About Indian Archaeology

The history of archaeology in India dates back to the early sixteenth century and involves three groups of people namely Portuguese residents of Goa, other European sailors and occasional travellers. Principally, two categories of monuments are dealt with during this phase: the rock-cut caves of west India and the south Indian temples. Among the monu-ments in the interior, Elephanta was frequently described, and in the east the Black and White Pagodas, the Konark and Jagannatha temples of Orissa respectively, were known as early as the seventeenth century when they served as prominent navigational markers on the Orissan coast. By the middle of the eighteenth century, European familiarity with Indian monu-ments was fairly broad-based.

The formal beginning of Indian archaeology can be traced back to the mid-dle of the eighteenth century, when academic interest in the Indian antiq-uities began. The archaeology of India has got significance in the writings of some French scholars. The names of the major ancient Indian cities were known from the classical sources, and by the middle of the eighteenth century there was a specific geographical interest to identify them on the ground. Pataliputra, the ancient Mauryan capital described by the Greek ambassador to the Mauryan court, Megasthenes, was one of these cities.

In the second half of the eighteenth century there was considerable philosophical interest in the antiquity of India in Europe, especially among the philosophers of the French Enlightenment. The historical study of ancient India cannot realize its full potential on the basis of textual sources alone due to the fact that the sources which have been used, beginning with the Rig Veda, were not meant to be historical sources, and whatever historical information has been gleaned from them is not free from questions regarding their chronol-ogy, geographical applicability and even content. Except for the history of the kings of Kashmir, written by Kalhana in the twelfth century, there is no proper historical chronicle dating from the ancient period of Indian history. Great books which, like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, have for ages served as popular encyclopaedias of national culture.

The problem of sources is not limited to the texts. It affects in good measure inscriptions, coins, sculpture, painting and architecture as well, although in these cases geography and chronology are not among the prob-lems. The number of early inscriptions is severely limited. They increase in number only in the twelfth-twelfth centuries, more in the south than in the rest of the subcontinent. But inscriptions are also textual compositions, and. like other textual compositions, devote a lot of space to conventional descriptions rather than to the enumeration of the event for which the in-scription was intended in the first place. Coins come mostly from `stashes`; accidental, non-contextual discoveries which very often end up with the coin-dealers. A framework of the study of coins has no doubt emerged, but on many occasions the study of ancient Indian coins has not been able to proceed beyond a study of their design. The same is true of the specimens of art and architecture. They are concerned much more with the religious life of the day in different regions and less with the issues of individual authorship and patronage, precisely the issues which would have made them exciting as historical documents.

Over the last two centuries or more, scholars have certainly mapped out the different areas of ancient Indian history. Archaeology can greatly expand the nature of the sources in the context of ancient India. Even in the areas with a much larger mass of detailed and rigorous textual documentation, archaeological research often leads to hitherto unperceived dimensions of the historical landscape. In the case of ancient India, where the basic quantum and the rigour of textual documen-tation are comparatively limited, archaeological research becomes more than ordinarily significant.

Archaeology can also greatly change the nature of historical questions, and it is here that the second reason of the significance of archaeology in ancient Indian historical research is rooted. Although modern archaeology is not afraid of handling a multitude of issues ranging from environment and subsistence to symbolism and cognition, it is primarily in the reconstruction of the story of man-land relationship through the ages that the subject excels. Through the excavations, ample information of Paleolithic and Mesolithic period is obtained that enriched the study of Archaeology of India as a whole.

The past is a hotly contested arena of modern times, and the fact that it has become so is in a large measure due to a sense of monolithic, racist past that India have inherited as a colonial legacy in a large part of the world. In the case of India, it is realized that since the beginning of research on the history of ancient India, the story of its conquest by a care-fully constructed `superior` racial and linguistic group called the Aryans has been an overwhelmingly dominant theme and that this conquest and the subsequent assimilation of the various indigenous strands of culture by the conquering Aryans have been said to constitute the very basis of an-cient Indian society and history.

As far as the Third World countries go, the most pressing need these days is certainly to go beyond the bagful of colonial theories which they have all inherited and try to build up an image of themselves in which every member of their nation state can participate, irrespective of their regional, caste, tribal, religious, sectarian and a whole host of other affiliations. The primary sector of the past in which such a broad-based parti-cipation is possible is the history of their land, that particular patch of the earth`s surface which has befallen to their lot as a product of the historical circumstances and through which they have interacted in various ways through time. This approach makes archaeology predominantly a part of the environmental sciences.

Thus, to learn a non-sectarian and multilineal image of ancient India, archaeology, especially aided by the scientific techniques which are now available to the cause of archaeological research, provides the most significant area of historical enquiry.

Sources Of Indian Archaeology

Sources of Indian archaeology comprise of the different inscriptions, coins, terracotta and architectural structures that are built in different ages by different dynasties. These are reckoned as the important evidences that justify the Indian history from all the aspects of art, culture and society.

One of the main evidences available in the sources of Indian archaeology is the coins of different dynasties. Principally, two types of coins first appear in the early historic Indian archaeological records that are punch-marked silver and copper coins and uninscribed cast copper coins. The punch-marked coins were made by imprinting symbols on the obverse and reverse of these coins by individual punches. These coins were made mostly of silver and, in a much lesser quantity, of copper. The weight system was linked to the weight of a parti¬cular type of seed, which was expressed as `rati` or `ratti` weight. The punched symbols include a sin¬gularly wide range of motifs like geometric patterns, plants, weapons, minus¬cule representations of humans, and some animals like elephants, hares, bulls, dogs, etc. These motifs are said to run into several hundred varieties. According to numismatists of mod¬ern India, each of the symbols is found confined to the coins of a particular area or on those of a particular variety or type. The coins of each of these states differ from one another in their execution, fabric, weight, qual¬ity of metal and symbology. This offers a most interesting line of enquiry and speaks more eloquently of the extent of monetary economy in early historic India than anything else.

As far as the regional divisions of early punch-marked coins are con¬cerned, the silver bent-bar coins of Gandhara form a special category and so does the group of coins which are small, globular and bear the imprint of a single punch. The latter category does not seem to be confined to a single region.

At Kausambi, the uninscribed cast copper coins are thus considerably earlier than the silver punch-marked coins. Apart from these, the extensive distribu¬tion of black-and-red ware sites in the Sonabhadra region on one of the routes between Gangetic India and central India. As far as the other coins of early period are concerned, mentioning of the presence of the Achaemenid daric or `sigloi` type in a hoard of the Bhir mound of Taxila, which makes sense in view of the Achaemenid occupation of the area, and the early inscribed copper coins of the Chola, Pandya and Chera kings of the south" is important. The earlier square coins like Peruvaluthi clearly stand as testimony that the Tamil kings started issuing coins as early as the 3rd century BC. Before this, the local punch-marked coins as suggested by the fish, bow-and-arrow symbols in¬signia of the Pandyas and Cheras respectively are found.

From the late centuries BC onwards, the coin range of the north-western region is dominated, perhaps exclusively, by the coins of the Indo-Greeks, Indo-Scythians and Indo-Parthians till the coins issued by the Kushana kings supplant them not merely here but also over a very large tract of Gangetic India. There is a world of difference between the `Attic-standard` (the standard introduced by Alexander in his empire and accepted by his successors in the east), `drachms` and `tetradrachms` of the Bactrian Greek kings up to Euthydemus II and the introduction of `Indian-standard` coins with bilingual inscriptions (Greek on one face and Prakrit on the obverse) from Agathocles onwards. It has been evidenced that the Bactrian Greek king Demetrius I, who first tried his strength in the south of the Hindukush in the wake of the Mauryan decline, introduced a new coin-type with die-struck punch-mark symbols for his territories south of the Hindukush, which was still used to the punch-marked system. This underlines once again the tremendous significance of the Hindukush as providing a firm geo-political limit of the South Asian land mass. The coins of Agathocles and the later Indo-Greek coins bear the replicas of In¬dian deities such as Brahmi script or Kharosthi script the Greek name gets Indianised; Agathocles becomes `Agathuklaya` and Pantaleon `Pamtaleva`. The Indo-Scythian kings like Maues, Azes I and others and the Indo-Parthians like Gondophares are very much in the In¬dianized Indo-Greek tradition.

India was not ignored in the Kushana coinage. Even in the first group of Kushana issues under Kujula Kadphises the `bull` appears on one type and `Kharosthi` as the bilingual counterpart of `Greek` in all. Kujula`s coins were all in copper, but Wima Kadphises, his successor, introduced gold coins of three denominations on the model of the Roman coins which were then being imported into south Asia as part of Indo-Roman trade. However, `bull` and `Shiva` figure in the Wima coinage, also conti¬nued the tradition of bilingual (Greek and Kharoshthi) inscriptions. What is important, however, is that with their extensive possessions in central Asia and with the whole of Afghanistan in their control, the Kushana kings and their coinage were influenced by motley of elements: Greek, Iranian and Indian. The king after Wima, Kanishka, retains Shiva and introduces Lord Buddha as deities on his coins, but a whole host of Iranian and Greek deities also make their appearance on his coins. On the coins of Huvishka `Uma` and `Karttikeya` find a place along with Shiva.

In North India as a whole the phase of early coins was succeeded by an extensive range of local coinage belonging either to kings or tribal republics. The punch-mark tradition is now replaced by the die tradition, but the same symbols continue to occur. As far as the political history based on kings of different areas (Ayodhya, Panchala) and tribal republics like the Yaudheyas, Arjunayanas, etc. are concerned, these coins constitute the principal source of study. In the next phase, of course, the Kushana coinage takes over, leaving its mark in different forms even in the post-Kushana coinage.

The tradition of the coinage system in the post-Maurya phase in south India and the Deccan belongs to royal families such as `Sadakana` and the succeeding `Ananda` families in Karnataka, and the `Kura` family of the Deccan. These are die-struck coins but the punch-marked symbols continue to occur. This particular tradition of local coinage is soon overshadowed by the coinage of the Satavahana kings, issued mostly in lead and copper. Quite unusually, some Satavahana kings of the early centuries AD issued silver coins bearing their own portraitures and names (in Prakrit written in Brahmi script). It is obviously a case of Indo-Greek influence or the influence of Roman coins flowing by now in peninsular India in thousands. The successors of the Satavahanas, such as the Ikshakus of Andhra Pradesh, continue the Satavahana coinage tradition in some way. The case of the Satavahana contemporaries in western India, the `Western Kshatrapas` with their two branches of Kshaharatas and Karadamakas, shows some influence of the Indo-Greek or Roman coinage in the sense that a royal bust is placed on one side, but the inscriptions are in Sanskrit and Prakrit language. The north-western tradition had a faint echo in the coinage of west India and the Deccan but that was purely ephemeral. The Kushanas, with all their central Asiatic interests, could not forget south Asia altogether.

In addition to the coins in medieval India there are other sources that provide ample information to the study of Indian archaeology namely sculpture, terracotta and painting. It is in the Mauryan period that the growth of sculptural art was witnessed after an interregnum of more than a thousand years since the end of the Indus civilization which had a complete command over stone-cutting and sculpting. It is not known how the Indus tradition was passed on or whether the Mauryan period brought about a completely new phase of Indian stone-cutting. This uncertainty once impelled scholars to look for the genesis of Mauryan art in the Achaemenid imperial style and stone-cutting tradition. While some interaction between the Mauryans and the contem¬porary artists of western Asia is entirely probable and some features of Mauryan art bear its signature. Second, the Mauryan terracottas too mark a new phase in the history of Indian terracotta art. One need not deny a distinct sense of modelling in some pre-Mauryan terra¬cottas of the Ganga valley, but the evidence is not pervasive. The Indian terracottas assume a distinct time-bound style in the Mauryan period. From both these points of view the Mauryan art marks a new phase in the history of ancient Indian art.

The Ashokan pillars are all monolithic and sculpted and are considered, along with their animal capitals above, parts of the sculptural tradition. Parts of Mauryan capitals and broken pillars of the same period occur at a number of other places. The Rampurwa bull is firmly modelled but full of natural dynamism in the basic style of the elephant which emerges out of the live rock at Dhauli and the small elephants which occur on the facade of the Lomash Rishi cave in the Barabar hills. The tradition of naturalism is equally manifest in the bull, lion, horse and elephant which are shown along the diameter of the abacus of the Sarnath capital and in the row of geese shown in the sides of the Bodhi throne of Bodh Gaya. The honeysuckles, rosettes, palmettes, lotus-buds, bead-and-reels and volutes as designs on some capitals foreshadow the long history of such motifs in Indian art. The Didarganj specimen, which is in the form of a female fly-whisk-bearer, combines dignity with statuesque sensuousness. The much smaller mustachioed human head and a few animal heads from the late Mauryan level at Sarnath and the small, partly broken, limestone image of a humpless bull or cow from Harinarayanpur strengthen the assumption that the range of Mauryan art is much wider than the assumed circle of court art. Ringstones of soapstone and metamorphosed schist reveal a large range of iconographic elements, among which the figure of the earth goddess or Prithvi, of a type found in gold at Lauriya Nandangarh, seems to be common. Miscellaneous stone reliefs, including three pairs of frolicking male and female on a panel of three scenes from Rajgir, are reminiscent of the iconographic tradition of this type. The flounced-skirted and heavily coiffured females that one sees as a dominant type in the Mauryan terracottas are much less attractive than the naturalistic representations of Mauryan terracotta elephants.

The recent discoveries of seemingly contemporary stupa railings and medallions in Orissa and the Kanpur district of Uttar Pradesh along with the exca¬vated stupa remains at Pauni in Berar indicate that the distribution of the Sunga period and immediately later stupas is more widespread than its distribution along the Gangetic valley-Deccan route at Bodh Gaya, Bharhut and Sanchi would suggest.

That the stupa complex on the Sanchi hill was not an isolated complex but a part of a wider arrangement covering several places and is one of the excavated areas from where several sources have been derived. Supreme import¬ance is given in this art to human figures which are now elongated and sturdy and shows relief after relief of frenzied sensuous humans with a bet¬ter sense of perspective, more light and shade and rhythmic lines leading to a dynamic compositional unity and these reliefs are the representations of the most voluptuous and the most delicate flower of Indian sculpture.

Voluptuousness with less of delicacy and a lot more of earthbound strength was the characteristic feature of the yakshinis of the Mathura school of sculpture. They occur as components of the stupa remains (presumably Jaina in affiliation) at Kankali Tila in Mathura. It is also here that one can trace the transformation of primitive earth-bound yakshas into standing Bodhisattva type images, of which the one dedicated by Bhikshu Bala is a famous example. The diverse elements which represent Gandhara art are the following: Buddhism, both in spirit and iconography; central Asian influence in the royal attire; Iranian sun and moon gods; and finally, the row of Classical garland-bearing figures and Corinthian pilasters. It has been designated as "the Indus-Oxus school of Buddhist art" and its area of origin has been supposed to be the Swat valley.

Another distinct genre of Indian art of the period is ivory. The Kushana period ivories provide a rapturous mix of sensuousness and elegance in their female forms. These compare well with the sculptural and terra¬cotta specimens of the Sunga period.

Moreover the architectural evidences are other sources of Indian archaeology. Starting from the early historic Buddhist architecture, encompassing stupas, chaitya halls and monasteries, the architectural evidences are scattered hither and thither and they all are the evidences of the early history of India. The pillars and stupas under the reigning period of the Sunga period, the Satavahana kings" et al serves as the sources of the study of Indian archaeology. The stupa plan and its decorative styles were different from one another and with time the stupa plans differed from area to area. For instance, in some stupas at Nagarjunakonda the walls were arranged in the form of a multiple-spoked wheel, whereas in the Gandhara region the min¬iature stupa from Loriyan Tongai stands on an oblong platform with sides showing sculptured panels and Corinthian pilasters.

Some of the architectural constructions that date from the third century BC are found and they refer to the art and architectural evidences of the era like the chaitya-halls, a major form of Buddhist architecture. Rock-cut examples with variations in planning occur in the Sudama and Lomas Rishi caves of the Barabar hills date from the same period. Broadly similar plans from later contexts (c. first century BC) occur in the Tulja-Lena group of rock-cut caves at Junnar near Nasik, Kondivte in Mumbai and Guntupalle in the Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh. Apsidal chaitya halls dating from the third century BC have been noticed in the Sanchi temple and at Sarnath and Rajgir (below Maniyar Math). Free-standing Hindu temples occur only from the Gupta period onwards, although shrines have been represented in sculptural reliefs from Mathura, Sanchi and Bharhut. Excavated examples of earlier dates are still rare and occur at Sanchi, Vidisa, Nagari and Sonkh. The Sonkh specimen, an apsidal Naga temple, belongs to the second century AD. Recently, an apsidal structure on rammed burnt-brick foundation has been dated to the late Mauryan period at Sarnath.

Archaeology of Palaeolithic Age

The modern phase of Palaeolithic studies in archaeology in India began in the 1930s when there were attempts to go beyond the succession and distribution of artifacts and consider the issues of related environment and geochronology. The interrelationship between the stratigraphic profile of prehistoric tools and related environment was first highlighted in a major way in India by a study of tools collected in the Eastern Ghats of the Andhra region.

However, the works of certain geologists have got their significance because of the fact that they went beyond such palaeoclimatic correlations and introduced a geochronological scale on the European model. Moreover, having established a geochronological scale for its main study area between Kashmir and the Salt range, it extended the framework, through archaeological com¬parisons, to include the Narmada valley in central India and the area around Madras in the south.

In the Narmada valley of central India, four terraces were recognised only in the tributary valleys but they were impossible to distin¬guish in the main valley where three different cycles of sedimentation were recognized. These cycles of sedimentation came to be known as the `lower group`, `upper group` and `regur or cotton soil group`. While the regur or black cotton soil is irrelevant, the lower and upper groups both show a gravel bed followed by a bed of clays and silts. The gravel bed or the boulder conglomerate of the lower group is more cemented than the gravel of the upper group. Similarly, the clay of the lower group is more intensely coloured and richer in concretions than the clay of the upper group. Thus, basically, it is a succession of cemented basal gravel, clay, finer gravel and clay, the whole being covered by regur or cotton soil.

In south India, three terraces were observed in the Kortalayar plain near Chennai. These terraces were formed after a deposition of detrital laterite over a boulder conglomerate. The better known sites of this region are Vadamadurai and Attirampakkam. The evidences found from some books published by some scholars show that there was considerable progress in Indian Palaeolithic research between 1963 and 1974, especially in the areas of stratigraphy and typology. The stratigraphic and typological continuity between the three horizons of the Indian Palaeolithic could no longer be doubted, and there was certainly a better grip over the typological range of the tools themselves. At the same time, it has to be noted that within the range of the Indian lower Palaeolithic no acceptable evolutionary se¬quence of tool-types emerged.

Since the mid-seventies, Palaeolithic research in India has branched out in several directions beyond stratigraphical and typological considerations. First, a few traces of primary occupation of Palaeolithic people have been exposed through controlled excavations at Paisra in Bihar, Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh and Hunsgi in Karnataka. However, none of these ex¬cavations yielded any sign of organic material which could be used for a fuller reconstruction of the contemporary life. Second, there has been some emphasis on working out the geochronology of lower Palaeolithic and middle Palaeolithic horizons. Admittedly, the dates available are still very limited in number, and at least in one case the dates have not contributed to a clear picture. However, the availability of some absolute dates for the Indian lower Palaeolithic and a handful of non-radiocarbon dates from the middle and upper Palaeolithic as well, must be considered an important step forward. Along with this has developed a concern for geoarchaeology and a quest for precision in the typological analysis of tool assemblages. Both these developments have received warm welcome, but as far as geoarchaeology is concerned, the use of geological and geomorphological jargon and the presentation of archaeological data in various computer-derived forms do not necessarily announce the maturity of geoarchaeological approach to Palaeolithic studies in India.

Apart from these, rigorous multi-disciplinary investigations in the field of sediment deposits have been conducted in a rather limited area in Rajasthan. Some amount of sea-level studies has been conducted in Gujarat. In Kashmir, the archaeological correlates seem to be elusive before the upper Palaeolithic stage. A study of this kind was also undertaken in the context of the Son valley in Madhya Pradesh and the Belan valley of Uttar Pradesh. Under the circumstances, what has been really successful in the field of palaeolithic studies in modern India is the development of an eth¬nography-based settlement-subsistence approach. This has been applied with success in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, and may be pursued in other areas as well.

The sources of information for the archaeology in the Paleolithic age are some books that are written by some scholars of this sector. Moreover, there are some other sources that stand evidences for the study of the archaeology of the Palaeolithic age, but due to the dearth of written documents in this particular division of archaeology, the detailed study of archaeology of the Palaeolithic age was hampered.

Archaeology in Mesolithic Age

Towards the end of the geological period of Pleistocene and the beginning of the geologically Recent period, and between the hunting-gathering upper Paleolithic and the `neolithic` or a generalized stage marking the beginning of food-production and village-farming economy, the position of the Mesolithic as a distinct archaeological level has long been assured in the archaeological literature. This stratigraphic aspect cannot be separated from the concept of the Mesolithic. In the Indian situation, on the one hand we would expect this level to be rooted in the preceding upper Paleolithic, and on the other it should be earlier than the first manifestation of the village-farming economy in the regional context. Correspondingly, it should also be possible to ascribe it to a geological context of the late Pleistocene-early Recent or Holocene phase. Thus, while ascribing the `Mesolithic` status to the finds of `microlithic industry` anywhere, it is important to consider the chronological aspect.

The first phase of the Indian Mesolithic period dates back to the era between 10,000+ BC and c. 5,000-4,000 BC. There is some consistency in this spread of dates in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. There are also many late dates from other apparently Mesolithic contexts. For instance, the Lekhahia rock-shelter in the eastern Vindhyas has three seventeenth century AD dates from the phase 4 of its Mesolithic occupation. Either these dates are based on contaminated samples or indicative of a very late con-tinuation of the use of microlithic tools in this area.

In addition to the `pigmy` versions of the upper Paleolithic types, such as points, scrapers, burins, awls, etc., there are lunates or crescents and the so-called geometric shapes of rhomboids, trapezes and trapezoids, and triangles. The presence or absence of the geometric shapes establishes the status of a particular microlithic industry as geometric or non-geometric. As far as the presently available evidence goes, the latter may be earlier than the former in a particular sequence, but geometric type by itself need not be taken as indicative of a late assemblage. In both cases, the tools are too small to be effective as single specimens, although excep-tion may be made in the case of those which could be used as arrowheads and drill-points. They were mostly hafted into handles of wood or bone and formed composite implements, such as saws, sickles, etc. Actual speci-mens of such implements made by hafting microliths in a handle have been found in suitably preserved archaeological situations.

That the Indian microlithic industry is rooted in the preceding phase of upper Paleolithic industries is proved both by the continuation of the archaeological stratigraphy from the upper Paleolithic into the microlithic and the development of the latter category of tools from the former category. The element of stratigraphic continuity is clear from ailed areas and localities where a full prehistoric profile from the Paleolithic to the Mesolithic is available. The continuity of lithic technology is apparent too, wherever a close study of the lithic assemblages of both the upper Paleolithic and the Mesolithic has been made. Patne in the Chalisgaon area of Maharashtra is an excavated site where such a study has been made. The presence of backed, pen-knife and truncated varieties of blades along with lunates, triangles and trapezes in this level clearly foreshadows the development of the full-fledged microlithic industry of the succeeding phase. As per the study of the excavation, it has been noted that the `Microlithic character obtained in the Late Upper Paleolithic`.

Moreover, it has been noted that the Chopani Mando, contains an industry of backed blades, parallel-sided blades, burins, points, scrapers, cores, flakes and blanks which are smaller than the same type of upper Paleolithic artifacts but longer, thicker and broader than the true Mesolithic artifacts. In the Belan valley the emergence of microliths towards the end Pleisto-cene is a clear possibility. In certain areas, however, the use of microliths could have continued till the early medieval context. The early historic level of Dihar in Bankura, West Bengal, supposedly contains microliths made of bottle glass and in the same region lithic spe-cimens have been found in association with c. tenth to twelfth century AD pottery. The tradition of making microliths out of bottle glass has been documented in the Andaman Islands in the nineteenth century. In fact, un-dated microlithic contexts in India do not denote a Mesolithic phase. Myri-ads of surface clusters of microliths in the subcontinent are undated and thus cannot be put in a specifically Mesolithic context.

Although the distribution of early, truly Mesolithic evidence in India is still limited, the distribution of microlithic sites is not; in fact, it is easier to note the areas without microliths than those with them. Except in a limited section of the Ganga plain, i.e. part of a strip between Pratapgarh and Banaras, microliths are not yet known to occur elsewhere in the Indo-Gangetic plain. The hilly areas of the north-east too have not yet revealed any categorical proof of the existence of this industry. Otherwise, microliths are more ubiquitous than Palaeoliths in the sense that they are far more visible in the landscape. The modern population explosion has, however, destroyed many microlithic clusters in many areas of the subcontinent.

Archaeology in Post Independent India

There is no deny¬ing that in the total scheme of historical investigations archaeology in post independent India was only a marginal, vocational activity undertaken by a government depart¬ment, despite the achievement of archaeology in British India.

In the post-Independence period, the scale of government support to widen the base of archaeological research in the country was fundamentally changed. The basic shape of the central Archaeological Survey remains the same, but in scale there can be no comparison between the official strength of the pre-1947 Survey and that of post-1947 India. In terms of approved manpower, budget and the number of its circles and branches, the modern Indian Survey was truly an archaeological juggernaut. On a different level, the state governments had assumed the responsibility of archaeological research and conservation within their own territories, thus sharing a substantive amount of archaeological power with the central government. On another level, the Indian University Grants Commission had injected large amounts of money into the university system to establish units of archaeological research in different parts of the country. The number of archaeological museums and miscellaneous organizations interested in archaeology had also increased manifold.

Compared to the pre-1947 scenario, the result of all these efforts had been spectacular. The prehistoric and protohistoric roots of every part of the country had now been put in sharp focus. In the historical field too there had been a sharp increase in the quantity of both explored and excavated data. As far as the natural-scientific techniques are concerned, a beginning had been made in most of the major fields. The questions which were being asked of the archaeological data were also manifold and re¬fute the allegation aired in some quarters that theoretically Indian archaeo¬logy had not moved forward after Wheeler. Archaeology in Indian universities has been traditionally built around history departments, and in a country with a rich past such as India archaeology is considered quite logically a historical discipline. Other disciplines like anthropology, geol¬ogy and geography can certainly have archaeological components just as the hard-core natural science subjects like physics and chemistry can play major roles in archaeological dating and analytical techniques. However, because of certain constraints of the Indian university system these multi-disciplinary aspects were yet to make a systematic headway. But to argue that archaeology in India had only to be anthropologically structured and not historically oriented was unacceptable.

If Indian archaeology has significantly progressed since Independence, it had also made the mass aware of the manifold issues and both orga¬nizational and academic problems associated with it. The two funda¬mental issues continued to obstruct the progress of the subject as a whole in India. One was related to the traditional Indological framework of ancient India in terms of race, language and culture. Although strong voices have been raised in recent years against this approach, this has not gone out of scene in archaeological literature either in India or abroad. As long as this antiquated and overtly racist approach to the past persisted, which it did in the framework of traditional Indology, ar¬chaeological emphasis on the grassroots history of the land was unlikely to be appreciated. It is this mind-set which provided the greatest stumbling block to the progress of archaeological research in India as a full-fledged academic discipline.

The second major issue offsetting the progress of archaeological res¬earch in India is rooted in the way archaeology developed in the country. It got systematized only as a government activity and even now, to a very large extent, it is dominated by provincial and central bodies. A strong bureaucratic and authoritarian element ran through the organization and execution of archaeological research in India, and in this sense archaeol¬ogy in India was not a free academic subject like other subjects taught in the universities. Besides, Indian archaeological bureaucracy had been unable to take stock of the changing dimensions of archaeology as an academic subject and orient its planning accordingly. What was perhaps worse is that it had not yet woken up to the sheer scale of destruction of archaeological sites of all kinds due to the ever-mounting population pressure. Further, in an authoritarian bureaucratic structure of management a lot depends on the quality and commitment of the people in higher echelons of the structure. The progress achieved by Indian archaeology in the post-Independence period, was possible because of the presence of some who had the necessary education and mental frame to look beyond their personal interests and the interests of their caste-groups and regions and focus on the evolution of a national archaeological policy even within the bureaucratic constraints. That policy now lies in tatters, in an increasingly politicized and factious world of higher education and bureaucracy. The only sign of hope was a heightened awareness of archaeol¬ogy as an academic discipline among the general educated class of the country.

Archaeology in Modern India

The footsteps of Indian archaeol-ogy can easily be traced from the beginning of the early sixteenth century to the closing years of the nineteenth century with its dominant theoretical frame of field-enquiry being a concern with the issue of ancient Indian historical geography. Sites, inscriptions, coins, sculpture, architecture, all had their place in this over¬riding scheme. At the dawn of the twentieth century there was a definite archaeological shape of India`s ancient past. Some recent excavations that are carried out by the archeologists of modern era also serve important information in the Indian archaeology.

Moreover, during the modern period of archaeology, important matters should be taken for considerations in the field of archaeology in modern India. The Archaeological Survey of India was organised as late as 1861 and suffered at least two major interruptions before the end of the century. During this time, in the important task of preserving the Indian monuments there were only brief and generally half-hearted attempts and there was no policy of systematically excavating ancient historic settlements. The excavations that took place during this period were done in a haphazard manner and were only of marginal significance. In fact, in the closing years of the nineteenth century the government had no bigger plan for archaeology except a province-wise listing of the major monuments and sites.

During the ruling period of the British, there was a steady emphasis on the tasks of exploration and ex-cavation in different parts of India, undertaken by the authorities. This was the era when the British took increasing role in the field-work, with the em-phasis on the excavation of the principal early historical cities of north India and the associated stupa and monastic sites, along with Rajagriha (1905-6) and Bhita (1911-12). For the first time, the early historic urban past of north India was being given a touch of reality by the archaeologist`s spade. Another major achievement of his time was the discovery of the Indus civilization. The principal sites of this civilization excavated during this period are Mohenjodaro and Harappa. Though both the sites had been known for a long time but their archaeological significance was not appreciated till these excavations were undertaken. The site of Harappa was much destroyed by the depredations of the railway contractors of the Lahore-Multan railway, and thus Mohenjodaro became the major focus of horizontal excavations. Another excavation of archeological importance was the buried Bud¬dhist ruins in the deserts of central Asia in 1900-1, 1906-8 and 1913-16 that was made on behalf of the government of India.

Till 1944 certainly some good work were carried out, notably at the Indus civilization sites of Mohenjodaro, Chanhudaro and Harappa and at the early historic site of Ahichchhatra. The government of India took a renewed interest in the Archaeological Survey to make further progress in this sector of archaeology.