Author: Nayanjot Lahiri
Publication: Hindustan Times
Date: June 19, 2008
URL: http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=3cf9f5af-24a9-43e9-ac3c-0390cb9b650c
I once read a silly fairy tale called The
Three Princes of Serendip... as their highnesses travelled, they were always
making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not
in quest of.
Horace Walpole, 1754
Archaeology has a long tradition of celebrating
a select number of men and a few women as discoverers who, unlike the three
princes of Serendip, found what they were in quest of - a tradition it shares
with many other academic fields. This probably explains why in popular imagination
as well, such individuals - from real life ones like Heinrich Schliemann,
the discoverer of Troy, to fictional heroines and heroes like Lara Croft and
the adventurer of the Indiana Jones series - are seen to be the celebrated
protagonists of discovery sagas.
There is, of course, drama and intellectual
excitement in the lives and work of these determined individuals who went
about unearthing treasure about whose significance they were convinced even
before they actually found them. Is archaeological knowledge, though, a simple
byproduct of such deliberate discoveries? Does it result largely from field
projects designed to answer specific questions? Great expectations do sometimes
lead to great results. However, as the tiny gold combined toothpick and ear
wax spoon discovered during the search for a shipwrecked Spanish galleon off
Florida shows, far more compelling are the other more 'naturalistic' ways
in which knowledge is acquired in archaeology, where unexpected discoveries
take place without conscious design.
The archaeology of Hinduism in India underlines
this elementary point rather well. It is true, of course, that intentional
excavations of sites of Hindu worship and ritual take place all the time.
The Hindu temple has been a major area of such interest. Among other elements,
temples have been deliberately investigated in order to understand the antiquity
of worship there. Pandharpur, the most venerated religious centre of Maharashtra,
was excavated in 1968 with the goal of reaching back to its earliest occupation.
What was discovered, though, only dated back to the 13th century AD, and may
have disappointed the devotees of Vitthal.
On the other hand, I.K. Sharma of the Archaeological
Survey of India (ASI) was luckier. He undertook to probe inside the garbagriha
of the Parusramesvar temple at Gudimallam in Andhra Pradesh. Unlike the Pandharpur
shrine, this excavation revealed that the Gudimallam linga - a very early
and celebrated Siva linga - stood in a kind of demarcated area marked by railing
as early as the late centuries BC.
At the same time, along with such focused
excavators and excavations, a great deal of what we today recognise as having
contributed to our understanding of the archaeological dimensions of Indian
religions was done in a more mundane way. Alexander Cunningham, the ASI's
first Director-General, went about the Indian countryside discovering Buddhist
monasteries and stupas, Hindu pilgrimage sites and temples, and so much else.
Yet, the dazzling array of what he located
and described should not make us inattentive to what he saw as his main task.
Cunningham's ambition was to impart topographical bearings to the places and
sites of ancient India mentioned in the accounts of Chinese pilgrims, classical
writers, and in Indian epic literature. Several of these happened to be religious
in nature. Thus, a grand exercise in topographical archaeology also became
a voyage involving the recovery of long-forgotten religious landscapes.
Ritual structures have also emerged out of
more in-depth studies of cities and towns. Kausambi, capital of the ancient
Vatsa kingdom, is an example of this. The primary aim of G.R. Sharma of Allahabad
University, who directed the excavation was to study the defences that surrounded
Kausambi. What was more surprising was the discovery of a massive brick altar
in the shape of a flying bird. This seemed, to the excavator, to be a site
of human sacrifice (the Purusamedha) whose features he thought closely tallied
with what was known about such rituals in Vedic literature. The excavator,
though, did not dig Kausambi to elicit information about this altar. It's
most likely that it attracted the attention of Sharma because it was located
at the foot of the outer edge of the fortifications that formed his primary
focus.
In some instances, it is the prospective disappearance
of ancient landscapes that has resulted in a relatively detailed knowledge
of their archaeology. Such salvage archaeology involves a quick documentation
of ancient sites threatened by modern development work. The Nagarjunasagar
dam across the Krishna river, we know, has submerged the valley of Nagarjunakonda
which was known to be littered with archaeological relics. In the 50s, when
the plan to convert this valley into a reservoir was made, a project was simultaneously
undertaken by the ASI to document and, in a few cases, exhume such ruins for
transplanting them. Religious structures of all kinds were found including
Buddhist monasteries and Hindu temples.
Telkupi was not as fortunate as Nagarjunakonda.
The ASI could only begin work after the waters of the Damodar river had already
submerged some temples - as a result of dam construction in 1957. Debala Mitra,
who went on to become the first woman Director-General of the ASI, provided
a largely 'posthumous' description based on previous documentation and whatever
she could access at the site. She succeeded in demonstrating the cosmopolitan
character of medieval Telkupi, the royal seat of Sikhara chieftains and adorned
with Saiva, Vaishnava, Surya and Shakti shrines.
Such salvage work was conducted for reasons
very different from the ideas that gird either the Cunningham surveys or the
excavation at Kausambi. But surely, what is common is that they succeeded
in documenting sacred landscapes. The most worthwhile outcome of such work
has been that religion is integrated into the larger sum total of ancient
lives and societies. Kausambi's altar appears to be part of a larger urban
milieu marked also by the monastic cells and stupa of a thriving Buddhist
community.
The tendency to gild a few lilies certainly
makes for compelling mythology. The available paths through which knowledge
is acquired, however, are not just far more but also far more serendipitous
than such embellished versions would have us believe.
- Nayanjot Lahiri teaches archaeology at the
University of Delhi
