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Charles Masson and the Buddhist Sites of Afghanistan Company to Explore the Ancient Sites in South-East Afghanistan

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Charles Masson and the Buddhist Sites of Afghanistan Company to Explore the Ancient Sites in South-East Afghanistan From 1833–8, Charles Masson (1800–1853) was employed by the British East India Charles Masson and the Buddhist Sites of Afghanistan Company to explore the ancient sites in south-east Afghanistan. During this period, he surveyed over a hundred Buddhist sites around Kabul, Jalalabad and Wardak, making numerous drawings of the sites, together with maps, compass readings, sections of the stupas and sketches of some of the finds. Small illustrations of a selection of these key sites were published in Ariana Antiqua in 1841. However, this represents only a tiny proportion of his official and private correspondence held in the India Office Collection of the British Library which is studied in detail in this publication. It is supplemented online by The Charles Masson Archive: British Library and British Museum Documents Relating to the 1832–1838 Masson Collection from Afghanistan (British Museum Research Publication number 216). Together they provide the means for a comprehensive reconstitution of the archaeological record of the sites. In return for funding his exploration of the ancient sites of Afghanistan, the British East India Company received all of Masson’s finds. These were sent to the India Museum in London, and when it closed in 1878 the British Museum was the principal recipient of all the ‘archaeological’ artefacts and a proportion of the coins. This volume studies the British Museum’s collection of the Buddhist relic deposits, including reliquaries, beads and coins, and places them within a wider historical and archaeological context for the first time. Masson’s collection of coins and finds from Begram are the subject of a separate study. Elizabeth Errington first began working on the archaeological records of Charles Masson during research for her doctoral thesis on the 19th-century discovery of the Buddhist sites of Gandhara. She was a curator of South and Central Asian coins in the British Museum (1993–2011) and from 1993 onwards has served as the co- ordinator and principal researcher for the British Museum’s Masson Project. Charles Masson and the Other recently published Research Publications Elizabeth Errington Research Publication 210 Excavations at the British Museum: An Archaeological Buddhist Sites of Afghanistan: and Social History of Bloomsbury Rebecca Haslam and Victoria Ridgeway Explorations, Excavations, Research Publication 207 Amaravati: The Art of an Early Buddhist Monument Collections 1832–1835 in Context Edited by Akira Shimada and Michael Willis Research Publication 206 ‘Some Friends Came to See Us’: Lord Moyne’s 1936 Expedition to the Asmat Elizabeth Errington Nick Stanley Research Publication 205 Ming China: Courts and Contacts 1400–1450 Edited by Craig Clunas, Jessica Harrison-Hall and Luk Yu-ping Research Publication £40 215 Charles Masson and the Buddhist Sites of Afghanistan: Explorations, Excavations, Collections 1832–1835 Elizabeth Errington With contributions by Piers Baker, Kirstin Leighton-Boyce, Wannaporn Kay Rienjang, Chantal Fabrègues, Ian Freestone, Louise Joyner, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer and Margaret Sax To Neil Kreitman, Joe Cribb and Charles Masson without whom the Masson Project would not have existed Research funded by the Neil Kreitman Foundation 1993–2011 Published with the support of ERC Project No. 609823 Publishers The British Museum Great Russell Street London wc1b 3dg Series editor Sarah Faulks Charles Masson and the Buddhist Sites of Afghanistan: Explorations, Excavations, Collections 1832–1835 Elizabeth Errington isbn 978 086159 215 9 issn 1747 3640 © The Trustees of the British Museum 2017 Front cover: The relic deposit from Bimaran stupa 2, 1st century AD. British Museum (steatite reliquary 1880.27; gold reliquary 1900,0209.1; coins IOC.201, IOC.202, IOC. 204, 1960,0407.1; signet ring 1880.3855.a; see Figs 117 and 119 for all the objects from the relic deposit) Printed and bound in the UK by 4edge Ltd, Hockley Papers used by The British Museum are recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests and other controlled sources. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. All British Museum images illustrated in this book are © The Trustees of the British Museum All British Library images illustrated in this book are © British Library Board All images from Mizuno 1970–1 are © Kyoto University 1965 All other drawings and maps where copyright is not specified are © E. Errington Further information about the British Museum and its collection can be found at britishmuseum.org Contents Acknowledgements v Preface 1 Part 1: Charles Masson and His Contemporaries 1. The Life of James Lewis / Charles Masson, 3 1800–53 2. The Discovery of Buddhist Sites in Afghanistan, 15 1824–79 3. From Kabul to London and Beyond: 22 The Dispersal of the Masson Collection Part 2: The Stupas and Relic Deposits 4. The Buddhist Landscape 28 5. The Relic Deposits 32 6. The Buddhist and Historical Context of the Finds 41 7. Sources of Raw Materials Suggested by the 45 Published Literature 8. Analysis of the Materials Used for Small Finds 49 from the Relic Deposits Louise Joyner and Ian Freestone 9. Stone Beads from the Relic Deposits: 52 A Preliminary Morphological and Technological Analysis Margaret Sax, Wannaporn Kay Rienjang and Jonathan Mark Kenoyer Part 3: Records of the Sites and Catalogue of the 58 Relic Deposits 10. Bamiyan 59 11. Kabul Sites 66 12. Stupas South-east of Kabul: Shakh Baranta 71 Ridge (Modern Monaray Ghar) 13. Sites in Koh-i Daman and Kohistan (between 82 Kabul and Begram) 14. Darunta / Siah Koh Sites 85 15. Chahar Bagh Sites 141 16. Sites in the Jalalabad, Kunar and Safed Koh 153 Regions 17. Hadda Sites 162 18. Wardak / Kohwat Sites 200 19. Finds without Site Provenance 212 Appendix 1 List of Standardized Spelling 215 Appendix 2 Records Relating to the South 217 Kensington Museum 1880 India Museum Inventory Appendix 3 Documentation of Bead Morphology, 226 Manufacture and Use Wear Jonathan Mark Kenoyer References 230 Index 238 iv | Charles Masson and the Buddhist Sites of Afghanistan When I wandered into the British Library in the early 1990s Acknowledgements with the question ‘What are these Masson manuscripts all about then?’, I never dreamt that I would be embarking on a project that would take up the rest of my working life and beyond. Had I foreseen it, would I have fled? Somehow I doubt it, for the subject has held my interest throughout. In my tortoise-paced progress I have been blessed with the encouragement, assistance and hard work of many people over the decades. I owe an immense debt of gratitude above all to two people – Neil Kreitman and Joe Cribb – for their forbearance and unflagging support. The Masson Project was their brainchild and has been generously funded throughout by the Neil Kreitman Foundation (1993–2011), with additional funding from the Townley Group of British Museum Friends (1998–2004), the Royal Numismatic Society and the British Museum Research Board and Asia Department. Publication costs have very kindly been met by the European Research Council (ERC). The Masson Project led to my working among the best of colleagues in the Coins and Medals Department of the British Museum. In addition to Joe Cribb, former Keeper of Coins and Medals, I would like to thank in particular the present Keeper, Philip Attwood, and my fellow Asian coin curators Helen Wang, Robert Bracey and Vesta Curtis for continuing to assist and accept me as a member of the Department despite my official retirement, allowing me unlimited time and facilities to complete this undertaking. My thanks also to Michael Willis for his help and for organizing the transfer of the Asia Department’s Masson holdings to the Department of Coins and Medals for the duration of the Project, thereby allowing free access to the collection at all times. He has also been instrumental in arranging ERC funding for the publication. It has proved fortunate that Masson caught the imagination of many people who have worked on the Project, occasionally with limited funding, mostly as volunteers. The ghost-writer contributions of Piers Baker, Kirstin Leighton- Boyce and Kay Rienjang to this volume are not individually credited, but are nevertheless extensive. All three worked on documenting and registering the collection, while Piers and Kirstin wrote entries for the British Museum’s Collection Online database that forms the basis of this catalogue. Kirstin also helped to produce images of the site drawings and in numbering the catalogue figures. Kay acted as my long-suffering personal library assistant, checking bibliographic references, alerting me to relevant publications and generously sharing her ideas and any new information she found in the course of her own PhD research on relic deposits. She and Piers transcribed Masson’s manuscripts on the cave sites of Kabul and Jalalabad (G41) and Bamiyan (G42). Piers moreover provided photographs of some of the key sites and, with Henry Lythe, traced Masson’s family records in the National Archives and elsewhere. The volume has also benefited from Chantal Fabrègues’ expertize on jewellery of the period and region. During a heat-wave one summer, Paramdip Khera and Jeanne Dreskin stoically worked in impossible temperatures, recording the contents of each box of relic deposit small finds prior to their registration: the computer overheated and gave up, but they did not. I also greatly appreciate the help from Acknowledgements | v Anna McIlreavy and Setsuko Kuga-Cornish in I would also like to thank Harry Falk for his extremely documenting the finds. useful images of the new Wardak reliquary and for his help An unexpected bonus has been the Department of in making sense of Masson’s stray Kharoshthi records. Scientific Research’s contributions on materials and bead Masson’s drawings and manuscripts are all reproduced manufacture by Margaret Sax, Louise Joyner and Ian courtesy of the British Library.
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