INTRODUCTION: INDIA and her ancient culture
The Bengal Society began to turn some of its attention to the material remains of India past, as the East India Companysurveyors brought back to Calcutta many reports of temples, caves and shrines, together with early coins and copies of inscriptions in long-dead scripts. By working backwards from the current scripts the older ones were gradually deciphered, until in 1837 a gifted amateur, James Prinsep, an official of the Calcutta Mint and Secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, interpreted for the first time the earliest Brahml script and was able to read the edicts of the great emperor Asoka. Among PrinsepтАЩs colleagues in the work of decipherment was a young officer of the Royal Engineers, Alexander Cunningham (pi. IV6), the father of Indian archaeology. From his arrival in India in 1831 Cunningham devoted every minute he could spare from his military duties to the study of the material remains of ancient India, until, in 1862, the Indian government established the post of Archaeological Surveyor, to which he was appointed. Until his retirement in 1885 he devoted himself to the unravelling of IndiaтАЩs past with complete single-heartedness. Though he made no startling discoveries, and though his technique was, by modern archaeological standards, crude and primitive, there is no doubt that, after Sir William Jones, Indology owes more to General Sir Alexander Cunningham than to any other worker in the field. Cunningham was assisted by several other pioneers, and though at the end of the 19th century the activities of the Archaeological Survey almost ceased, owing to niggardly government grants, by 1900 many ancient buildings had been surveyed, and many inscriptions read and translated.
It was only in the 20th century that archaeological excavation on a large scale began in India. Thanks to the personal interest of the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, in 1901 the Archaeological Survey was re┬м formed and enlarged, and a young archaeologist, John (later Sir John) Marshall (pi. IVd), appointed as Director General. For a country of the size of India the Archaeological Department was still lamentably small and poor, but Marshall was able to employ a number of expert assistants, and had funds for excavation on a scale more extensive than anything previously attempted. For the first time traces of the ancient cities of India began to come to lightтАФ archaeology, as distinct from the surveying and conservation of ancient monuments, had begun in real earnest. The greatest triumph of the Archaeological Survey of India under Sir John MarshallтАЩs directorship was undoubtedly the discovery of the Indus civilization. The first relics of IndiaтАЩs oldest cities were noticed by Cunningham, who found strange unidentified seals in the neighbourhood of
Harappa in the Panjab. In 1922 an Indian officer of the Archaeo┬м logical Survey, R. D. Banerjl, found further seals at Mohenjo Daro in Sind, and recognized that they were the remains of a pre- Aryan civilization of great antiquity. Under Sir John MarshallтАЩs direction the sites were systematically excavated from 1924 until his retirement in 1931. Digging was interrupted by financial retrench┬м ment, and by the Second World War; but further important dis┬м coveries were made at Harappa during the brief directorship of Sir R. E. Mortimer Wheeler just after the war, though the sites are still by no means fully cleared.
Much has yet to be done. Many mounds as yet unexcavated may throw floods of light on the dark places of IndiaтАЩs past: unpub┬м lished manuscripts of great importance may yet lie mouldering in out-of-the-way libraries. India, Pakistan and Ceylon are poor countries, desperately in need of funds with which to raise the stand┬м ard of living of their peoples; but with the resources available the archaeological departments of all three countries are working to their fullest capacity to reveal the past.
Even in the last century, much valuable work was done by natives of India, especially by such Sanskritists and epigraphists as Drs. Bhau DajI, Bhagavanlal Indrajl, Rajendralal Mitra, and the great Sir R. G. Bhandarkar (pi. IVc). Now the chief initiative in Indology comes from the Indians themselves. Indians are well on the way to completing the first critical edition of the gigantic Mahabharata, and have started work on the enormous Poona Sanskrit Dictionary, which, when complete, will probably be the greatest work of lexicography the world has ever seen. The Director General of the Archeological Department is now an Indian (Dr. A. Ghosh), and today the Western Indologist cannot hope to be more than the helper and friendly critic of the Asian. In times like these, however, when Asia is reacting against a century and a half of European domination, and a new culture, which will contain elements of East and West in firm synthesis, is in the process of birth, the European student still has a useful role to play in Indology.
THE GLORY OF ANCIENT INDIA
At most periods of her history India, though a cultural unit, has been torn by internecine war. In statecraft her rulers were cunning and unscrupulous. Famine, flood and plague visited her from time to time, and killed millions of her people. Inequality of birth was given religious sanction, and the lot of the humble was generally hard. Yet our overall impression is that in no other part of the ancient world were the relations of man and man, and of man and the
state, so fair and humane. In no other early civilization were slaves so few in number, and in no other ancient lawbook are their rights so well protected as in the Arthasastra (p. I54f). No other ancient lawgiver proclaimed such noble ideals of fair play in battle as did Manu (p. 127). In all her history of warfare Hindu India has few tales to tell of cities put to the sword or of the massacre of non- combatants. The ghastly sadism of the kings of Assyria, who flayed their captives alive, is completely without parallel in ancient India. There was sporadic cruelty and oppression no doubt, but, in comparison with conditions in other early cultures, it was mild. To us the most striking feature of ancient Indian civilization is its humanity.
Some 19th-century missionaries, armed with passages from Hindu and Buddhist scriptures, often taken out of their context, and with tales of famine, disease, and the evils of the Hindu caste and family system, have helped to propagate the widespread fallacy that India is a land of lethargic gloom. The traveller landing at Bomba}^ has only to watch the rush-hour crowds, and to compare them mentally with those of London, to realize that the Indian character is neither lethargic nor unhappy. This conclusion is borne out by a general acquaintance with the remains of IndiaтАЩs past. Our second general impression of ancient India is that her people enjoyed life, passionately delighting both in the things of the senses and the things of the spirit.
The European student who concentrates on religious texts of a certain type may well gain the impression that ancient India was a land of тАЬ life-negating тАЭ * ascetics, imposing their gloomy and sterile ideas upon the trusting millions who were their lay followers. The fallacy of this impression is quite evident from the secular literature, sculpture and painting of the time. The average Indian, though he might pay lip-service to the ascetic and respect his ideals, did not find life a vale of tears from which to escape at all costs; rather he was willing to accept the world as he found it, and to extract what happiness he could from it. DandinтАЩs description of the joys of a simple meal served in a comparatively poor home (p. 446ff) is prob┬м ably more typical of ancient Indian everyday life than are the Upani- sads. India was a cheerful land, whose people, each finding a niche in a complex and slowly evolving social system, reached a higher level of kindliness and gentleness in their mutual relationships than any other nation of antiquity. For this, as well as for her great achieve┬м ments in religion, literature, art and mathematics, one European student at least would record his admiration of IndiaтАЩs ancient culture.