Author: Sourindranath Roy
Publisher: Archaelogical Survey of India
Year: 2011
Language: English
Pages: 213
ISBN/UPC (if available): N/A
Description
This compilation presents a brief review of the leading trends which characterized the long march of Indian Archaeology from its antiquarian beginnings in the closing years of the eighteenth century to the culmination it reached in the late forties of the twentieth century.
Archaeology has come to acquire for modern India a significance which is at once deeper and subtler than a strict definition of the term as a scientific discipline would seem to imply. The reason, however, is not far to seek. For what archaeology has achieved for her, albeit unconsciously, is nothing short of a revolution, a revolution in her own conception of her history and personality.
It has enabled her to establish her lost links with a great past whose magnificence was beyond her distant dreams. It has provided her with a vast and impressive background stretching back to the dimly lit dawn of prehistory and splendidly befitting her recently acquired greatness as a member of the comity of nation. Finally, by making her proudly conscious of a past replete with great achievements, it has made her also hopeful of a future worthy of that past.
Contents
The setting of the stage
The antiquarian prelude
From antiquarianism to archaeology
Cunningham and the first Archaeological Survey
A brief set-back and a swift recovery
Cunningham : the second phase
James Burgess
A bleak interlude
Curzon and the dawn of a new era
The Marshall epoch
After John Marshall