India Discovered (15 page)

In the eighteenth century Aurangzeb’s great mosque above Panchganga ghat dominated the Benares waterfront. Built on the site of a vast Hindu temple it helped explain the dearth of pre-Islamic architecture in the sacred city. Yet Benares remained a centre of Hindu scholarship where the first orientalists sought the keys to India’s past. (Watercolour by Robt. Smith, 1833.)

James Prinsep consulting with Hindu
pandits
in the Sanskrit College in Benares. Founded by one of Warren Hasting’s protégés, the institution was the first to attempt the systematic collection and study of India’s classical literature. (Lithograph by Sir Chas. D’Oyley.)

The rock of Girnar in Gujerat, ‘which by the aid of the “iron pen” has been converted into a book’, was discovered by Colonel James Tod in 1822. Carrying one of the longest versions of Ashoka’s edicts, it was used by Prinsep to help decipher the script and establish Ashoka as the greatest figure in India’s ancient history. (Watercolour by Thos. Postans, 1938).

Only a few miles from Madras, the temples of Mahabalipuram (here in a painting by Thomas Daniell) puzzled scholars and visitors alike. For they were not in fact architecture but sculpture, each carved and hollowed from a single gigantic boulder.

“Few remains of antiquity have excited greater curiosity.’ The engineering skills involved in excavating the cave temples of western India suggested Egyptian involvement while their sculptural elegance was ascribed to Greek influence. Not till the 1830s was it acknowledged that they were in fact Indian – Buddhist in the case of Karli lithograph by Henry Salt, 1808), Hindu in the case of Elephanta (drawing by Bishop Heber).

The ruined temple of Boddh Gaya was being cared for by local Brahmins when Francis Buchanan first identified it as Buddhist. From ancient Chinese texts Cunningham discovered that it was in fact the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment. Rehabilitated, it is today a major centre of Buddhist studies and a place of universal pilgrimage. (Watercolour by ‘J.C.M.’, 1814.)

The
stupas
of Sanchi, and particularly the sculpted reliefs that cover their gateways, proved to be amongst the most enlightening finds. When first discovered in 1819, the Indian origins of Buddhism were still unsuspected. Alexander Cunningham pioneered this field of study and was the first to conduct a systematic examination of Sanchi. But not till the 1880s was the site cleared and partially reconstructed. (Watercolour by William Simpson, 1862.)

A major obstacle to any Victorian appreciation of Indian sculpture was its unabashed sensuality. The
yakshis,
tree and fertility spirits, once adorned Buddhist
stupa
railing at Mathura. But exception was made for artefacts of the Gandhara school (first to fifth centuries AD) of the northwest. Here Greek and Roman influence had resulted in the Buddha being decently clothed in a tog and in a Boddhisattva being endowed with classical features.