By Prof. A.V. Narasimha Murthy, former Head, Department of Ancient History & Archaeology, University of Mysore
The print and electronic media have been very active in giving publicity to the 150th celebrations of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). This great department was established in 1860-61 with Alexandar Cunningham, generally considered to be the first Director General.
Actually first he was appointed as Surveyor with a salary of Rs. 450, field allowance of Rs. 250, plus a share in the antiquities to be discovered by him. Subsequently he was appointed Director General, which post is being continued till today mostly occupied by archaeol-ogists and sometime IAS officers. Thus it has a long tradition.
Archaeology is not a popular word and most people find it difficult to pronounce. It means the science of the past. To make its meaning more easy, my teacher used to say that archaeology is the root and history is the fruit, there by showing that history depends upon archaeology to become meaningful. If a literary text states that a king’s palace had golden doors, archaeologist would interpret it as gold was known and the king had a palace! Thus archaeology requires a proof or evidence.
Archaeologist is generally compared to a detective who, with the available artifacts, solves a problem or a riddle and gives flesh and blood to history.
Archaeologist is also made fun of for his way of working. R.K. Narayan’s joke is famous. Two archaeologists were working at an ancient site. One of them found some metallic wires and he immediately exclaimed, these people knew electricity. The other one did not get anything and he announced that they knew wireless.
But archaeology is more serious and a methodical academic discipline all over the world which brings dead civilisations alive. Archaeology includes many categories such as prehistory (before the invention of writing), inscriptions (on stones and copper plates), coins, architecture, sculpture, paintings, bronzes — thus all objects created by man. These antiquities are generally buried under the earth and archaeologist digs them out in a methodical manner, analyses and interprets them and passes them to the historian to write a continuous history of the men and period during which they were made.
This is the journey of man through the ages in all walks of life and this is generally referred to as culture or civilisation.
This is what the ASI is doing for the past 150 years in a methodical manner. Perhaps taking a global view, it can be said with certainty that best served country from the point of view of archaeology is India itself. We should be grateful to Britishers for this contribution and this tradition has been nurtured ably our own Indian archaeologists.
Archaeology has been making use of scientific tools in an amazing way. Carbon 14, dendrochronology Potassium-Argon, spectroscopy are some of the methods which have made archaeology a science. Non-destructive methods are used to analyse coins and even determine the source of the metals used for making coins. Aerial photography has been a great boon in exploration had location of remnants of monuments. Archaeological chemistry has made great prog-ress. Ancient paintings of Ajanta, Tanjore etc. have been given a new lease of life by archaeological chemists. The Tanjore temple has two layers of paintings and our chemists have been able to remove the upper layer of painting and transplant them to a different place and allow us to see the Chola paintings of the early period. Hundreds of bronzes have been given chemical treatment.
Transplantation of temples from one place to another is a great contribution of archaeologists. Thus many destroyed temples have been rebuilt with the same original pillars, sculptures and other architectural members. Our expertise in this field is so good that many foreign countries have invited our archaeologists to conserve their monuments including Angkor. Thus Indian archaeology is going global.
The Horticulture Branch of ASI is providing proper environment to beautiful monuments by providing carpet-like green lawns and gardens to enhance the bea-uty of the monuments. Now laws have been made more effective so that unnecessary and ugly constructions which are an eye-sore to the monuments are removed. More and more monuments are being added to the list of world heritage monuments which bring in thousands of international visitors to our country.
A large number of museums both at excavated sites and location of temples and mosques have been established. Their educative value cannot be overestimated. A large number of authentic guide books and scholarly works have been published to educate our youth. Though the Head Quarters of ASI is in New Delhi, it has various branch offices to look after the monuments.
Mysore is the Head Quarters of the Epigraphical Branch. Inscriptions all over the country are copied and about one lakh estampages are stored here for the study of the historians.
It is my good fortune that I started my professional career in ASI in 1957. At the instance of my guru Prof. K.A. Nilakantha Sastri, a special interview was conducted at Madras by B.K. Thapar, who later became Director General. Unfortunately I could not continue in ASI beyond three years, as I had to go to Harvard University on a Fulbright Scholarship where I worked under Movius Jr. and Dr. Wiley. After returning from Harvard, I joined Mysore University and taught archaeology in addition to research for over 35 years. I have contributed many students to ASI who have distinguished themselves as archaeologists.
The Bangalore circle had organised a function to celebrate 150th year of ASI last month where I was honoured with a plaque which referred to it as an award of excellence in discovering the ancient glory. This give me the satisfaction that I have served my motherland through archaeology.
In this process I had the good fortune of knowing the savants like A. Ghosh, M.N. Deshpande, B.B. Lal, Thapar, Debala Mitra, M.C. Joshi, Jagatpati Joshi, D.C. Sircar, K.R. Srinivasan, Shivara-mamurthy, Krishnadeva, V.D. Krishnaswamy, Soundararajan, T.N. Ramachandran and others.
I have seen 100th and 150th year of ASI. Thus I pay my homage to ASI and its dedicated officers and salute them.
source: http://www.StarofMysore.com / Feature Articles / February 11th, 2012