0 km 100 I Figure Bihar state, showing the loca­ 1 tion ofRajgir and other places mentioned ecent tensions in India contest. Its results will be part of the pro­ in the text. between Hindus and Muslims cess by which different meanings emerge. have centred on the sixteenth­ That this will not be the first time this has century BC, Magadha became the Mauryan R century Babri Masjid mosque. happened can be illustrated by the history empire, which at its height extended over Located in Ayodhya, a city in of archaeological work at Rajgir in north­ nearly all of modern South Asia; but by northern India sacred to the god-hero eastern India.1 then the capital had moved north to Patal­ Rama, controversy has raged there over iputra (modern Patna, Fig. 1). whether a temple dedicated to him was The site of Rajgir Modern interpretations ofthe site divide demolished in the past to make way for the The modern town of Rajgir in the state of it into old and new parts. The old capital is mosque. The mosque was in turn demol­ Bihar (Fig. 1) is now just a provincial cen­ identified with ruins in a valley sur­ ished in 1992 and attempts by interested tre, but ancient Rajagrha was once one of rounded by the Rajgir hills (Fig. 2). The parties to build a new temple continue. the largest cities in the Ganges Valley and modern town just outside the valley is Archaeologists have been called in to act as the capital of the kingdom ofMagadha. It is adjacent to ancient ramparts that postdate independent arbiters, to supply the scien­ mentioned frequently in ancient texts - the Buddha and they are considered to rep­ tific facts that will allow the real history of Hindu, Buddhist and Jain - and the found­ resent a relocation of the city at some point the mosque to become incontestably clear. ers ofboth Buddhism and J ainism (Buddha in the mid-first millennium BC. But whatever the outcome, archaeology and Mahavira) spent much of their careers Rajgir's past has made it a pilgrimage will not be a referee standing outside the here. In the last quarter of the fourth site for nearly all India's religions - in • 15 OF RAJGIR . DISTRICT NALANDA JCALE OF K nu�u.nu.s AMIR Sl/fGH Figure 2 Sketch map of Old and New Rajgir, from the guide to Rajgir published in 1958 by the Archaeological Survey of In dia (from M. Kureishi A. Ghosh, Rajgir (Delhi: Archaeological Survey of In dia, 1958). & 48 ARCHAEOLOGY INTERNATIONAL particular for Hindus, who consider its hot was monumentalized with commemora­ version of the work of the Greek author springs sacred, Jains, whose temples dot tive stupas (hemispherical Buddhist struc­ Pausanias. 3 Cunningham visited Rajgir for the hilltops, and Buddhists (mainly from tures that contain sacred relics) that the first time in 1861-62 and again in eastern Asia), who come to visit places connected geography with the events of 1872.4 But he had prefigured it as specifi­ mentioned in their scriptures. It is Bud­ the Buddha's life. Non-Buddhist material cally Buddhist from at least 1843, when he dhist conceptions ofRajgir that have been, was elided from theiraccounts, including first announced his programme for util­ and remain, most prominent in archaeo­ Hindu and Jain understandings of the site. izing the Chinese records to locate Bud­ logical work. With the end of Buddhism, the sacred dhism's most significant sites, including topography it engendered faded too. When Rajagrha.5 In 1848 he published his pro­ Buddhist texts and Chinese monks Scat Francis Buchanan visited the town in posal for systematic archaeological inves­ The first phase ofRajgir's Buddhist topog­ 1812, while surveying for the East India tigation in India, most of which is devoted raphy is to be found in the Buddhist Canon Company, Hindu myth dominated local to a justification of the study of Buddhist (records of the Buddha's teaching), dating peoples' understanding of their surround­ remains. Hindu ruins are mentioned once, to the later first millennium BC, which, ings. The key figure was King Jarasandha, its texts are dismissed as useless, and Islam according to the Canon itself, was first a local ruler prominent in the Hindu reli­ is referred to only as the force that compiled on the outskirts of Rajgir. The gious epic Th e Mah abharata (in which he destroyed Buddhism.6 When he arrived at city is mentioned in three ways. The first is is overthrown by the god Krishna and his Rajgir, he therefore spent his energies iden­ when a place name is directly referred to, allies). Various points in the landscape, tifying as many Buddhist structures as he for example when a figure such as King including ruins, were identified with could. Bimbisara (a contemporary of the Buddha) where he had walked, with his gardens, or That a single religion no longer present donated the Venuvana garden to the Bud­ with where he had been defeated. Jain tem­ in India could play such an important part dhist Order. The second is when the place ples occupied the hilltops and the hills in the interpretation of a site can be is given as part of the framing narrative now became part of a sacred pilgrimage explained by reference to the position of for the particular teaching, and is thus route. Buddhist images and structural Buddhism in Victorian consciousness, a incidental. The third is when the Buddha remains had often been re-used by Hindus position that had largely been created by recites what seems to be a standard topo­ and Jains. Outside the valley, the fortifica­ the 1850s. Most aspects of it are illustrated graphical list as he leaves the city for the tion next to the modern town was attrib­ in some of Cunningham's early work, last time. uted to the sixteenth-century ruler Sher particularly in his account of the stupas at Therefore, for authors and readers of (or Shah. Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh, the Bhilsa listeners to) these texts, the city was a set tapes. 7 In this work he argued that Buddha of place names connected with the Buddha Alexander Cunningham had been a social critic, who attacked the and his teachings; an identification was It was to be archaeology that recreated Hindu caste system and the "menaces of made between event and place. There was Buddhism at Rajgir. Its most significant the most powerful and arrogant priesthood little interest here in building a precise modern interpreter was Alexander Cun­ in the world" (i.e. the brahmans).8 Bud­ description of the city or relating these ningham (1814-1893, Fig. 3), the founder dhism was a religion that preached an places to each other geographically. It is of the Archaeological Survey ofindia. 2 The ethical system, and was opposed to empty unsurprising also that this Buddhist topog­ core of his archaeological career was the ritualism. Its rational pacifist nature was raphy excludes that of other religious identification of the places mentioned by the very opposite ofislam, which appealed groups. When one looks at the place names the two Chinese monks. Their works had to the passions and to satisfaction of desire, in the Jain texts, little overlap is apparent become available to the British in the 1840s and whose history was a particularly between the two. and 1850s through French translations, bloodthirsty one: The first half of the first millennium AD and they were quickly seen as India's "The sanguinary career of the Islamite saw the development of lively cultural and was lighted by the lurid flames of burning economic interchanges between China cities; the peaceful progress of the Buddha and India. The spread of Buddhism to was illuminated by the cheerful faces of China led to many Chinese monks travel­ the sick in monastic hospitals, and by the ling to the region of Rajagriha, and from happy smiles of travellers reposing in the perhaps the fifth century the nearby uni­ Dharmshalas by the roadside".9 versity at Nalanda gained an international And Buddhism was an important part of reputation. Of the accounts written of the history of india, at least as old as Hin­ these journeys, by far the most detailed are duism, and at one time the country's domi­ the Foguoji of Faxian (c. 33 7-442) and the nant faith, until ritualism and monkish Tang Xiyu Ji of Xuanzang (c. 596-664), Do indolence and lack of zeal brought about the latter supplemented by the biography its downfall - a very Protestant assump­ of him written by his disciple Huili. Both tion. Cunningham's views are strikingly Faxian and Xuanzang came to India to col­ typical of characterizations of Buddhism lect materials for translation, as well as to being made at that time, and his statements visit the sacred sites. can be regarded as a precis of the dominant Almost all the places listed were Bud­ nineteenth-century paradigm, Although dhist, or connected with Buddhism in some the Bhilsa tapes is an early work aimed at way. These very Buddhist antiquarians a general audience, it points to the context seem not to have explored other aspects of in which his project was conceived. the city's past, including most of the ruins But Cunningham's work does not merely of Old Rajgir. Neither monk shows any sign reflect tenets of contemporary Buddhist of having ventured deep into the valley. scholarship; it must also be related to Faxian merely mentions the old city to be wider currents in Britain's approach to a waste, and, althoughXuanzang does refer Figure 3 Sir Alexander Cunningham India's past.