Four Reports Made During The Years - 1862-63-64-65 (An Old and Rare Book)

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Preface THE matter contained in these two volumes is the result of the archeological survey which I conducted during four consecutive years from 1862 to 1865. The object of this survey cannot be better stated than in the memorandum which I laid before Lord Canning in November 1861, and which led to my immediate appointment as Archeological Survivor to the Government of India, as notified in the following minute:

Minute by the Right Humble the GOVERNOR GENERAL OF INDIA in Council on the Antiquities of Upper India,-dated 22nd January 1862.

" IN November last, when at Allahabad, I had some com- medications with Colonel A. Cunningham, then the Chief Engineer of the N north- Western Provinces, regarding an investigation of the archeological remains of Upper India. "It is impossible to p~ through that part,-or indeed, so far as my experience gut’s .any part-of the British territories in India without being struck by the neglect with which the greater portion of the architectural remains, and of the traces of by-gone civilization have been treated, though many of these, and some which have had least notice, are full of beauty and interest.

"By 'neglect' I do not mean only the omission to restore them, or even to arrest their decay; for this would be a task which, in many cases, would require an expenditure of labour and money far greater than any Government of India could reasonably bestow upon it.

"But so far as the Government is concerned, there has been neglect of a much cheaper duty,-that of investigating and placing on record, for the instruction of future generations, many particulars that might still be rescued from oblivion, and throw light upon the early history of , England’s great dependency; a history which, as time moves on, as the country becomes more easily accessible and traversable, and as Englishmen are led to give more thought to India than such as barely suffices to hold it and gowerner it, will assuredly occupy, more and more, the attention of the intelligent and enquiring classes in European countries. "It will not be to our credit, as an enlightened rullw5" 'power, if we continue to allow such fields of investigation, as the remains of the old Buddhist capital in Behar, the vast ruins of Kanouj, the plains round Delhi, studded with ruins more thickly than even the Campagna of Rome, and many others, to remain without more examination than they have hitherto received. Everything that has hitherto been done in this way has been done by private persons, imperfectly and without system. It is impossible not to feel that there are European Governments, which, if they had held our rule in India, would not have allowed this to be said.

H It is true that in 1844, on a representation from the Royal Asiatic Society, and in 1847, in accordance with detailed suggestions from Lord Hardinge, the Court of Directors gave a liberal sanction to certain arrangements for examining, delineating, and recording some of the chief antiquities of India. But for one reason or another, mainly perhaps owing to the officer entrusted with the task having other work to do, and owing to his early death, very little seems to have resulted from this Endeavour. A few drawings of antiquities, and some remains, were transmitted to the India House, and some 15'01' 20 papers were contributed by Major Kittoe and Major Cunningham to the Journals of the Asiatic Society; but, so far as the Government is concerned, the scheme appears to have been lost sight of within two or three years of its adoption.

"I enclose a memorandum drawn up by Colonel Cunning- ham, who has, more than any other officer on this side of India, made the antiquities of the country his study, and who has here sketched the course of proceeding which a more complete and systematic archeological investigation should, in his opinion, take.

Introduction The study of Indian antiquities received its first impulse from Sir William Jones, who in 1784 founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Amongst the first members were Warren Hastings, 'the ablest of our Indian rulers, and Charles, Villains, who "as the first Englishman to acquire knowledge of Sanskrit. and who cut with his own hands the first Devanagari and Bengali types. During a residence of little more than ten years, Sir William Jones opened the treasury of Sanskrit literature to the world by the translation of Sakuntala and the institutes of Manu. His annual discourses to the Society showed the wide grasp of his mind; and the list of works which he drew up is so comprehensive that the whole of his scheme of translations has not even yet been completed by the separate labors of many successors. His first work was to establish a systematic and uniform system of orthography for the transcriptian of Oriental languages, which, with a very few modifications, has since bcen generally adopted. This was followed by several essays-On Musical Modes-On the Origin of the Game of Chess, 'which he traced to India--and On the Lunar Year of the Hindus and their Chronology. In the last paper he made the identification of Chandra-Gupta with Sandra- kottos, which for many years was the sole firm ground in the quicksands of Indian history. At the same time he suggested that Palibothra, or Pataliputra, the capital of Sandrakottos, must be Patna, as he found that the Son River, which joins the Ganges only a few miles above Patna, was also named Hiranyabahu, or the "golden-armed," an appellation which at once re-called the Erranoboas of Arrian.

The early death of Jones in 1794, which seemed at first to threaten the prosperity of the newly established Society, was the immediate cause of bringing forward Colebrook, so that the mantle of the elder was actually caught as it fell by the younger scholar, who, although he had not yet appeared as an author, volunteered to complete the Digest of Hindu Law, which was left unfinished by Jones?

CHARLES WILKINS, indeed, had preceded him in the translation of several inscriptions in the first and second volumes of the Asiatic Researches, but his communications then ceased, and on Jones' death in 1794 the public looked to Davis, Welford, and Colebrook for the materials of the next volume.

SAMUEL DAVIS had already written an excellent paper on Hindu astronomy, and a second on the Indian cycle of Jupiter; but he had no leisure for Sanskrit studies, and his communications to the Asiatic Society now ceased alto- gather.

FRANCIS .WILFORD, an officer of engineers, was of Swiss extraction. He was a good Classical and Sanskrit scholar, and his varied and extensive reading was success- fully brought into use for the illustration of ancient Indian geography. But his judgment was not equal to his learning;* and his wild speculations on Egypt and on the Sacred Isles of the West, in the 3rd and 9th volumes of the Asiatic Researches, have dragged him down to a lower position than he is justly entitled to both by his abilities and his attainments. His" Essay on the comparative Geography of India," which was left unfinished at his death, and which was only published in 1851 at my earnest recommendation, is entirely free from the speculations of his earlier works, and is a living monument of the better judgment of his latter days.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages ,