British Scholarship The British pursuit of knowledge on India followed the East India Company’s rise in status from a trading company to the revenue collector of Bengal in 1765. The translations into English of the indigenous Persian and Sanskrit texts, which were a direct response to the Company’s new administrative needs, facilitated the recovery of ‘Ancient’ India. This … >

Historical Scholarship Of the archaeological work that was undertaken during much of the nineteenth century, one was a survey of the ‘Hindu’ and ‘Mohammedan’ monuments, an activity pioneered as a scholarly pursuit by James Fergusson, who ventured out of his lucrative indigo plantation at a rather opportune moment (when indigo prices fell partly as a consequence of the depr… >

Documents Records When Cunningham got himself appointed by the then Viceroy, Lord Canning, to head the newly established Archaeological Survey, the Raj had been planted on the Indian soil, and so had some of the seminal institutions, such as the geographical and revenue surveys through which the British had begun to map, classify and store information on India. In their gra… >

Visual Evidence Fergusson’s aim of creating visual documents that could transcribe his vision was not novel, as the painters, William and Thomas Daniells, had harboured similar objectives before him. But the distinction he made between his sketches and theirs is instructive to note. For, it has a resonance on what was subsequently, i.e. during the twentieth century, promote… >

Collection Archives Although, the photographic documentation of India’s architectural topography had conclusively begun by the mid 1850's, it was pursued as a government-directed policy only after the formal establishment of the British Empire of India, and with it the British anxieties of retaining it. From the 1880's concerned efforts were made to make the ‘listing’ more… >

Archive Field Study Encyclopedic repositories of photographs and drawings have proved to be one of the most enduring creations of colonial politics. Such repositories, like the one which at present resides within the British Library, facilitated precisely the opposite of what we may think nineteenth century archaeological investigations were about. By bringing sites to scho… >

Filling Gaps Imbricated within this physical distancing, with respect to projects on history-making of India, was also the thrust of empirical proclivities, where ‘field observations’ were, paradoxically, to sanction the judgments that had already been made on India’s past. James Mill’s framework for the history of the Indian civilisation not only remained unquestioned, its… >

Buddhist Sites By locating Buddhist sites in north and central India, Cunningham could lay to rest speculations on the Buddha’s life-story. Of Rajgir, a site he plotted as Buddhist, he enthused that “every hill and stream had been made holy by the Buddha’s presence… Numerous ruined topes, sculpted friezes and inscribed pillars still remain scattered over the country as last… >

Essentialised Cultures Cunningham’s surveys and interpretation of the temple at Bodh Gaya, which he presented in The Mahabodhi, provides many examples of the ways in which he used photographs to physically fill in the ‘lost’ architectural details (Figure 12). Despite recognizing that local customs and rituals had made its marks within the body of this derelict Buddhist tem… >