire; and at its culmination would be the important recognition of the physical integrity of India. Just as Ashoka had defended his empire with carved stone pillars and inscriptions, the British would claim their own right with activation stations and the resulting maps. Between 1800 and 1802, Lambton conducted a training exercise of sorts in the Bangalore area. The trigonometric surveys began by measuring a baseline along the ground with a specially forged chain that was leveled and tensioned to ensure absolute accuracy. The string, along with all the other instruments used by Lambton, was second-hand from a shop that Dr. Dinwiddie bought it in Calcutta. They would have been in Beijing if not for a happy coincidence: the Chinese did not regard chains and other instruments of torture as appropriate gifts for His Heavenly Majesty. Dinwiddie therefore accompanied her back to England, England, via India, and was only too happy to be released from her care. Outside Bangalore, suitable flat land was selected and operations began. The tarnished steel chain was 30 meters long. To ensure it was flat and level and not exposed to extreme temperatures, it was placed in five long wooden crates, each twenty feet long. ng. These, in turn, were transported on tripods equipped with lifting screws for leveling; The boxes were also equipped with thermometers, as temperature was a major factor in any chain expansion.

The baseline in this case was 7.44 miles, which required the chain, cassettes and tripods to be disassembled and reassembled nearly 500 times. This was done by a carefully trained squadron, twenty men on the line, more in the boxes, obeying orders. The whole operation lasted fifty-seven days. Floods, possibly planned by the locals, broke off; but Lambton was confident that "no error of more than eight or ten inches" was possible over the entire distance. He then followed a series of astronomical observations to determine the latitude at each end of the baseline. This required an instrument called the zenith sector; the one purchased by Dinwiddie was stored in two large coffins, which required fourteen men to carry it. Finally the baseline was measured and its position determined, triangulation could be started. A suitable mound was selected, a stake was erected over it, and the angle between the baseline and a line for the mound at each end of the baseline was measured with a theodolite. Now, knowing the length of the base and the two angles, we can calculate the length of the other two sides and mark the position of the mound. One of the lines became the base of the next triangle. etc. The research was eventually able to spread across the country. From time to time, it was essential to check accuracy by measuring another baseline and making other observations. But in theory, as long as the original base is accurately measured and allowances are made for changes in elevation, earth curvature, and refraction, the deviation should never exceed a few centimeters. Although the 1800-2 baselines and triangles were known only as a practice, the principles and procedures remained the same, measured as the Grand Trigonometric Survey (GTS). There were difficulties, difficulties, for example, the lack of suitable hills on the plains, plains. And there were refinements, refinements, like blinkers instead of bars. But Lambton's scheme, based on "sound mathematical principles", actually proved adequate to continue "to an almost indefinite point". Extension'. Equipped with new instruments from England, including the half-ton theodolite, Lambton began his Coast-to-Coast series in 1802. He measured a baseline along the beach at Madras and from there stretched up and down triangles. down on the beach. a short meridian arc, which would give you the curvature of the Earth at that latitude. Then, in 1803, he headed west and two years later reached the Malabar coast, near Mangalore. His measurements showed that the peninsula was 360 miles wide at this point, forty less than current maps indicate. In 1807 he began to extend his triangles south to Cape Comorin to "form a complete skeleton of the peninsula". He tried walking along the coast but found it difficult at Nagore, south of Pondicherry. Work here was interrupted by the height and dense growth of palm trees, which blocked the view on all sides. The difficult and dangerous method of erecting scaffolding on the highest pagodas [temples] and lifting the heavy apparatus with specially designed machines was employed, but without success; No stations with the necessary visibility were found and the Nagore Pagoda was brought down with some difficulty. He decided to move inland and reached Tanjore using more temples. Here this “difficult and dangerous method” ended in disaster, and the entire GTS was in danger. The great spire of Tanjore Temple, 216 feet high, proved irresistible; but when he dragged the half-ton theodolite to the top, the rope that held it to the frame snapped; The theodolite collided with the tower. Lambton records no damage to the temple; he was very worried about his instrument.

The impact was absorbed by the tangential screw and its collet. The box, insufficient to protect it, broke, and the link, instead of being a beautiful circle, was so distorted that everything seemed worthless. It looked like operations would have to be suspended indefinitely. Lambton withdrew to the nearest weapons depot and locked himself in his tent with his beloved theodolite. No one was allowed inside except for a few participants. Then he completely disassembled the instrument [writes his successor] and after cutting a circle of the exact size he wanted on a large flat board, little by little, with the help of wedges, screws and pulleys, he tore off the branch, making it within reach. ; and so, in the course of six weeks, he nearly restored it to its original form. The curved spokes were restored to the correct shape and length by striking them with small wooden mallets. Work can resume. By 1810, Lambton had completed his south end triangulation and was returning to his original coast-to-coast series, extending it to the north. Now in his late sixties, he increasingly left the triangulation to his assistants, focusing his own energy on new baselines and calculations. But no matter how trusted his assistants were, there was still no one who could be considered his natural successor. "Someone with enthusiasm, physique and skill" was urgently needed. necessary. In 1818, the government seized the opportunity and appointed George Everest, a young artilleryman with a talent for mathematics and good experience in surveying. At about the same time, the pending survey reached the Hyderabad survey area and was transferred from the Madras government to the Supreme Government government in Kolkata. It was officially dubbed the Great Trigonometric Survey and sanctioned by its expansion across India to the Himalayas. The future was assured. But Lambton, now a colonel, slowed down. "Men cannot last forever", commented Everest in 1822, "the colonel's illnesses have evidently stained everything but his spirit." long period of time, hardly experienced a difficult, difficult time; this is the case when the human mind is absorbed in efforts that put its energies into action. A man so busy that his time passes imperceptibly&. I will finish my degree with great satisfaction and look back on my years in India with ever-increasing joy. But there was no time to look back. At the age of 70, he embarked on the 400-mile journey across the Deccan from Hyderabad to a new headquarters in Nagpur. He died in his tent eighty kilometers from his destination. "As he always expected death, he died in his post," wrote a later inspector general. -Generally. Everest would be a worthy successor to Lambton in everything but constitution and temperament. While Lambton seemed immune to the Indian climate, Everest succumbed to every fever and never got rid of "my old disease", probably amoebic dysentery. Correspondence from him is replete with detailed bulletins. In 1824 he was temporarily paralyzed and had to be lifted from his seat in the zenith sector. In 1835 his hip cramped up and he recovered only after "the use of a few hundred leeches, poultices administered day and night, day, proper blood collection by cupping, cupping, and a series of soft diets". Three years later, he fell again. once again. I had a serious illness near Sironj last November&. Horrible rheumatic pains in my bones - fever - loss of appetite - appetite - indigestion - indigestion - bowel utterly disturbed - stomach ache utterly impotent stomach - impotent - my power is completely gone - gone - whole system seemingly ruined and undermined forever. I gradually recovered, but to my indescribable astonishment, I found that my

The memory was gone, gone, that my mind was affected, affected, that everything I did or thought during the day haunted me at night, at night, and worst of all, I was oppressed by a terrible fear of a premonition. from evil. . --sick--a horror of being awake in the dark--darkness--and a fear, even wide awake, that some specter or monster of the imagination would come and talk to me, and I thought would surely put an end to the madness. With the exception of five years of vacation in the country of origin (1825-1830), 30), this state of continuous convalescence should not interfere with the progress of the research; but it certainly helped make George Everest one of the ill-tempered sahibs of all time. When he took over the GTS, most of Lambton's assistants quickly resigned. Those who followed them were harassed and bullied mercilessly. Everest seemed incapable of any professional relationship other than revenge. He scolded his local officials, scolded local authorities, and greeted every order from Kolkata with shouts of protest. No man was less likely to doubt the importance of his work, and woe betide anyone who interfered with its smooth running! Any dog ​​or cat that entered their camp was shot on sight, and a commanding officer whose horse was suspected of neighing outside the Inspector General's tent was threatened with a court-martial for disobedience. But if not exactly beloved, Everest enjoyed great professional respect. No one could question his devotion. During twenty years as Superintendent of the GTS, he took Lambton's Triangulation Berar across central India and across the plains of the Comoros to the Ganges and Dehra Dun in the Himalayas. The wild triangular lines that stretch across the mountains were the longest meridian arc ever measured and of immense geodesic importance in calculating the curvature of the Earth. This great arch was Everest Verest's greatest achievement and has formed the backbone of Indian maps ever since. But he did not neglect the rest of the skeleton—skeleton—of the great arch, another series of triangles extended eastwards to Calcutta, and a third began eastwards along the base of the Himalayas. These two were connected by more series of meridians, forming a grid over much of northern India. This was all possible thanks to more accurate instruments, a much larger staff, higher expenses and a host of innovations. Everest discarded Lambton current for baseline measurements in favor of new displacement balancer rods, which eliminated stretch-induced stress. The first time these rods were used was for the Calcutta baseline measured in 1832. 1832 . A sketch of the process by James Prinsep, who has always been fascinated by such things, shows the rods mounted on cassettes and supported by tripods, as in Lambton's day; in the background you can see one of the towers built at each end of the line. Towers became an essential part of the topography of the northern plains. With a thick haze of smoke and dust covering the ground, without exception, and without handygopurams or handygopurams or mounds, towers of bamboo scaffolding twenty meters high were erected, as well as some masonry towers for the main trigonometry stations. Even so, clear vision was rarely possible at a distance of fifty miles. Therefore, Everest introduced the use of heliotropes - heliotropes - mirrors that reflect the sun - the sun - for daytime work and blue flares for night work. He also pioneered what he called "ray tracing": fixed telescopes aimed at distant explosions. Accuracy was now overwhelming. The difference between the baseline at Dehra Dun, measured on the ground and triangulated from a baseline at the great arc 40,4000 miles away, was only 7.2 inches. Sir Clements Markham would hail the completion of Everest's great meridian arc as "one of the most astonishing feats in the entire history of science". But in terms of human effort and scientific achievement, the series of northeastern Himalayan triangles along the base of the Himalayas was no less remarkable. Started by Everest, completed by

his successor, Andrew Waugh, who is credited with definitively determining the height of the Himalayas and discovering the highest point on Earth. According to Markham, the northeast Himalayan series involved "much greater dangers and difficulties of execution than in most Indian campaigns"; it was "the most desperate undertaking, and the average carnage was greater than in many battles". As the Nepalese refused to cooperate, reconnaissance had to be done through the dreaded Terai, a belt of jungle and swamp between the plains and the foothills. Between 1845 and 1850 five surveyors worked on this series. Of these, two died of fever, two were forced to withdraw, and only Waugh survived. In just one season forty native helpers fell victim to the weather, in another a whole topographical command had to be "transferred to Gorakhpur in a helpless state of fever". But somehow the series was completed, and from the main firing stations it was finally possible to triangulate the exact position and elevation of the snowy peaks along the northern horizon. While the British were in India, the height of the Himalayas and their distance from the plains were the subject of intense speculation. From near Patna, John Marshall observed "very high hills in the north" in 1671. They seemed farther away than "any object that my eyes ever saw", perhaps, he thought, as far as 300 miles away. According to travelers he met, Armenians who are from China and have traveled to most countries in the world, and these lower hills [meaning Bhutan, meaning Tibet] are the highest hills I have ever seen or heard of. . . Sir William Jones saw the Himalayas for the first time on his journey to Benares. Just after sunset on October 5, 1784, I had a clear view of Chumalury Peak [possibly Chomolhari in Bhutan] and the adjacent Tibetan mountains of Bhagalpur. According to the most accurate calculations I could make, the horizontal distance at which it was clearly visible must have been at least 244 British miles. Taking into account other recent observations, Jones boldly asserted that "from Bhagalpur we have seen the highest mountains in the world, not excluding the Andes". As so many times before, he was right—good—but few in Europe would budge again. Interestingly, it was the mountain on the island of Tenerife that was then considered the highest, at least in the Old World: “The peaks of Nepal cannot be less high than the peak of Tenerife”, ventured William Kirkpatrick in 1793. from Nepal, none other than the ubiquitous Dr. Buchanan, fresh from his road inspection in Mysore, declared the mountains "of enormous height"; with his partner Major Crawford he attempted to measure eight peaks - peaks - "Result: 11,000 to 20,000 feet above observation stations." The day. In 1807 he measured the peaks of Nanda Devi and Trisul from the plain. Having given the basis for his calculations, he fully agreed with Jones' judgment. Two of these mountains will therefore be more than five vertical miles above the level of the plain on which I was standing. For the moment I must postpone any further comment or calculation until I can compare my observations with those of Major Crawford, who observed the same mountains in Nepal, and with observations made in the Andes in South America, and on the summit of Tenerife & but I myself I am confident that I can show that the mountains of Tibet are not only higher than any other in the ancient hemisphere, but also in the known world. In 1816 Colebrooke decided that the point was not in question. He had just discovered that Dhaulagiri was 26,862 feet tall; the Himalayas were considerably higher than the Andes and

it could be described as "the highest mountain range in the Alps ever seen". Surveyors working after the Gurkha War agreed, stating that there were at least twenty peaks higher than Chimborazo, considered the highest of the Andean peaks, in Garhwal alone. But local salon geographers were far from satisfied with this. The problem with all these calculations was that they were based on observations made from positions whose distances from each other had not been precisely determined. Until the base of the triangles was established on the distant peaks, measured from the ground or even determined trigonometrically, the results would certainly be doubtful. This is of course where the work of Lambton, Everest and Waugh came into play. With the completion of the northeast Himalayan suicide chain, a network of impeccably accurate baselines stretched just below the mountains. In the late 1840s and early 1850s, Waugh triangulated the elevations and locations of 79 peaks. Some had names, the rest numbers. The tallest of all, measured at 29,002 feet above sea level, was No. XV. On Waugh's recommendation, it was named Mount Everest in honor of his former boss.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN An Idolatrous Affection

As large as the previous edition of the British Academy was, it had to cover many meters of library shelves with all the works that at the time could not be considered a classic. There are some notable productions in the memoir and travelogue genre, e.g. B. The Travels of Bishop Heber Travels; but somehow writers on architecture, sculpture, archeology, geography, and even history have failed to produce much remarkable merit. For the most part, they confided their findings to the journals of Asian societies or included them in official reports. When considered as a separate volume, the most influential literary format seems to have been the state dictionary. It was as if the facts and findings spoke for themselves; the cake needed no frosting. However, an exception must be made for two monumental works written by Colonel James Tod. Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan and Rajasthan and Travels in Western India, in India, although their titles sound different, are actually sister books. Both are part art history and part travelogue; the second simply extends the field of study to Gujerat and therefore to the entire West Indies. Its 1,500 pages together occupied Death for sixteen years. The common reader may find the profusion of unfamiliar names and places intimidating; the India expert can poke fun at Tod's often uncritical approach; but no one could deny that this was finally a true classic, instructive, full of conviction and extremely readable, a work worthy of standing alongside Gibbon and Carlyle. The depth of Tod's scholarship and his breadth of vision are remarkable for a man whose education was ordinary and whose career was as active and demanding as any other. But even more surprising is her great command of language and her deep sympathy for the subject that inspires her. The long periods of rumbling, like distant thunder, thunder somehow evoke the vast skies of the western deserts, the well-crafted phrase evoking the simple harmony of a camel and rider silhouette. There are a number of classical and medieval metaphors which lend an additional degree of conviction to the deeds described. Death wrote from the bottom of his heart. Earth. The Rajput clans, whose martial traditions make up the lion's share of annals and antiquities, owned antiquities, they gained more than their sympathetic curiosity. "In 'In a Rajput I always recognize a friend'", he confided; and for Mewar, the most famous of the Rajput principalities (capital of Chitor and later Udaipur), he felt both filial loyalty and paternal care. I regard Mewar as my adopted country, and, together with all the associations of my early hopes and their actual fulfilment, I am inclined to exclaim to her and her rebellious children, 'Mewar, with all her faults, I still love you.' don't worry'. Tod's close identity with a people not even part of British India has shaped his career as much as his books. Born in London, he came to India in 1799 at the age of 17 as a military cadet. Six years later, he was assigned to escort the British agent to the court of the Maratha chief Daulat Rao Scindia Scindia of Gwalior. The Marathas were lords of most of Rajasthan, whose Rajput princes, despised by the British and hopelessly divided between them, proved easy prey. Stuck. In 1806, Tod made his first visit to Udaipur, where he witnessed the final degradation of the Maharana of Mewar, the descendant of the Rajputs. The scene was terribly intriguing. The Maharana, a weak but noble figure, was at the mercy of not only the Marathas, but various other adventurers as well; and at its gates its natural allies, the Rajputs

The chiefs of Jodhpur and Jaipur fought for their daughter's hand and a share of the loot. Guided by evil advisers, he finally agreed to the assassination of his beloved Kishna Kumari as the only way out of the stalemate and as the only chance to preserve Rajput independence. But no man was found to deal the fatal blow; and in a scene adapted for the Italian opera, "the flower of Rajasthan" took the poisoned cup and emptied it three times before "falling asleep in a dream from which he never awoke". to wake up'. Tod was so moved by all this that he apparently decided to champion the Rajput cause right away. But so far there was little he could do; and between 1806 and 1817 Mewar was devastated by the Marathas as never before. Tod kept abreast of events through a network of informants that covered the entire West Indies. He became the East India Company's leading official in the region, and when British protection was finally granted to the Rajputs in 1817, Tod was appointed political agent in western Rajasthan. His return to Udaipur through burned villages and overgrown fields was a pitiful progress. Everything was desolate; even the traces of people's footsteps were erased. On the country roads grew the babuol (Mimosa arabica, arabica) and the gigantic reeds that sheltered the wild boar and the tiger; and every high ground revealed a mass of ruins. Bhilwara, the commercial center of Rajasthan, which was home to 6,000 families ten years ago, showed no sign of existence. All was silent in the streets, streets, no, nothing alive to be seen, except a lone dog that fled in dismay from its perch in the Temple of Death, frightened by the unknown sight of man. a practical mission to gain the trust of the Rajput princes and restore the peace and prosperity the country had not known since the advent of Islam. A measure of its success can be understood from the comments of Bishop Heber, who was traveling safely through the western deserts just eight years later. By this time Bhilwara was prospering again; it had a greater display of trade, industry, and moderate but general wealth and comforts than I had seen since I left Delhi. The streets were full of Hacke Hackeries laden with flour and corn, the shops stocked with all kinds of wool, felt, cotton and household goods, &c. --ganj" - "but there is no need for us to ever forget this". It was the same story of "death" in the Rajput states. Time after time, Kotwals Kotwals (village leaders) would ask us after "Tod Sahib" if your health had improved since his return to England, and whether there was any chance of seeing him again. poor people loved him. Indeed, he loved the people of this country and understood their language and manners to a most unusual degree. Tod's merit in political and economic reconstruction was one thing, but even more important was upholding the customs and traditions of the country. people. He recognized the ancient warrior race of Hindu India in the Rajputs. They were a feudal aristocratic aristocracy, as steeped in chivalric traditions and as passionate about war epics as King Arthur and his knights. Tod dug into their history and, as Mackenzie, Mackenz, found a lot of material. There were not only ruins, inscriptions and coins, but also a wealth of literary and oral evidence, in particular the poems of the bard Chand, "the Rajput Homer, the Indian Ossian". Ossian'. While exploring the ruins of Chitor, Tod heard stories of their heroic defenses and tragic surrenders. In Udaipur, on the waters of Lake Peshola Peshola, he sat in the palace on Lake Jagnivas and listened to the ancient epics, just like the princes of Udaipur two centuries earlier.

Here they listened to the bard's tales as they slept their midday opiate amidst the cool breezes of the lake, exhaling delicious odors from the myriad lotuses that covered the surface of the water; and when the potion's vapors evaporated, they opened their eyes to a landscape that not even their inspirations could frame with likeness; the vast waters of the Peshola, with its jagged and wooded banks, receding to the last vantage point where the Temple of Brinpoori loomed over the pass of the gigantic Aravalli, the field of their fathers' exploits. Through the rocky passes of many ambushes, Morte traced the story of his desperate encounters with Muslims and later Maratha enemies. In the marble and mirrored halls of Amber and Jodhpur he heard whispered tales of court intrigues and harem scandals. And in the libraries of Jaipur and Bikaner he traced the chronologies and records. If he was romantic, it wasn't surprising. He not only studied the past, but revived it. That romantic approach wasn't out of place either. In their palaces and paintings, as well as in their history and poetry, the Rajputs demonstrated their love of Palestinian pageantry, decor, and surroundings. By rescuing and recording such traditions -traditions- and above all by revering them and recognizing them as still vital -vital- Tod Tod restored to the Rajputs a racial pride that stricter scientific standards would simply have destroyed. In short, Death single-handedly did for the Rajputs what several generations of scholars would have had to do for the people of India as a whole. Foreword to Travels in Western Indiahe Indiahe reaffirmed his commitment to the Rajput cause, but with one important addition. I labored heart and soul for one [Annals and Antiquities] and Antiquities], and with the same idolatrous affection for the subject I abandoned all pursuit, all thought of these [journeys] [journeys], in the hope of helping those Rajputs to publicize their works; but I stop for a while on the shores of Rajasthan and lead my reader to the slightly less interesting region of Saurashtra and the mountains sacred to Jain monotheists. Jains are traditionally the administrators, traders and bankers of the West Indies. Tod was already in debt for his scholarship. Their main Pandit Panditwas was a Jain and had located entire libraries of Jain texts. ("One can only regret," he wrote in a thinly-veiled reply to Macaulay's tirades, "the arrogant vanity which has led to the claim that Hindus have no historical record"). they were once numerous throughout India; but now they only survive in scattered niches concentrated around their main places of worship. These places used to be high hills on or around which the Jains carved their colossal nude statues and erected their delicate little temples. Gwalior, Parasnath (Bihar) and Sravana Belgola were typical examples; but the most important were in the West Indies, and of these the most famous was the isolated Mount Abu, 5,000 feet high, rising in the western desert. Tod was determined to see this famous shrine before leaving Rajasthan. By 1822 he was a very sickly man (as Everest seems to have suffered from permanent dysentery). Ysentery). But he decided to turn his trip to Bombay into something of a Jain pilgrimage. He visited Mount Girnar, dotted with whitewashed temples, and there he first discovered the famous Ashoka rock inscription. He also explored the ruins of Anhilwara and discovered a pointed arch which he, like Havell, almost a century later regarded as proof that the Jains and Hindus had anticipated the architects of Islam. But Abu, without a visit from any Europeans, was his biggest target. It was almost noon when I passed through the Seetla Mata pass, and as the craggy peak of Mount Abu opened before me, my heart was pounding with joy as I shouted "Eureka" with the Sage of Syracuse. "Eureka".

Too weak to climb "Indian Olympus", Tod accepted the offer of a ride in a pilgrim's chair. So they carried it, swinging on a bamboo pole, pulling it out of the desert bushes through dense jungle and steep cliffs to the undulating meadows and forests of the summit plateau. On 14 June 1822, he was "lying down with a high fever and unable to articulate" next to the mango grove where the Dilwara temple complex stands. This is undoubtedly the most magnificent of all the temples in India and there is no other building than the Taj Mahal that can come close. Pen is unable to describe the exuberant beauty of this proud monument of the Jains. The whole is of pure white marble, every column, dome and altar varying in form and ornament, the richness and delicacy of the workmanship indescribable. The keenest admirer of sober design need not fear that his taste will be shocked by the accumulation of detail and detail, or that the minuteness of the ornaments will lessen the enormous dignity of the whole; on the contrary, when we consider that all this splendor is located on the top of an isolated mountain on the edge of the desert, today inhabited by a humble and semi-civilized few [again the Bhils tribe], the association cannot fail to see it to increase the feeling of wonder Wonder. Like many subsequent visitors, Tod could not understand the beauty of the temples. “The blinding rays of a perpendicular sun, reflected on the marble pavement, led me to the square in search of refuge.” The domes, cupolas and columns, walls and floors are all white marble; They catch the light and there eliminate the glare, the glassy luster quality, the effect of glaciers. bright as a diamond. But design and embellishment are easily overlooked in what is essentially a physical experience. Like death, you stagger in the deep shadow of a mango tree, your eyes teary and your senses seduced by the incredible smoothness of the marble tiles. “Now that my pilgrimage is over,” wrote Tod, “I feel satisfied; It is one of my wishes that I fulfilled.” He retired to his bed, bed, feverish, but with a copy of the Ramayana in his hand. theRamayana.Next The next morning he was worse. "Grandfather has completely destroyed me, the fever is red hot, my hands and face are terribly swollen." The European traveler must be suspicious of his physical abilities on this alluring mountain." After toying so much with his health, he was understandably persistent in his discovery. Others, including Heber, published Abu's account before his was published. But "the discovery was mine; Abu I first assigned a local address and name; and if I am a little jealous of my rights in this matter, it is the only reward for the work I have done, and no small deterioration in health and pocket. bear' To the man who initiated the study of Indian coins, who helped to solve the Ashoka script, who tied much of India's medieval history together, and most importantly, who rescued the Rajputs from obscurity and turned their history into one of India's noblest monuments. less blessed with British learning, the discovery of the temples of Abu was a very fitting reward. What Death did for the Rajputs, others would do for all tribes and castes of India. For example, Joseph Cunningham, brother of the Archaeological Surveyor's Surveyor, wrote the first history of the Sikhs, and Edgar Thurston Thurston compiled a comprehensive handbook on all the tribes and castes of southern India. The country's extraordinary human diversity was a constant source of wonder and fascinated even the first visitors. John Marshall of the group of "Yogis" and "Mairmaids" was very interested in the tribal people of Nepal who descended on the plains of the plains in winter. As they have never known shoes, "nothing will hurt them if they step on them, because they are like hooves on the soles". He commented "but few rabbits [sic] in their beards" and attributed a very nasty habit to women. It is generally assumed that women in Nepal urinate in the street in front of people during the day,

what am I inclined to believe, as I was in Hajipur, where many women come from Nepal, I saw a woman (passing me as I was walking) who, almost as soon as she passed me, fell down in the middle of the square sitting right on my forward and angry. Nepal must become one of the classic fields of ethnological research. This was due in part to its geography, which kept its various tribes isolated and separate; but it also owes much to the presence of that remarkable scholar Brian Hodgson there and in Darjeeling for nearly forty years. Hodgson's contributions to the discovery of India span so many different subjects and span so many years that one might think he is dealing with several different people, perhaps members of the same family, with a long connection with the Himalayas. But no, Hodgson Hodgson, whose collections of Nepali and Tibetan texts earned him the title "founder of the true study of Buddhism", was also Hodgson the naturalist, naturalist, "father of Indian zoology", Hodgson the ethnologist, "the supreme" . "authority over the native races of India", and Hodgson Hodgson, promoter of Indian vernaculars and protagonist of Macaulay. "I doubt that any Englishman of our century," wrote his biographer, "receives so many prizes from so many learned bodies, representing both the academic and the scientific side of inquiry." His name was revered in the Linnaean Society and the Royal Society, the Ethnological Society and the Zoological Society, as well as the purely Orientalist societies of India, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and the United States. No man better embodied Sir William Jones's vision of the study of the native peoples of India, no man than Brian better embodied the spirit of Indian discovery. in 1800, Houghton Hodgson had barely arrived in India when his health failed. He was advised to immediately return to England and find another career; and doubtless would have done so had it not been necessary to support his impoverished parents and their several other children. Instead, he chose to serve in the Himalayas, especially Kathmandu, where the climate was considered temperate enough for his delicate build. And there he remained in self-imposed exile for twenty-four years. As a resident assistant and later a resident at the court of Nepal, he was rarely in the company of more than two of his countrymen. The frequent animosity and infighting of the Nepalese, coupled with the often unsympathetic attitude of the Calcutta government, made his position as dangerous as it was lonely. But somehow he survived. He fought loneliness not only by immersing himself in his studies, but also by the method, however much frowned upon, of "entering into a domestic aesthetic connection" with a young Muslim woman. They had two children, to whom Hodgson Hodgs was devoted. In 1833 he wrote to his sister describing his various pursuits. Activities. Country antiques give me much entertainment; I think of the picturesque, sculptural, and architectural monuments of Buddhism. But the past interests me mainly because it can be used to illustrate people's present, present, origins, genius, character and achievements. His first work was not on ancient Buddhism but on modern Buddhists, and this extremely practical approach influenced all of his research. He attributed Nepal's chronic instability to the underemployment of its workforce. Trade was a possible solution, and he was desperate to find new markets and trade routes. More important, however, was his recognition of the martial traditions of the people; Until an outlet could be found for their fighting spirit, peace would always have to be fragile. Hodgson studied each of the tribes in detail and as early as 1833 wrote an article about them for the Asiatic Society and Compa Company forces. The Gurkha regiments of the Indian Army and later the British Army are among his least expected legacies.

Aside from the Gurkhas, Hodgson's main interest in ethnology was India's most primitive people, the aboriginal tribes. Before the Aryans, before the Indus Valley people, perhaps even before the Dravidians, there were strata of indigenous peoples whose modern representatives still survive in the jungles of southern and central India and in the hidden valleys of the eastern Himalayas. Alone in the Himalayas, he discovered and studied a large number of its hitherto unknown peoples. He collected the vocabulary and grammar of their unwritten languages, noted down their customs and beliefs, and measured their skulls. Through circulating questionnaires, he continued to expand his investigations into the subcontinent, finally reaching Ceylon and the Indus. In twenty-one papers submitted to the Asiatic Society, he identified all the major regions, from the Nilgiris to the Himalayas, where aboriginal tribes still survived, and examined their anthropological and linguistic affinities. There was still much work to be done, but as in so many other areas, Hodgson paved the way, set the direction for future research, and inspired others to follow. Meanwhile, he increasingly conformed to the ideal of the Himalayan sage. By 1839 he had given up meat and alcohol and, as a Brahmin, lived on a strictly vegetarian diet. He owes his success in Nepal as much to his reputation as a guru as to his political acumen. When he was relieved of his office on account of inconsistencies in Lord Ellenborough's policy, he simply moved a few hundred miles east and a few thousand feet to Darjeeling, then an equally remote place. And there, in a house on a hill, half lost in the clouds, he continued his studies for another thirteen years, reclusive and increasingly "Himalayan hermit." Himalayas'.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Wondrous Woven of Nature

I am proud that the same 1833 letter to his sister did not describe or make room for all of Hodgson's various Buddhist studies or ethnological researches, but for the "delights" of natural history. Zoology amuses me a lot in the field of birds and quadrupeds&. I have a wild tiger, a wild sheep, a wild goat, four bears, three civets, and twenty-three of our beautiful [Himalayan] pheasants. And my drawings now reach 2,000. Hodgson being considered the father of Indian zoology in the mid-19th century may seem odd given that the country's wildlife has always been one of his main attractions. Visitors to the Mughal court in the 18th century invariably sent back wide-eyed accounts of the emperor's 14,000 elephants, elephants, camels and cheetahs and his "unicorns" or "rhinos" (which are animals as big as the finest oxen that England has to offer). ). The skins are silvery or, as it were, in folds on the back. The same author, Edward Terry, paid special attention to elephants. The elephants. Although they were no longer considered legendary beasts, they were still virtually unknown in Europe; Europe; Terry felt compelled to provide a description - no, not an easy task - task - of his anatomy. Their trunks are long gray snouts that hang between their teeth, also called hands by some, which they use at all times. The male's testicles are on the forehead, the female's teats between the tiger's forepaws, full of testicles. But then again, the whole question of where the elephants' reproductive organs were located and how these strange creatures could mate was perhaps India's biggest zoological mystery. John Marshall, with his talent for discerning the curious and the controversial, devoted the subject to special study. Mr. Hatton says that with elephants, when they have intercourse, the male mounts the female as a horse mounts a mare, and puts his yard under the female's belly, folding her over again (he delights in this ⅓ part of the final), it inserts itself into the female in that part that distinguishes her sex, which is located under the abdomen; Stomach; Which used to be a wonder how they should produce, and some said it was a woman to a man, and others that the woman should kneel, &c. Marshall was on the right track; but the theory of their face-to-face mating survived until the 19th century, and in 1903 the Zoological Society of London published an article on the subject. Like Hodgson, many Englishmen of an earlier generation formed their own zoos. Jones himself, with his tiger cub, his flocks of sheep and goats and his tortoise, had such a thing. William Carey, another great Sanskrit and promoter of the Bengali language, maintained a small zoo, the Duke of Wellington kept and studied cheetahs, and his brother Lord Wellesley, the Governor General, established the first official menagerie at New York State House. in 1804. Wellesley attaches great importance to natural history and asks the East India Company to provide funds for his research. "Many of the commonest quadrupeds and birds of this country are wholly unknown to the naturalist, or have been incompletely and inaccurately described. The illustration and improvement of this important branch of natural history is worthy of the acceptable bounty and generosity of the East India Company, and should necessarily render the world the highest service." commissioned a magnificent

of around 3000 drawings of plants, birds and animals, and installed the tireless Dr. Francisco

Buchanan, later a contributor to the Mysore Survey, as superintendent of the wild zoo. Buchanan has done a noble job of collecting and describing hundreds of species; Species; but with his leave and Wellesley's dismissal, the first impulse failed to materialize. The Governor-General's plan did not impress the East India Company, and the Government House zoo degenerated into an amusement park. Another obstacle in the development of the scientific study of Indian fauna was the exceptionally discouraging attitude of Sir William Jones. Nothing more clearly shows the great man's influence on the course of Indological studies, and nothing better illustrates his extraordinarily human attitude. In his 10th anniversary address to the Asiatic Society, he made his position clear. If figure, instincts, and qualities could be determined without inflicting pain on the object of our examination, few studies would offer us more solid instruction or more exquisite pleasure; but I could never know by what right, or with what feeling, a naturalist can cause pain to an innocent bird, and perhaps leave her young to die in a cold nest, because she has variegated plumage; or take away a butterfly's natural joy because it is unlucky enough to be rare or beautiful. Undoubtedly, this deep compassion had a lot to do with the reverence for life that permeates all Indian religions and cultures and that Jones had imbibed so deeply. It was certainly never said; and given the tragic consequences of neglecting it, it may be regretted that any nobler Indian zoology ever advanced beyond the stage of the zoo. But to Hodgson's credit, at least he didn't confuse science and sport. As with all of his other "amusements", he was entirely self-taught, but in studying each species he paid meticulous attention to detail and structure. This could only be achieved by dissecting and analyzing dead specimens. But he was also a great field naturalist, fully aware of the importance of observing behavior and habitat, and an excellent collector. His menagerie included some of the rarest Himalayan goats and pheasants, and he is the only man known to have domesticated an Indian jackal. In 1833 he tried to send part of his collection to the Zoological Society of London. The death rate among sea creatures in zoos was staggering at the time. An Indian gaur (or bison) sent by the Asiatic Society had just perished at sea, and a rhinoceros on the same cargo voyage had first wreaked havoc on deck, and then, when a storm broke out, the captain thought he must be stopped. smart to throw it overboard. 'oh verbosity'. Hodgson's specimens fared no better. One of the deer jumped overboard, the other fell dead against the bars of its cage. The ship reached the coldest northern latitudes, where one by one they died. In all, his zoological studies resulted in 127 articles, most of which were published in the journals of the Asiatic Society. The first, in 1826, was an account of the "Chiru, or unicorn, of the Himalayas", and the last, in 1858, was a description of a new species of Himalayan mole. Long-legged thrushes, cat-footed plantigrades, Tibetan badgers, and the fifteen species of Nepalese woodpeckers - woodpeckers - were water for his insatiable search. Drawings by him, now in the Zoological Society of London, form the most complete folio of Himalayan fauna, and his collection of specimens, now in the Muse or Natural History, number 10,500. He was the first to describe about 39 new species of mammals and about 150 new species of birds. The issue of claiming and naming new species was a particularly sensitive point. Hodgson was an advocate of accurate description and careful identification. He hesitated to announce new discoveries until he had examined at least two or three specimens. But some of his are contemporary.

they were less conscious. “If anyone who happens to lay his hands on a single wrinkled skin can immediately announce a new animal,” wrote Hodgson in 1836, “the true naturalist must be content to leave what is called discovery to the mere nomenclature; and science must continue to groan under an ever-increasing weight of fictitious species.” Three years later, he became even more embittered, even highlighting the zoological societies with the announcement of a new species of cuckoo. Among the many new birds I sent to London a few years ago, when I was young enough to imagine that learned societies existed only for the selfless advancement of science, was a very unique form of Cucuculus. cucuculus.Unceremoniously Unceremoniously, like many of my other novelties that I have appropriated, this one still remains, I believe, undescribed, and therefore I request that a description and outline of it be sent. Hodgson's successor in the fields of zoology and ornithology was Edward Blyth, curator of the Asiatic Society Museum of Natural History from 1841 to 1863. 63. If Hodgson was the Jones of ornithology, Blyth was its prince. As a struggling pharmacist in Tooting, London, he developed a passion for studying and dissecting birds. When the pharmacy failed, he sailed to Calcutta and accepted the underpaid, overworked, and underappreciated position of museum curator. And in this humble position he remained until finally, after twenty years, his health broke down. He contributed some forty scholarly articles to the Society's journal and cataloged its entire collection. More important was the encouragement he gave to all aspiring naturalists in India. I like that, but Prinsep was an inveterate correspondent. A request for specimens was made for athletes and animal lovers; and soon came stuffed birds and skins, drawings and descriptions from every corner of India. He worked 24 hours a day, annotating them, cataloging them, publishing them – and begging for more. He became a walking encyclopedia ridiculed by some but revered by others, including Charles Darwin, who shared his love of pure science. The catalog of the Society's collection was incomplete when he was forced to withdraw. It was taken over by TC Jerdon, an army doctor from Madras. In the 1860s, Jerdon published the first standard manuals on The Birds of India and India and The Mammals of India. Twenty India. Twenty years later, the government commissioned another series on The Fauna of India, with geologist WT Blanford as editor. Jerdon recorded around 242 mammals, but by Blanford's time that number had grown to over 4,000. However, the decline in the number and distribution of the most distinct species was already evident. Indian zoology probably owes as much to the improvement of firearms as it does to Hodgson's example or Blyth's encouragement. When the matchlock gave way to the breechloader and the breechloader gave way to the ex-press express rifle, sport and science gained enormous popularity. Unfortunately, in India, as elsewhere, no distinction was made between the two, and Jerdon, for example, was able to devote much of his entry onsus onsus indicusto indicus to a lyrical description of minced pork. Accounts of men like Tod, Buchanan and Mackenzie, marching and counter-marching across the subcontinent in their various roles in the early 19th and 19th centuries, clearly show that tigers were a terrible nightmare. Buchanan Buchanan documents entire villages and fields abandoned by devastation. Alexander Alexandrer tells the same story from the area around Ajanta and until the 1860s, Blanford claims that in Bengal alone, tigers killed nearly a thousand people a year. Leopards can also be just as deadly; one is said to have killed 200 people in two years. And that, of course, was just the cannibals, cannibals, perhaps one of hundreds in all; but they all hunted domestic cattle. The government had instituted a reward system that could reach fifty

rupees for a tiger to encourage local hunters; sport sahibs sport sahibs needed no encouragement. But in Jerdon's time, in the 1860s, this apparently had little effect; "Tiger numbers appear to have declined only slightly." In the 1880s, it was a different story. Blanford noted that "in the last twenty or thirty years these destructive animals have greatly diminished in numbers, and in parts of the country where they were once common, they have now become rare, or in some cases even disappeared." Obviously, Blanford didn't take this as cause for concern, but as congratulations. Twenty years later, Lord Curzon, like his predecessors, would religiously observe the ceremonial tiger hunting rituals. While no man understood the need to preserve India's monuments better than Curzon, it is doubtful that any Anglo-Indian appreciated the need to conserve their wildlife. The Indian lion, found by Tod in Rajasthan and reported from Heber to Punjab in the north and from Cunningham to Bharhut in the east, was "almost extinct" in Blanford's time and confined only to the Gir forest of Saurashtra, where it survived. . - survived - straight. Just. The rhinoceros found by Emperor Babur in the Indus and found in the Terai still in Jerdon's time dwindled to just 473 specimens in y Blanford's time, all in Assam. Even the killing of elephants is sometimes rewarded by the government. The idea that fauna and country were as much a part of their national heritage as Sanskrit, or that they inspired so many artistic masterpieces like the story of Buddha, seems to have occurred neither to naturalists nor to orientalists. A much happier story is that of the discovery of Indian flora. For a trading conglomerate like the East India Company, the country's productions and the extent to which they could be improved and expanded were vital. Subject. It was the spices of the Malabar coast that attracted the first Europeans, and it was opium, indigo, cotton, tea and jute that successively financed the British Raj. Therefore, botanical studies had great practical and commercial value, in addition to the purely scientific one, and were financed accordingly. Sir William and Lady Jones may regard botany as "the best and most comprehensive department of the natural sciences", but they also looked on with satisfaction at the founding of the Calcutta Botanical Gardens in 1786. A similar institution already existed in Madras, and it was from there that William Roxburgh came to Calcutta in 1793 to take over as superintendent. Roxburgh, 'Indian Linnaeus', 'the father of Indian botany', was like Francis Buchanan, Buchanan, a Scotsman and originally a surgeon in the Company's navy. Of course it wasn't a coincidence. The best medical schools were in Scotland and herbalism was still an important part of medicine. Indeed, botany has been incorporated into the medical curriculum. But whereas Buchanan essentially became an itinerant fieldworker, collecting and mapping his way through Burma, Mysore, Nepal and Bihar, Roxburgh was a scientist and horticulturist who studied, catalogued, landscaped and experimented with new varieties. For twenty years he transformed the Garden of Calcutta into the largest and most scientifically organized garden in Asia. Like the great banyan tree at its center, constantly spreading more branches and roots to cover an area a quarter of a mile in circumference, the gardens under Roxburgh's care grew from a collection of 300 species to one of 3,500. he set up a herbarium and trained a number of Indian artists in the scientific drawings of plants, an area where the supposed genius of the Indians could be harnessed to portray the minutest detail. When Roxburgh retired in 1814, around 2,500 panels had been completed. There were also two manuscript books, one a catalog of gardens containing at least 500 species new to science, the other an unfinished flora, unfinished flora indica. indicates. The latter was eventually edited and edited by William Carey the Orientalist and Nathanial Wallich. After a brief period when Francis Buchanan took over Calcutta

Nathaniel Wallich. After a brief period when Francis Buchanan took over Calcutta

Garten became Wallich's new superintendent and held the position for thirty years. He originally came to India as a surgeon in the Danish settlement of Serampore, upriver from Calcutta. But when the British finally found an excuse to expel the Danes in 1813, Wallich was captured and later rehabilitated in recognition of his botanical knowledge. Though perhaps less scholarly than Roxburgh, he proved to be an even greater traveler and collector than Buchanan, visiting Nepal, Singapore, Penang and Burma, and all of India's most botanically interesting regions. However, his greatest contribution to science was the dissemination of his herbarium in Europe, which includes about 8,000 different species, along with a large number of seeds and plants. Joseph Hooker called it "the most valuable contribution of its kind ever made to science". In one fell swoop, Wallich made the flora of “the most diverse botanical area in the world” accessible to botanists in Europe. Balloon'. It only remained to create a standard work on the theme. The Flora of Roxburgh The Flora Indicawas of Roxburgh was far from exhaustive and in any case incomplete. Several other works on the flora of specific areas appeared, and Thomas Thomson, another Scottish medicinal botanist, and Joseph Hooker began to use them, building up their own North Indian and Himalayan collections for a new Flora nova Flora Indica in the 1990s. 1850 Volume One appeared in 1855, with Thomson himself covering the costs. It was hoped that the government would see the value of the work and finance the remaining volumes. But at this rate, Thomson expected the edition to grow to around 12,000 twenty more volumes. The government hesitated, was called to take over the Calcutta Botanical Gardens, and the project fell into disuse. However, it was not forgotten and in 1870 it was revived on a reduced scale by Hooker. With official support and a new team of collaborators, he worked at Kew Gardens for another twenty-seven years until the last of the seven volumes of Indian of Indian Flora is Flora was published. Hooker, the greatest of all British botanists and a friend and colleague of Darwin, made botanical forays into India, Nepal and Tibet; but he never served in India and never had reason to identify with the country. In Darjeeling he was privileged to endear himself to Brian Hodgson and even stay at his home. Hodgson became "one of my dearest friends on earth", naming a famous rhododendron and one of its children after him. But it seems doubtful that Hooker really understood the strange passion that fired such a man. The botanist was all youthful enthusiasm and curiosity. Hodgson, now surrounded by cats and shunning any company, seemed incredibly distant and eccentric, lost in his books and his various research. The age difference between the two men was seventeen years, but it could have been fifty. Hooker represented all that was modern in terms of science and scholarship, Hodgson recalled the older, broader traditions and looser disciplines of Jones or Mackenzie. Meanwhile, other botanical gardens sprang up in different parts of India along the lines of Madras and Calcutta. In Saharanpur Saharanpur, northeast of Delhi, another Scottish medicinal botanist, John Forbes Ro Royle, yle, assembled an important collection of plants from Kashmir and the western Himalayas. The Saharanpur Garden was housed in what was once a Mughal garden, and although it was intended as much for research as for convenience, it certainly provided useful experience for the eventual salvation of the more famous Mughal gardens. The beautiful sunken flower beds between the Dig palaces in Rajasthan provide an even better example than the Taj of how the formality of a Mughal garden could be complemented by the horticultural and botanical skills of the British. Later in the 19th century, Saharanpur became famous for its collection of fruit trees.

Similarly, Madras Gardens focused on growing tobacco, pepper and cardamom.

All the gardens were, in effect, government research stations as well as recreational groves, and from them emanated the constant flow of seeds and seedlings that gradually changed the pattern of Indian agriculture. Agriculture. In 1835 Hodgson proclaimed from Kathmandu: "I cut and dig and sow potatoes and oats, oats, yea, with my own hands." Overnight, the extent of his influence in the country could still be clearly gauged by examining the spread of the potato. Bishop Heber agreed, deeming it "perhaps the most valuable gift [in this case, the Kumaon people] are likely to receive from their new masters". He was not so much denigrating the benefits of the British government as extolling the virtues of this new addition to the staple diet. Of course, all this happened before the arrival of more famous products. Back in Saharanpur, Royle advocated the introduction of a Peruvian tree known as the chinchona. The name comes from a Spanish countess who was cured of a fever by ingesting a liquid made from its bark. In the 1880s, Clements Markham revived Royle's idea, and through the Botanical Botanical Gardens, Chinchona successfully established itself in India. Like quinine, it did as much to reduce deaths from malaria as DDT did later. Another crop that Hodgson, among others, experimented with was the tea plant. As early as 1778, Sir Joseph Banks, the great naturalist and promoter of exploration, had recommended the Orient as bushes, a crop which it would be profitable to introduce into India. He even suggested that the seeds or some Chinese pots be imported into India as well. Banks Banks carried Lord Macartney's mission to China, the same as Dr. Dinwiddie and the research instruments eventually purchased by Lambton, which included Lambton, to investigate this possibility. Seeds and plants were apparently transferred to the Calcutta Garden, and in 1819 Dr. Wallich gave both to an official eager to sample the harvest in Assam. But the real breakthrough came with the discovery of an indigenous tea plant, both there and in Nepal. In its wild state it was more of a tree than a shrub, and in the 1820s Wallich was unable to confirm whether it was actually a tea tree or a camellia. The government, at risk of losing its monopoly on the Chinese tea trade and facing insatiable demand from British tea drinkers, acted quickly. A committee was set up to study the matter, a mission was sent to China to acquire more seeds and knowledge, and Wallich was sent to study the trees of Assam. Not only did he confirm that they were tea, but he also found that they were much more widespread than previously thought. The result of the investigation carried out by the tea delegation of Dr. Wallich on the tea plant in that country, shipped to Assam, gives every reason to believe that tea will soon become a major export from India. The plant has been found in extensive natural plantings, and locals suggest that it exists much more widely than has actually been discovered, justifying the conclusion that Assam and our northern border generally offer the best of extensive countryside for growing crops of any kind. years later, in 1839, the first Indian tea was auctioned in London. By the end of the century, it had completely supplanted the Chinese variety and India was the world's largest tea producer. The above-cited report on the delegation of Dr. Wallich to Assam was published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of 1836. A hefty leather-bound volume of 840 pages, covering a variety of material which may be considered typical of any given year. The first article is by Charles.

Masson transporting coins from Begram to Begram in Afghanistan. Then comes a Hodgson play

He cites Sanskrit texts to support his reconstruction of the Buddhist faith. Then follows an account of the large fossils found in the Siwalik Hills, including the bones of a creature the size of an elephant, but more like a camel and with four horns (it was named Sivatherium after the god Siva). Colonel Stacy reports his discovery of this Bacchus relief at Mathura and there is news of a new column inscription in Gupta script. In this single volume, Hodgson contributes twelve articles on new birds and mammals, and Prinsep almost the same with translations of coins and stone inscriptions. 1836 was not a good year for the society. The Orientalists were still reeling from last year's loss to Macaulay Macaulay. Sanskrit studies were effectively banned and Prinsep felt compelled to offer some encouragement in his preface. Cheer up. There was still "a wave of popularity, or at least a small wave" hitting "the remote and lonely estuary of eastern exploration". Calcutta was downright hostile, but London, Paris and Vienna still valued his studies. The work would continue. "We will always strive to fill these pages with a rewarding array of original information on all subjects, whether human achievement or the products of nature, within the broad spectrum dictated by our loyalty to Asian society." Jones' spirit endured.

Author's Note on the Third Edition

As I write this book, the "Orientalist" scholarship in question is being destroyed by Professor Edward Said (see his book Orientalism, Orientalism, published in 1978). Reviewing Western representations and research of the Islamic-Islamic Middle East, Said recognized an ignorant and disparaging commentary fueled by possessive and selfish motives. Since then, this pejorative aspect of "Orientalism" has been reinforced by its many scholars and critics. Most of the text was written before the release of Said's great work and I doubt I would have written it any other way had it been different. India is not like the Middle East, and its colonial exposure was of a different magnitude. For every act of vandalism there was a side of conservation, and for every paragraph of Orientalist slurs there was a side of admiration. Both are openly presented in the following text. All things considered, however, I believe that for scholars of the R Raj, aj, India's legacy no longer represented a contrasting "other" to be reviled and marginalized, but rather a spectacular survival with which to live happily and proudly. Indeed, a crown jewel. It is clear that such studies catered to the imperialist mentality. No science is completely disinterested, be it Orientalist or critical of it. As the intellectual climate has changed, so has my own perspective. I have learned so much more about Indian history since this book was written. The light-hearted assertion in the introduction that India's early history is devoid of the personalities, anecdotes and anecdotes that make the past palatable cannot go unnoticed. As the author of a recent work replete with such details (India: A History, I History), I stop here to severely correct myself. There are other generalizations that I would avoid in writing this book today, though they hardly detract from what is essentially a presentation of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholarship. And there are cases, particularly with regard to the Harappan studies (Chapter 12), where the pace of current research means that everything published is already out of date. The book originally appeared under the same title, but in large format with many color illustrations. This smaller format makes for a cleaner reading and the new illustrations give a better sense of the times. They were compiled by Joy Law, to whom I am very grateful. Argyll, January 2001

Sources and bibliography

In a book of this nature, it seemed inappropriate to overload the text with references and notes. Widely cited sources are self-explanatory anyway by context. Furthermore, the publications listed below do not constitute an exhaustive bibliography on the subject, nor the scope of my own reading. They are simply those that have emerged as the most relevant. I would like to make special mention of the periodicals of the various Asian societies, especially those of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Calcutta). They are the fields from which this history was conquered. (Unless otherwise noted, place of publication is London.)

PRIMARY SOURCES

Blanford, W. T., Fauna of British India– India–Mammalia, Mammalia, 1888–91 91 Brown, P.,Indian P.,Indian Architecture,Bombay, Architecture,Bombay, o.D. Buchanan, F., Journey through Mysore etc., 1807 Buchanan, F., (ed. M. Martin), Eastern Martin), Eastern India, 1836 India, 1836 Cole, H. H., Preservation of National Monuments, Plates I-X, Calcutta, 1836; 1881 Calcutta, 1881–85 85 Coomaraswamy, A. K., Indian and Indonesian Art, 1927 Cumming, J. (Eds.), Revealing India's Past, 1934 1934 Cunningham, A. C., Archaeological C., Archaeological Surveys of India, Indian Bands, Volume I. -XXIII, Calcutá, 1981–87 87 Cunningham, A. C., The Bhilsa Topes, 1854 Topes, 1854 Cunningham, A. C., Inscriptions of Ashoka, 1877 Cunningham A. C., The Stupa of Bharhut, 1879 Bharhut, 1879 Cunningham, A. C., C ., Maha-Bodhi, 1892 Maha-Bodhi, 1892 Daniell, T., Vistas do Taj Mahal, 1789 1789 Fergusson, J., Templos cortados na rocha da Índia Ocidental (2º Aufl.), 1864 1864 Fergusson, J., Árvore e Serpent Worship (segunda construção (segunda edição), 1873 Fergusson, J., A History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (segunda edição), 1897 Fergusson, J. e Burgess, J., Cave Temples of India , 1880 India, 1880 Foster, W. (Hrsg.), First Travels in India, 1921 1921 Havell, E. B., Havell Papers in India Office Library and Records Havell, E. B., Indian Sculpture and Painting, 1908 1908 Havell, E. B., Indian Architecture , 1913 1913 Havell, E. B., Ancient B., Ancient and Medieval Architecture Indians, 1915 Indians, 1915 Hooker, J. D. and Thomson, T., Flora T., Flora Indica, 1855 Indica, 1855 Hunter, W. W., Life W., . Life of B. H. Hodgson, 1896 Hodgson, 1896 Huxley, L., Life L., Life and Letters of Sir J. D. Hooker, 1918 Hooker, 1918 Jerdon, T. C., Mammals C., Mammals of India, Roorkee, India, Roorkee, 1867 Jones , Sir W., Cartas W., Breve de Sir William Jones (Hrsg. Jones (Hrsg. G. Cannon), 1970 Keene, H. G., AG, A Handbook to Delhi, 1899 Delhi, 1899 Macaulay, T. B., Minute on Education, 2 de fevereiro de 1835 Macaulay, T. B., Speech on the Gates of Somnath, 9 de março de 1843 Markham, C., Memoir C., Memoir of the Indian Surveys (segundo Umfragen (segundo Aufl.), 1878.

Marshall, J. (Hrsg. S. A. Khan), A. Khan), John Marshall na Índia, 1927 Índia,

Marshall, J. H., Os Monumentos de Sanchi, 1931 Sanchi, 1931 Marshall, J. H., Mohenjo H., Mohenjo Daro e a Civilização do Indo, 1931 Civilização, 1931 Marshall, J. H., Budista H., A Arte Budista de Gandhara, 1960 Gandhara, 1960 Mitra, R. L., et al., Centenary Review of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta, Bengal, Calcutta, 1885 Phillimore, R. H., Historical Records of the Survey of India, Bände I–V, V, 1945–65 65 Prinsep, J (Hrsg. E. Thomas), Essays on Indian Antiquities, 1858 1858 Rapson, E. J. (Hrsg.), Cambridge History of India, Bd. I, 1922 Tod, J., Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, 1829 Tod, J . , Travels in Western India, 1839 Wilson, H. H., Ariana Antiqua, 1841 Wheeler, M., My Archaeological Mission to India and Pakistan, Pakistan, 1976 Wheeler, M., Civilization of Industry and Beyond, 1961

MAGAZINES

Asiatic Researches, vols Researches, vols I-XX, 1788–1839 1839 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vols Bengal, vols I-X, 1831–41 41 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vols Society, vols 1–5, 5, 1839; 1829–33 33 Transactions of the Bombay Literary Society, Volumes Society, Volumes 1–11, 11, 1819–20 20 Archer, M., “Sketched Painter of the Picturesque; Henry Salt', Salt', Landleben, November 19, 1959 Archer, M., 'India and Natural History', History History', History Today, November Leaf, November 1959 Archer, M., 'India and Archaeology'. , History Archeology ', History Today, April Today, April 1962 Archer, M., 'Indian Miniatures', Art Miniatures', International Art, 5. International, 5. December 1963 Archer, M., 'An Artist Engineer; Col. A.S. Light on a Long Forgotten Civilization“, Illustrated Civilization“, Illustrated London News, September 20 September 20, 1924 Marshall, J. H., “Revealing the Prehistoric Civilization of India“, Illustrated India“, Illustrated London News, 27 News, 1924; February 27, 1926 Havell, EB, Nachruf no The Times, 1 Times, January 1,1935

TRAVEL REGISTRATION AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND

Atkinson, G. F., Curry and Rice, 1858 Busteed, H. E., Echoes of Old Calcutta, 1908 Eden, Emily, Up the Country, 1830 Eden, Emily and Fanny, Letters from India, 1872 Fay, Eliza, Original Letters from India, 1925 Heber , R., Journey Through the Upper Provinces of India, 1828 Hickey, W. (Hrsg. P. Quennell), Memoirs of William Hickey, 1960 Hodges, W., Travels in India, 1780–83, 83, 1793 Jacquemont, V. V. J. , Breve aus Indien, 1834

Kincaid, D., British Social Life in India, 1608–1933 1933 (secundado), 1973

Murray Handbook for the Bengal Presidency, 1882 Murray Handbook for India, 1894 1894 Murray Handbook for India usw., 1975 1975 Postans, Mrs. M., Western India 1838, 1859 Roberts, Emma, ​​​​​​Sketches and Characteristics of Hindostan (2. Aufl.), 1837 Valentia, G. A., Travels and Travels, 1809 Travels, 1809

SECONDARY SOURCES

Arberry, A. J., Los orientalistas británicos, 1943 1943 Arberry, A. J., Asiatic J., Asiatic Jones, 1946 Jones, 1946 Archer, M., La arquitectura india y los británicos, 1968 1968 Archer, M., Dibujos de la empresa en la biblioteca de la oficina de la India, 1972 1972 Archer, W. G., India and Modern Art, 1959 1959 Basham, A. L., The Wonder that was India, 1954 1954 Basham, A. L. (ed.), A Cultural History of India, 1975 Blunt, W., The Ark in the Park, 1976 Cannon, G., Oriental Jones, Nueva York, 1964 Carrington, R., Elephants, 1958 Carroll, D., The Taj Mahal, Nueva York, 1972 Craven, R., Concise History of Indian Art, 1972 Crowe, S., et al., Gardens of Moghul India, 1972 Dictionary of Indian Biography (Hrsg. Buckland) Dictionary of National Biography Gascoigne, A. B., The Great Moghuls, 1971 Griffiths, P., History of the Indian Tea Industry, 1967 Hawkes, J., The First Great Civilizations, 1973 Keay, J., When Men and Mountains Meet, 1977 Keay, J., The Gilgit Game, 1979 Kopf, D., British O rientalism and the Bengali Rena issance, LosAngeles, LosAngeles, 1969 Lipsey, R., Coomaraswamy, His Life and Work, 1977 Work, 1977 Markham, P. C., J. Peruvian C., Peruvian Bark, 1880 Marshall, (ed.), TheBark , 1880 British Discovery of Hinduism, etc., 1970 1970 Mason, P., Los hombres que gobernaron la India, 1954 1954 Mason, P., Una cuestión de honor, 1974 1974 Mukherjee, S. N., Sir William Jones, 1968 Jones, 1968 Narain, V. A., Jonathan Duncan und Varanasi , Kalkutta, 1959 1959 Philips, C. H., (Hrsg.), Historiadores de la India, Pakistán y Ceilán, 1961 1961 Rowland, B., Arte y arquitetura de la India, 1967 Sewell, R. , Un imperio olvidado, 1900 1900 Sharma, R. C. , Mathura C., Museo de Arte de Mathura, Mathura, Arte, Mathura, 1967 Singh, Madanjeet, Las pinturas rupestres de Ajanta, 1965 1965 Spear, P., Crepúsculo de los mongoles, 1951 1951 Spear, P., The Nabobs, 1963 Nababs, 1963

Index

The page numbering of this electronic edition does not correspond to the edition from which it was created. To find a specific passage, use your eBook reader's search function. Abu, Mount, 40, 146, 196–8 Afghanistan, 68, 69, 87, 88–9 9, 111 111 Agra, 22, 39, 40, 125, 126–7, 7, 133, 142–4, 4, 147 Agra, Red Fort, 142, 144, see also Taj, Itimad-ud-Daula Ahmedabad, 146 Ajanta, 14, 42, 48, 148–58, 58, 161, 162 Akbar, Emperor, 125, 133, 147 Alexander, the Great, 15, 33, 35–6, 6, 43, 44, 87 Alexander, Lt. J., 148-50, 50, 205 Allahabad, 47, 49, 51, 57, 82, 116, 141-2 Amaravati stupa, Amaravati stupa, 114, 114, 180 amber palace, 129-30, 30, 195 Amherst, Lord, Governor General, 143 Anhilwara, 196 Archaeological Department, 145–7, 7, 166 Archaeological Survey of India, 80–4, 4, 96, 98, 103, 114, 124 Aryans, 24, 30, 31, 116, 164, 174 Ashoka Brahmi (screenplay), 44–5, 5, 48–9, 9, 51–3, 3, 55–61, 61, 84, 164, 165–6 Ashoka, Emperor, 53–63, 63, 67, 71, 74 Ashoka Pillars, 43–57, 57, 72, 91, 115 Ashoka Rock Inscriptions, 57–63, 63, 90, 196 Asiatic Society of Bengal, 26–7, 7, 30, 35, 37 –8, 8, 42, 44, 47, 48–9, 9, 52–3, 3, 88, 145, 151, 175, 203, 204, 210–11 11 Auckland, Lord, Gov.- Gen. , 75 Aurangzeb, Emperor, 125

Babur, Kaiser, 129, 140 Baktrian, 87–8, 8, 90, 93, 94 Bagh, 42, 156, 157, 176 Belutchistan, 168, 174 Banerji, R. D., 166–7 Banks, Sir J., 209 Begram, 168; 88–9, 9, 210 Belur, 118, 119, 178 Benares, 29, 45, 47, 55, 70, 82, 116 Bentinck, Lord, Gov.-Gen., 144, 181 Besnagar, 91 Bhagavad Gita, 25, 25; Gita, 25, 28,

83–4, 4, 85, 91

Bhilwara, 194 Bhopal, 51, 64, 79, 85 Bhuvaneswar, 120–1, 1, 146 Bihar, 43, 44, 49, 57, 67, 81, 181 Bijapur, 127, 128, 146 Bird, Dr. J., 153 Birdwood, Sir G., 159–60 60 Bir Singh Deo, 130 Blanford, W. T., 205, 206 Blyth, Edward, 204–5 Boddh Gaya, 67, 81–2, 2, 122 Bombay, 22, 40 , 41, 169 Boriah, K. V., 180–1 Broach, 40 Buchanan, Dr. F. V., 67, 177–9, 9, 190, 202, 205, 207 Buddal, Säule, 44 Buddhismus, 42, 53, 62, 64–97, 97, 116, 122–3, 3, 153, 163, 199, 210 Burhanpur, 146 Burt, T. S., 47, 98–101, 101, 109 Kalkutta, 19–23, 23, 38, 39, 40, 50, 52, 61, 84, 105, 108, 186, 188, 207 Canning, Lord, Gov.-Gen., 80, 81, 98 Cautley, Capt., 51 Carey, Wm., 202, 207 Cecconi, Prof., 154 Ceylon, 53, 66 Chambers, Wm., 42, 66–7 Chandigarh, 169 Chandragupta, Gupta-Kaiser, 47 Chandragupta Maurya, Kaiser, 35–6, 6, 47, 53–4, 4, 73

Chitor, 193–5 Chunar, 55 Clive, Lord Robert, 20, 21, 23 Cole, H. H., 85, 86, 94, 96, 138, 139–41, 41, 142 Colebrooke, H. T., 38, 190 Connolly, Lieut. , A., 51 Coomaraswamy, A. K., 159, 160–2, 2, 172, 179 Coryat, Thomas, 43, 44, 176 Cunningham, Sir Alexander, 51, 52, 57, 70–84, 84, 89, 90, 92, 94, 96, 98, 101, 113, 114, 121–2, 2, 125, 129, 135, 164–6, 6, 176 Cunningham, Joseph, 79, 198 Curzon, Lord, Viceroy, 14, 82, 105, 138, 142, 145–7, 7, 206

Dangerfield, F., 176

Daniell, Thomas, 21, 40, 117, 143 Darjeeling, 198, 200 Datia, Palace, 130, 161 Dehra Dun, 188, 189 Delhi, 39, 40, 43, 46, 49, 55, 56, 82, 102, 116 , 123 123– –6, 6, 130, 132, 133–9, 9, 146, 169 Forte Vermelho de Delhi, 40, 133, 136–9, 9, 146–7, 7; Devanagari, script, 44–5, 5, 61 Dhar, 146 Dhauli, 58, 59–60 60 Dig, 112, 130, 208 Dinwiddie, Dr, 184 Dravidians, 117–8

Compañía de las Indias Orientales, 21, 25, 39, 80, 194, 202, 206 Eden, The Hon. Emily, 75–6 Elephanta, 40–1, 1, 42, 149 Ellenborough, Lord, Generalgouverneur, Ill Ellora, 42, 45, 149, 161 Erskine, Wm., 42 Everest, Mount, 191 Everest, Sir Georg, 186– 9

Fa Hsien, 73, 74, 93, 102 Fatehpur Sikri, 40, 125 Fell, Capt. E., 64–6 Fergusson, James, 94–6, 6, 112–30, 30, 138, 140, 142, 144, 153, 176, 178–178–9 Feroz Shah, Sultan, 56 Forster, George, 156 Francis, Sir Philip, 22 Franklin, James, 98, 176 Gandhara, 92–7, 7, 104, 105 Ganges River, 29, 36 Garhwal, 191 Gaur, 29, 127, 128, 146 Gaya, 29, 45, 46 Gill , Major Robert, 153–4 Gir, 206 Girnar, 58–9, 9, 60–1, 1, 78, 196 Grand Trigonometric Series, 182–91 91 Greek Influences, 33, 35–6, 6, 42, 43, 48, 86–97, 97, 171–2 Gresley, captain, 151–3, 3, 161

Griffiths, John, 154

Gujerat, 127–8, 8, 192 Gupta Brahmi, Schrift, 44, 46, 50, 71 Gupta-Reich, 73, 89, 91, 153, 162 Gurkhas, 39, 191, 200 Gwalior, 22, 79, 129–30 , 30, 139–41, 41, 146, 193, 196

Halebid, 118, 119–20, 20, 177 Halhed, Nathaniel, 24, 29 Harappa, 165, 166, 167, 170, 171–2, 2, 174 Harrington, J., 45 Harsha, King, 73 Hastings, Warren, Generalgouverneur, 22, 23, 24, 25, 45, 76 Havell, Ernest, 96, 105–9, 9, 116, 121–3, 3, 125–30, 30, 146, 155–60, 60, 172 Heber, Bishop R., 40, 112, 133, 134, 135, 143–4, 4, 192, 194, 209 Hickey, Wm., 19 Himalaya, 39, 188–91, 91, 198, 200 Hodges, Wm., 22 , 40, 143 Hodgson, B. H., 48, 55, 57, 67–9, 9, 182, 198–200, 200, 201–4, 4, 208, 209, 210 Hooker, Sir J. D., 207, 208 Hsuan Tsang, 73, 74, 80–1, 1, 122, 165 Hughli, R., 21, 34 Humayun, Kaiser, 126, 132, 147 Hyderabad, 148, 154, 179, 186

Indian Mutiny, 80, 136–7, 7, 138, 140 Indus Valley Civilization, 165–74 74 Islamic Influences, 112, 122–8, 8, 156 Itimad-ud-Daula, Tomb of, 142, 147

Jainismus, 66, 102, 116, 124, 127, 140, 146, 161, 178–9, 9, 182, 196–8 Jaipur, 193, 195 Jehangir, Kaiser, 139, 146, 147, 158 Jerdon, Dr. T. C., 205–6 Jodhpur, 129–30, 30, 193, 195 Jogeshwar, 41 Jones, Sir John, 138 Jones, Sir William, 19–3 38, 8, 39, 45, 46, 50, 66, 75, 103 , 175 , 190 , 202 , 203 , 206

Kalidasa, 32–3, 3, 48, 91 Kanchipuram, 117, 146 Kanheri, 41, 42

Kanishka, König, 94, 104

Karli, 42, 43 Kashmir, 39, 78, 91, 208 Kathmandu, 48, 67, 199–200 200 Keith, Major, 141 Khajuraho, 14, 40, 81, 98–101, 101, 108, 109, 120– 1 , 1, 146, 176 Kharosthi, script, 90, 91, 164 Khizrabad, 56 Khyber Pass, 62 Kincaid, Gen., 86 Kipling, R., 144 Kirkpatrick, Wm., 190 Kittoe, Lieut. M., 58, 59–60, 60, 78 Konarak, 100, 108, 146 Koros, A. Czoma de, 68–9, 9, 71 Krishnagar, 29–30, 30, 31 Kushan-Reich, 90, 94, 96 Kutila-Schrift, 44–5

Ladakh, 66, 68, 78 Lahore, 146 Lambton, Wm., 182–7 Lauriya Nandangarh, Säule, 49, 57 Leitner, Dr. G., 93 Lothal, 169 Lutyens, Sir E., 130 Lytton, Señor, Virrey, 142

Macaulay, TB, Lord, 77–8, 8, 111, 121 Mackenzie, Col. Colin, 179–82 82 Maddock, H., 69, 86 Madras, 19, 20, 42, 62, 108, 181, 183, 185 Madurai, 117 Mahabalipuram, 42–3, 3, 67, 108, 117–8 Mahabharata ,25, Mahabharata, 25, 45 Mahmud von Ghazni, Sultan, 102, 111 Mandu, 146 Manikyala, Stupa, Manikyala, Stupa, 69,87 69,87 Mardan, 97 Markham, Sir Clements, 154, 189, 209 Marshall, John , 28, 43, 176, 189, 198, 202 Marshall, Sir John H., 96–7, 7, 145–7, 7, 154, 155, 159, 166–74 74 Masar, 82 Masson, Charles, 88– 9, 9, 90, 165, 210

Mathura, 48, 74, 82, 92, 102–4, 4, 105, 106, 210

Imperio Maurya, 54, 89, 90 Megasthenes, 35–6, 6, 62, 73 Metcalfe, Sir Thomas, 136 Mill, James, 76 Mill, Revd W. H., 47, 48 Imperio mogol, 166 40,–125 8, 132– 4, 4, 146–7, 7, 156, 157–8, 8, 201 Mohenjo-daro, 74 74–8, Montpezir, 41 Moorcroft, Wm., 68 Muller, Prof. Max., 38 Mumtaz Mahal, Emperatriz, 126 Mysore, 40, 57, 118, 177–8, 8, 182 Encuesta de Mysore, 177–8, 8, 180

Nadia, 29 Nadir Shah, Rey, 137 Nagpur, 83, 187 Narwar, Palacios, 131–2 Nepal, 39, 48, 66, 67–8, 8, 189, 190–1, 1, 198–200, 200, 208 , 209

Orchha, Palacios, 129–30, 30, 161 Orissa, 47, 58, 62, 112, 121 Orsini, Conde, 154

Pali, Schrift, 52 Parasnath, 196 Pataliputra, 35–6, 6, 62, 67, 91 Patna, 35–6 Peshawar, 57, 90, 93 Pondicherry, 185 Poona, 40 Portugués, 24, 41 Porus, König, 43 Postans , teniente, 60–1 puestos, señora, 60–1, 1, 144 Prinsep, James, 39, 46–6 61, 1, 70, 71, 75, 78, 87, 89, 90, 92, 151, 176, 188, 210 Ptolemaeus, 59, 61, 62 Puri, 121

Qutb Minar, 116, 123–4, 4, 133, 134, 135–6

Rajaona, 82 Rajasthan, 40, 161, 168, 193–6 Rajatarangini, 33 33 Rajputen, 87, 101, 128–30, 30, 131, 140, 158, 160–1, 1, 193–6 Ralph, Herr, 151 –3, 3, 161 Ramayana, Ramayana,119, 119, Ramlochand, 29 197 Ranjit Singh, 69, 75, 76–7, 7, 88 Rennell, James, 35 Roberts, Emma, ​​​​144 Rothenstein, Sir Wm., 105, 159, 160 Rousselet, Louis, 140–1 Roxburgh, Wm., 206–7 Royal Asiatic Society, Londres, 113, 153 Royle, John F., 208, 209

Safdar Jang, Grab von, 135 Saharanpur, 208, 209 Salsette, 41 Salt, Henry, 41 Samudragupta, Kaiser, 47, 48 Sanchi, 51, 52, 57, 64–7, 7, 69, 79, 84, 85, 86 , 91, 114 Sánscrito, 24–5, 5, 29–33, 33, 37, 38, 45, 48, 52, 71, 77, 91, 164 Sarnath, 48, 70, 72, 74, 75 Sassaram, 115 Skythen. . , 90 Seleucus Nicator, Kaiser, 35–6 Shahbazgarhi, Felsinschrift, 90 Shan Jehan, Kaiser, 125, 126–7, 7, 139, 142 Sind, 166 Siwaliks, 210 Smith, Capt. E., 51, 57 Smith, prefeito. R., 51, 133–4, 4, 148 Smith, Vincent, 95–6, 6, 157, 172 Somnath, 111 Somnathpur, 118, 119 Sohn R., 36 Sravana Belgola, 178–9, 9, 196 Stacy, Col., 51, 92, 93, 95, 210 Strachey, Sir J., 142 Sultanganj, 82 Survey of India, 176–91 91 Swat, 93, 94

Taj Mahal, 22, 40, 43, 112, 126–7, 7, 142–4, 4, 147 Tanjore, 117, 185–6 Taxila, 82, 91, 96–7 Taylor, Bayard, 144 Terry, Edward, 201 Thomson, Thomas, 208 Thurston, Edgar, 198 Tibet, 66, 68, 190, 208 Tigowa, 82 Tipu Sultan von Mysore, 39, 76, 176, 180 Tiwar, 82 Tod, Col. James, 58–9, 9, 87 , 127, 182, 192–8 Tughlakabad, 124–5, 5, 133 Tughluk Shah, Sultan, 124–5, 5, 126, 146 Tumor, George, 53 Twining, Thomas, 15, 34, 132, 133, 143, 147, 156

Udaipur, 130, 193, 194, 195 Valentia, Lord, 41, 42 Ventura, Gen., 69–70, 70, 87, 88 Vijayanagar, 128, 146 Vikramaditya, König, 33

Wallich, Nathaniel, 207, 209–10 10 Waugh, Andrew, 189, 191 Wellesley, Sir Arthur, duque de Wellington, 176, 178, 179–80, 80, 182–3, 3, 202 Wellesley, Richard, Lord Mornington , Generalgouverneur, 177, 202 Westmacott, Prof., 104 Wheeler, Sir Mortimer, 75, 169, 174 Wilford, Teniente. F., 45–6, 6, 66 Wilkins, Charles, 24, 25, 28, 29, 44, 45, 46, 47 Wilson, H. H., 47, 50, 73

Timeline 176 1765 5 –1927 1927

1765 The East India Company grants Divan Divanof of Bengal. 1774 Governor General of Hastings. 1783 Warren Mackenzie first arrives in Madras. Jones arrives in Calcutta 1784 Asiatic Society of Bengal founded 1786 Calcutta Botanical Garden founded 1790 Third Mysore War. Twining's Voyages Travel 1793 Roxburgh arrives in Calcutta 1794 Jones dies 1797 Wellesley Governor-General 1798 Fourth Mysore War 1800 Survey of Mysore - Buchanan, Buchanan, Mackenzie and Lambton take action 1803 Maratha War; Acquisition of Delhi and Agra 1806 Tod's first visit to Udaipur. Salt and Valentia visit the Salsette Caves. Buchanan at Boddh Gaya 1813 Wallich Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanical Gardens 1816 Colebrooke declares the Himalayas the highest in the world 1817 Death returns to Rajasthan 1819 Prinsep arrives in India. Fell visits Sanchi. Dangerfield discovers Bagh. Franklin discovers Khajuraho 1820 Hodgson in Kathmandu 1822 De Koros in the Himalayas. Tod visits Abu and Girnar 1823 Everest follows Lambton as overseer of the GTS 1824 Alexander visits Ajanta 1825 Bishop Heber begins his journey to India 1830 Ventura opens Manikyalastupa Manikyalastupa 1833 Masson discovers coins at Begram. Hodgson's account of Ashoka's pillars is published. 1834 Ferguson toured North India. 1835 The minute of Macaulay. Cunningham opened Fa Hsien's publication Dhamekhstupa Dhamekhstupa 1836. Gandhara sculpture found in Mathura. Ralph/Gresley report on Ajanta. Kittoe finds the rock inscription in Orissa. 1837 Prinsep decodes the inscriptions on the columns. 1838 Burt visits Khajuraho. Postans visit Girnar. Prinsep decodes Kharosthi and becomes Home of Invalids. 1841 Blyth becomes curator of the Asiatic Society museum. 1842 Ellenborough proposes restoration of Somnath gates. doors Fergusson travels through southern India 1844 Gill begins copying Ajanta frescoes 1845 Everest begins series of northeastern Himalayas 1848 Hooker visits India. Cunningham finds a sculpture of Gandhara in Punjab 1851 Cunningham in Sanchi 1853 Cunningham visits Mathura for the first time

1857 Indian riot or national rebellion

1858 Decline of East India Company, exile of Mughal Emperor 1861 Cunningham appointed Archaeological Inspector 1862 Cunningham at Boddh Gaya 1865 Cunningham at Khajuraho 1867 Publication of Jerdon's Mammals published Jerdon's Mammals of India India 1872 Begins copying discovered frescoes from Bharhut Ajanta 1873 Griffiths Cunningham restores Sanchi in 1881. Keith restores Gwalior 1897 Ajanta frescoes published 1899 Curzon arrives as viceroy 1902 Marshall arrives as director of archeology 1908 Havell Indian sculpture and painting published 1910 Indian art controversy at the Royal Society of Arts 1913 Marshall begins excavations at Taxila 1920 Restorations of Ajanta begins 1921 Banerji discovers Mohenjo-daro 1924 Excavation of Mohenjo-daro begins 1927 Coomaraswamy Indians Coomaraswamy Indian and Indonesian art publication

the great arch

The dramatic story of how India was mapped and Everest called John Keay "A wonderful and fascinating book" LAWRENCE JAMES, The Times Times "More exceptional than any fiction" CHARLOTTE CORY, Mail CORY, Mail on Sunday Sunday The Great Indian Arc des Meridians, begun in 1800, was the longest measurement of the Earth's surface ever attempted. The 1,600 to 1,600 mile investigation took nearly fifty years and cost more lives than most contemporary wars. Hailed as "one of the most incredible works in the history of science", it was also one of the most dangerous. Through hills and jungles, floods and fevers, an intrepid group of surveyors brought the Arch from the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent to the icy reaches of the Himalayas. William Lambton, a lovable genius, came up with the idea; George Everest, Everest, an impossible Martinet, did it. Both found the technical difficulties terrifying. With instruments that weighed half a ton, their observations often had to be made from flimsy platforms 25 meters above the ground or from the tops of mountains during a snowstorm. Malaria wiped out entire research groups; The tigers and scorpions took their toll. But the results were reasonable. India, as we know it today, was defined in this process. The arc also resulted in the first accurate measurements of the Himalayas, an achievement recognized by the naming of the world's highest mountain Everest. More importantly, the Arc has greatly increased our knowledge of the exact shape of our planet. "Undoubtedly his most compelling non-fiction book and one of Keay's most notable to be published this year, this wonderful book is a fitting memorial not only to Everest but the Great Arch as well. WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, Sunday Times 0-00-653123 -7

India: a history

John Keay “In an environment where every fact is infinitely malleable and every interpretation is politicized, the need for clear, accessible, and unbiased popular history is even greater. It's hard to imagine that anyone could have done more balanced research than John Keay did on India: in India: A History & History&, a book as fluid and entertaining as it is timely and unbiased. Hardly a page turns without an intriguing nugget or startling fact, and one can only hope that John Keay Keay's India will be widely read and its teachings taken seriously." History of Indian history is a delight and one of the best general surveys on the subcontinent. " ANDREW LYCETT, Sunday Times Times "Surely the most balanced and clear [one volume [in the history of the subcontinent] and his passion for India shines through and illuminates every page and places Keay at the forefront of Indian historiographers." CHARLES ALLEN, Viewers 0-00-638784-5

Copyright HarperCollinsPublishers Publishers 77-85 85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.fireandwater.com This paperback edition 2001 135798642 First published in the UK 1981 First published in paperback by William Collins 1988 Copyright © John Keay 1981 The author declares moral rights, as the author of this work to be identified ISBN 0 00 712300 0 All rights reserved under international and pan-American copyright conventions. By paying the required fees, you have been granted a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and screen-read the text of this eBook. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored or incorporated into any information and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic-mechanical, now known or saved hereafter or in the future. future without the express written permission of HarperCollins or E-Books. EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-39964-2

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