From Temple to Museum

Colonial Collections and Umā Maheśvara Icons in the Middle Ganga Valley

Salila Kulshreshtha

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351356091
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Indische & südasiatische Geschichte

Religious icons have been a contested terrain across the world. Their implications and understanding travel further than the artistic or the aesthetic and inform contemporary preoccupations.This book traces the lives of religious sculptures beyond the moment of their creation. It lays bare their purpose and evolution by contextualising them in their original architectural or ritual setting while also following their displacement. The work examines how these images may have moved during different spates of temple renovation and acquired new identities by being relocated either within sacred precincts or in private collections and museums, art markets or even desecrated and lost.

The book highlights contentious issues in Indian archaeology such as renegotiating identities of religious images, reuse and sharing of sacred space by adherents of different faiths, rebuilding of temples and consequent reinvention of these sites. The author also engages with postcolonial debates surrounding history writing and knowledge creation in British India and how colonial archaeology, archival practices, official surveys and institutionalisation of museums has influenced the current understanding of religion, sacred space and religious icons. In doing so it bridges the historiographical divide between the ancient and the modern as well as socio-religious practices and their institutional memory and preservation.

Drawn from a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary study of religious sculptures, classical texts, colonial archival records, British travelogues, official correspondences and fieldwork, the book will interest scholars and researchers of history, archaeology, religion, art history, museums studies, South Asian studies and Buddhist studies.

Part I
The making of museum collections

1
Creating identities

Science has had her adventurers, and philanthropy her achievements; the shores of India have been invaded by a race of students with no rapacity but for lettered relics; by naturalists, whose cruelty extends not to one human inhabitant; by philosophers, ambitious only for the extirpation of error, and the diffusion of truth. It remains for the artist to claim his part in these guiltless spoliation, and to transport to Europe the picturesque beauties of these favoured regions.¹

Thomas and William Daniell paint a picture of the eighteenth-century India as a land of plenty, inundated with European intellectuals, travellers, artists and adventures each of whom wanted to carry a relic of this exotic land for audiences back home.

The English East India Company, by now the masters of North India, undertook a massive intellectual campaign “to transform a land of incomprehensible spectacle into an empire of knowledge.”² The campaign was dependent on geographers, anthropologists and surveyors who mapped the landscapes, studied the inhabitants, collected geological and botanical specimens and recorded details of economy, society and culture. Like elsewhere in India the British government appointed surveyors and officers to survey, document, identify and list the historical sites of Bihar. These surveys mapped the ancient sites in the region, gave details of archaeological remains and most importantly assigned nomenclatures, thus creating identities. The disciplines of archaeology and art history in India were eventually born out of this tide of survey and documentation.³

The surveys aimed to establish India as divided into numerous petty kingdoms. “It was also meant to show that Brahmanism, instead of being an unchanged and unchangeable religion which had subsisted for ages, was of comparatively modern origin, and had been constantly receiving additions and alterations; facts which prove that the establishment of the Christian religion in India must ultimately succeed.”⁴ Individual initiatives as well as those undertaken by the official departments had, amongst other motives the objective of recovering and interpreting the true, pristine past of the nation. “Shared also was the agenda for historicising the colonised within colonial constructs and arriving at comparative linear histories of Indian architecture through meticulous documentation, classification, description, and analysis of empirical evidence.”⁵ A look at the eighteenth and nineteenth century European writing on Indian history, art and archaeology often reveals the colonial biases visible beneath the veneer of scholarship.

The nineteenth century became an age of unprecedented archaeological discovery and documentation, sponsored by the colonial government. Numerous sites were discovered, explored and some excavated. Countless ancient antiquities and monuments were described, drawn and photographed. The identification of a large number of place names mentioned in Indian, Chinese and Greek texts created the basis of ancient Indian historical geography.⁶ Simultaneously there was a growing threat to the sites: by road and rail construction, brick robbery, takeover by secular structures, treasure hunters and, more so, amateur archaeologists themselves. Antiquities and architectural elements were dislocated from their original location, to later become items in private collections or objects of display in museums in India and abroad.

It is crucial to understand this “creation of a past” to view its interconnectedness and permeation into present-day studies. The various explorations by European travellers, artists and scholars contributed to influence the works of British archaeologists. Much of these travel-ogues and writings are accepted as major archaeological documents to date. The “interconnectedness” thus highlights how these perceptions have shaped the archaeological reports and in the long run influenced the understanding of Indian art and architecture.

The chapter thus engages with the formulation of the colonial discourse and traces the “rediscovery” of the “ancient past.” A picture of a “conveniently ruined” past of India was presented to provide a validation to the colonial government to protect, recover and restore.⁷ Through this chapter I endeavour to provide the different strands of narratives which together weave a picture of decay and corruption in religion, ritual praxis and philosophy hence legitimising colonial rule.

I draw out personalities who contributed to this discourse through a particular branch of academic expertise such as cartography, surveying, archaeology and ethnography. There are two parallel processes which I attempt to chronicle: first, to trace the efforts of the British travellers and surveyors at exploring and identifying the sacred landscape; listing sculptural remains, shrines and other ritual objects. This would indicate the character of the sacred sites and relics at the end of the eighteenth century, before the beginning of any archaeological intervention. The second process I record is as to what happened at the sites, the artefacts and the monuments during these decades of their discovery and exploration.

The various surveys were meant to provide the colonial government with a historical, economic and social understanding of India which would ease their administration. At the end, however, the surveys, each with different focus and objective eventually added layers to defining and reshaping the religious identity of South Bihar.

James Rennell: drawing a picture of the land (1742–1830)

The earliest physical conception of the territories and sites of Bihar probably emerge from the survey and mapping of the region by James Rennell in the middle of the eighteenth century. James Rennell became a midshipman at the age of 14 and received training in surveying in the Royal Navy. In 1763 he joined the English East India Company. Ren-nell was later appointed Surveyor General of the East India Company’s Dominions in Bengal, with a commission in the Bengal Engineers, on 9 April 1764.

Rennell’s survey of Bengal commenced in the autumn of the same year. He first surveyed the mouth of the Ganga in Bengal, carefully fixing the points along its course and subsequently extended his survey to cover the region up to Bhutan. In this pursuit he found much support from Robert Clive who “communicated to him all the materials that could be found in the public offices, furnished him with a proper establishment and gave him all the assistance in his power.”⁸

Starting from 1767 for the next one decade he carried out the first comprehensive geographical survey of India. He published a magisterial wall map of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in 1776. Rennell’s work is the earliest accurate general map of the region and is considered to be one of the finest technical achievements of cartography made during the eighteenth century. He further extended his survey to map the Mogul Empire and traced the course of the Ganga as far as Delhi thus also completing the first comprehensive map of India.⁹ His Bengal Atlas was published as a one volume folio in November 1779, containing twenty-one maps and plans, and the second edition appeared in 1781. It was accompanied by a Memoirs containing a full account of the intellectual framework on which the map was executed.¹⁰ In 1782 his large Map of Hindoostan was published which covered most of the Indian peninsula above the Deccan.

Rennell returned to England in 1782 where he continued to write and publish works on geography and history and became an expert in the mapping and study of ocean currents. He continually updated his maps for accuracy and added new geographical information, using indigenous maps and drawings as sources. His cartographic methods included gleaning information from earlier maps, measuring distances along roads, establishing the coordinates of control points, and then creating a graticule or grid to create his maps.¹¹ Rennell’s maps were of such accuracy and quality that they were used well into the nineteenth century.

In methodology, planning and execution, Rennell somewhat followed the strategy of the French cartographer D’Anville; “to collect all the information that was accessible to him, to discuss all the details with the greatest care, bringing all the acumen of a thoroughly logical mind to bear on the decision of each doubtful point, and to give reasons for his decisions, and a full account of his authorities in the memoir.”¹² The basic data was garnered by him and his nine assistants in a course of 500 elaborate surveys for Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. In addition, he used the Persian map of Sir R Baker for names of places, which were translated to him by assistants. He also studied the routes of the several invaders to India and of the Mughal armies.

Rennell in his survey followed the division of the region into subahs originally devised by Akbar for revenue purposes. “In the division of Hindoostan into subahs I have followed the mode adopted by Emperor Acbar, as it appears to me to be the most permanent one: for the ideas of the boundaries are not only impressed on the minds of the natives by tradition, but are also ascertained in the AYIN ACBAREE; a register of the highest authority.”¹³ As per Rennell, Akbar divided his empire into eleven subahs, listed by him as “Lahore, Moultan, Agimere, Delhi, Agra, Oude, Allahabd, Bahar, Bengal, Malwa and Guzerat,”¹⁴ some of these “were in extent equal to large European kingdoms.”¹⁵ The subhas were further divided into circars and pargannas. Apart from convenience, the decision to divide the map into Akbar’s subhas seems to have had a political logic behind it.

Akbar’s reign was exactly contemporaneous with that of our great Queen, overlapping it for a few years at the beginning and at the end. It was highest period of the greatest prosperity and highest civilization for Muhamaddan India; and the divisions for the administrative purposes so well described by Akbar’s famous minister, Abul Fazl, are of the greatest historical interest.”¹⁶

Rennell defined the boundaries of Hindoostan, “which the Europeans have traditionally regarded as lying between the rivers Indus and the Ganga with the mountains of Tibet to the north, thereby leaving out the Deccan and South India which were not considered a part of Hindoostan.”¹⁷ In Section II of his Memoirs he describes this survey as covering an area about 900 miles long by 360 to 240 wide, from the eastern confines of Bengal to Agra, and from the feet of the Himalayas to Calpee. “The measured distances are said to have accorded minutely with observations for latitude and closely with those for longitude.”¹⁸ The region is shown divided into subhas, each distinguished in full original wash colours. The map carries detailed labelling of villages, a vast network of roads running throughout the region, innumerable river systems, swamps and mountain ranges.

The top right hand corner of Rennell’s Map of Hindoostan carries a rather interesting cartouche. It shows Britannia receiving in her protection the sacred books of the Hindoos presented to her by the pundits or learned Brahmans.¹⁹ The mind-set behind this prejudice is confirmed when one reads the Introduction to his Memoirs:

The accounts of 22 centuries ago, rep...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I The making of museum collections
• Part II The icon in context
• Conclusion: from sacred icons to objet d’art
• List of Hindi and Sanskrit words
• Bibliography
• Index