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Home , Ajatashatru, Alexander Cunningham, Bimbisara, Buddhist temple, Nalanda, Rajgir

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Figure state, showing the loca­ 1 tion ofRajgir and other places mentioned ecent tensions in contest. Its results will be part of the pro­ in the text. between 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, became the Mauryan R century Babri Masjid mosque. happened can be illustrated by the history empire, which at its height extended over Located in , a city in of archaeological work at in north­ nearly all of modern South ; but by northern India sacred to the god-hero eastern India.1 then the had moved north to Patal­ Rama, controversy has raged there over iputra (modern , Fig. 1). whether a 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 (Fig. 2). The parties to build a new temple continue. the largest cities in the 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 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 and J ainism (Buddha in the mid-first millennium BC. But whatever the outcome, archaeology and ) spent much of their careers Rajgir's past has made it a will not be a referee standing outside the here. In the last quarter of the fourth site for nearly all India's religions - in

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OF RAJGIR . DISTRICT

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 (: Archaeological Survey of In dia, 1958). &

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particular for Hindus, who consider its hot was monumentalized with commemora­ version of the work of the Greek author springs sacred, Jains, whose dot tive (hemispherical Buddhist struc­ Pausanias. 3 Cunningham visited Rajgir for the hilltops, and Buddhists (mainly from tures that contain sacred ) 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 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 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 , 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 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. (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. in , 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 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 ).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 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 , 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 (c. 33 7-442) and the nant faith, until ritualism and monkish Tang Xiyu Ji of (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. Since the mid-eighteenth to "Old Rajagrha", he did not explore it. (from the frontispiece to Cunningham 's century, several scholars, of whom Sir That the monks were recording Buddhist Ancient geography of India, S. M. Sastri William Jones (1746-94) was the most sacred geography has been overlooked in (ed.), Calcutta: Ch uckervertty, Ch atterjee, famous, developed the concept of an India much of the discussion. The landscape 1924). that had more or less declined from a

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anchored in the biography of the Buddha, presenting the remains in terms ofthe mid­ first millennium BC. And each represents a particular relationship of text to topogra­ phy, with the second dependent for its meaning on the first. This close relation­ ship should not be surprising. Archaeol­ ogy is after all a cultural activity, and part of its role is the investing of features in the land with a meaning derived fromthe past. This process has resulted in archaeol­ ogy re-investing Indian landscapes with religious meanings that have been appro­ priated by international Buddhist groups ­ meanings that are now legitimated through the authority of Western science, as well as the religious tradition itself, and provide the interpretive grid through which tour­ ists and pilgrims the site. The various Figure "Bimbisara 's jail "; the structure is almost certainly the remains of a Buddhist 4 identifications, made with more or less jus­ of the first millennium AD. tification, have been incorporated in a site guide, the fifth and latest edition of which golden age. They defined this golden age as Islam. However, archaeology had a role to was published in 1958 (see caption to Fig. the period in which 's Vedic play in the recovery of this Buddhist past, 2). The guide may be considered to be texts, which were just being discovered and therefore in India's future. In his pro­ something of an official list, and is cer­ and translated, were composed. If India grammatic article of 1843,5 he refers to the tainly an influential source for visitors. was to progress, it needed to do so by re­ presence of Buddhism as a vitiation of the And it does not matter if they do not read discovering this past and learning from belief that India could never change - it it because the signs dotted around the val­ Europe through the medium of its own lan­ could show that the aims of philanthropy ley for tourists carry similar information. guages. A counter movement, developing and of Christian mission could eventually Each structure's meaning is anchored both from the late eighteenth century and triumph. Given a sense of the relationship by the guide and by the signage. Their represented in the nineteenth by commen­ between past and present inherited from effect has been not only to erase uncer­ tators on the condition of India (most his father and his father's circle, and his tainty, but (for the Buddhists) to concrete notably James Mill and Thomas Babington sense of Buddhism and archaeology as a religious truths. Macaulay) rejected this view of Indian his­ means of interpreting India's future, his Because of the topography's place in the tory. Instead, India had never had a past focus is unsurprising. pilgrimage circuit of Rajgir, it is of more that could be valued and it had been held Cunningham's archaeological work has than local importance. Rajgir's own promi­ back in particular by the priest­ largely structured the terms of debate ever nence, and its proximity to Bodhgaya hood. Progress (which included the spread since. One of his successors at the head of (see Fig. 1). where the Buddha achieved of Christianity) could be made only through the Archaeological Survey of India was Enlightenment, have meant it has felt the separating the country from its past and by John Marshal!, who in 1905-1906 carried effects of integration into international Anglicizing its language and society. The out a preliminary survey at Rajgir. Much of Buddhist communities. New religious fea­ two camps were in conflict in the early part Marshall's report10 was spent debating tures have been constructed, including of the nineteenth century, but the modern­ some of the identifications proposed by Buddhist temples in the town and the izers won the day, well before the Indian Cunningham. V. H. Jackson, whose work Japanese Shanti , which sits on top Mutiny of 1857 hardened British opinion constitutes the most thorough of the early of Mount Gridhakuta (the mountain on even further. Strangely, accounts of this surveys in Old Rajagriha (see Fig. 2).11 which the Buddha preached the Lotus debate have tended to underplay both the warned against the danger of attributing role of archaeology and the place of Bud­ everything to one period, but proceeded to dhist studies in it. In Cunningham's early do exactly that in the interpretation of his writings, one sees a position distinct from finds. A form of archaeological mytholo­ both. gizing - or perhaps an archaeological Alexander Cunningham had come from romanticism-resulted in his calling "Bim­ an antiquarian and Romantic background. bisara's jail" what was in fact a small His father was Allan Cunningham, who monastic ruin, where the king had sup­ collected folk songs of the Scottish High­ posedly been imprisoned by his son lands and who was an associate of Sir (Fig. 4). And in case King Waiter Scott (the man responsible for Jarasandha's displacement was in doubt, gaining Alexander his India commission). when an old road was uncovered in the Once in India, Cunningham came under 1930s, the cart ruts became "Bimbisara's the wing ofJames Prinsep (1799-1840), the tracks" (Fig. 5). a form of naming leader ofthe local antiquarian community not unlike the way in which Jarasandha's there, who helped develop his interest in biography was linked to the landscape. the Indian past. But the modernizing camp was already strong, and Cunningham's A new Buddhist landscape position represents a blending of the two. This archaeological topography bears Figure 5 "Bimbisara's chariot tracks "; He believed that India had indeed enjoyed many similarities to the earlier Buddhist the ruts were cut in slate by ancient traffi c a golden age, but a Buddhist one, the era in topographies. Each is a way of making using the old road south out of the valley, which Buddhism had been the dominant meaning in the landscape, of relating past but they have been associated with the faith. That religion had fallen and India and present through identifying events Maga dhan king Bimbisara, wh o was con­ was now in the grip of Hinduism and with features of this landscape. Each is verted by the Buddha.

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Sutra) and dominates the valley. The legit­ imacy of the archaeological discourse has become tied to religious practice and the latter's effect on the local economy; and these in turn have affected local percep­ tions of the site. Sher Shah's fort (so-called, the building of which was a subject of a local folktale) has become Ajatashatru's fort. Old Rajgir had been called Hamsapur­ nagar (City of the Goose) by the brahmans in the early nineteenth century, but by Cunningham's time the name had been lost. And on modern maps, the plain between the hills and the modern town has been marked as Benu Ban - named after Venuvana, the first monastery of the Bud­ dhist Order (Fig. 6).12

Conclusion The rediscovery oflndian Buddhism is one of archaeology's greatest achievements in the nineteenth century, and Cunningham was a crucial figure in bringing this about. But to see his and others' work as only a rediscovery is to sever archaeology from its political and social context. The revived Buddhist topography of Rajgir does have some relationship to that represented in the texts of Xuanzang and Faxian. But that relationship is not the sum of its meaning. It is still an artefact created from the claims of archaeology to privileged access to the past, to the Western framework out of Figure Th e new on the site of Ven uvana, built with the help of which Indian archaeology evolved, and to 6 Japanese funding; Rajgir has again become an important fo cus for pilgrimage. Th e tem­ its relationship with political authority. ple's location is based on the identification of the site by the archaeologist John Marsh all The archaeological consequences ofthis in 1905-1 906. have been threefold:

• a conceptualization of the site in terms in which he described the topography of of its religious features, rather than its cities and their surroundings, emphasiz­ urban features or significance as an early ing particular! y their historical and reli­ Gangetic ea pital . gious remains. 4. A. Cunningham, Archaeological Survey • the marginalization of other religious of In dia reports, vol. I (Simla: Government topographies. of lndia, 1871) and vol. m (Calcutta: Gov­ • a restriction of the site's significance to ernment of India, 1873). the period of the Buddha's residence 5. A. Cunningham, "An account of the dis­ there. covery of the Buddhist city of Samkissa", The last point is especially noteworthy, Journalof the Royal Asiatic Society 7, given that nearly every datable feature at 240-49, 1843. Rajgir dates to well after the Buddha's life. 6. A. Cunningham, "Proposed archaeologi­ cal investigation", Journal ofthe Asiatic Despite appearances then, archaeology Society of Bengal 17, 535-6, 1848. has not merely analyzed religious under­ 7. Tope is an alternative term for stupa. standings, it has been an active player in 8. A. Cunningham, Th e Bhilsa tapes (Lon­ shaping them. And, as the case of the Babri don: Smith, Elder 1854); quotation on Masjid mosque in Ayodha shows, it con­ p. 54. tinues to play a role in the construction of 9. Quotation on p. 54 of Cunningham 1854 modern Indian identity. (n. 8 above). 10.J. Marshal!, P. D. Ram, T. Bloch, "Rajagrha Notes and its remains", Archaeological Survey 1905-06, 86-106, 1. A previous version of this article was pub­ of In dia annual report lished as R. Harding, "The construction of 1909. Buddhist topography at Rajgir", Bulletin 11. V. H. Jackson, "Notes on Old Rajagriha", of the History of Archaeology 13, 1-5, Archaeological Survey of In dia annual 2003. report 1913-14, 265-71, 1917. 2. C. Allen, Th e Buddha and the sahibs: the 12. Venuvana, one of the most famous ofearly men wh o discovered In dia 's lost religion Buddhist , is mentioned sev­ (: John Murray, 2002) and eral times by the Chinese monks Faxian A. Imam, SirAlexan der Cunningham and and Xuanzang; but it was completely lost the beginnings of In dian archaeology to local memory until restored by archae­ (Dacca: Asiatic Society of Pakistan, 1966). ology. The present identification more or 3. Pausanias was a Greek traveller and geog­ less follows that by John Marshal! in the 1909 (n. 10, rapher of the second century AD, who is article referred to above pp. best known for his Description of Greece, 93-7).

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