Alexander Cunningham

Topic: Studying Indian History: Sources, Dating and Historiography · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Bricks, Beads and Bones"; Class 12, Ch 2 "Kings, Farmers and Towns"; Class 12, Ch 4 "Thinkers, Beliefs and Buildings"

Meaning

Alexander Cunningham was a British army engineer who became the first Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). He is called the "father of Indian archaeology". He found ancient sites by following the travel accounts of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims.

He matters for two reasons. He laid the base of organised archaeology in India. His career is also the classic case of a method that could not see what lay outside it. He held a Harappan seal in 1875 and still missed a whole civilisation.

Explanation

Background: a text-first method

• Cunningham started from a book, not from the soil. He read a text first and then went to find the place it named.
• His chosen books were the itineraries (travel accounts) of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims. They came to India between the 4th and 7th centuries CE. The best known are Faxian and Xuanzang.
• These pilgrims had visited Buddhist holy places, monasteries and cities. Cunningham matched their routes and distances to real ruins on the ground.
• So his work centred on the Early Historic period (about the 6th century BCE to the 4th century CE). This was the age of the Ganga valley cities, Buddhism and the Mauryas.

Main features of his work

• Organiser: as the first Director-General of the ASI, he turned scattered interest in ruins into a government survey.
• Site-hunter: his method was good at finding places the texts named. These were mainly Buddhist sites linked to the pilgrims' routes.
• Recorder: he wrote down the state of the sites he visited. At Harappa he recorded heavy damage.
• Local contractors had carried away Harappa's baked bricks for the Lahore–Multan railway line.
• The bricks were enough to lay about 100 miles of track.

• Mohenjodaro survived in better shape. This is one reason it later gave up more evidence.

• Brief work at Harappa: he made short excavations at the site in 1872–73. He found an Indus seal there that he could not explain. [2]

Why Harappa slipped past him

He missed Harappa because of his method, not because the evidence was missing.

• No text pointed to it. Harappa lay far off the pilgrim routes. No Chinese traveller described it, so his method could not lead him there.
• His idea of the past had no place for it. He believed Indian history began with the Ganga valley cities. He did not expect anything older.
• The seal did not fit. In 1875 he reported a Harappan seal. Its script could not be read, and its animal carving looked unlike any Early Historic art. He treated it as an oddity, possibly from outside India.

Results and legacy

• About 50 years later the same evidence was read correctly.
• 1921: Daya Ram Sahni found seals at Harappa in layers far older than Early Historic material.
• From 1922: R.D. Banerji found similar seals at Mohenjodaro.

• 1924: John Marshall announced a new civilisation. The article "A Forgotten Age Revealed" appeared in The Illustrated London News on 20 September 1924. [2]

• Exam lesson: a source is useless if your method has no place for it. Sources do not speak on their own.

• Indian archaeology later moved from texts to stratigraphy (reading the layers of soil at a dig) under Mortimer Wheeler, and later to science and DNA. Cunningham stands at the start of this chain.

Time, place and evidence

• Period of his work: the late 19th century, during British rule. His Harappa digs were in 1872–73 [2], and he reported the seal in 1875.
• Period he studied: mainly the Early Historic period (c. 6th century BCE – 4th century CE).
• Places: Buddhist sites named by the pilgrims. He also visited Harappa in Punjab (now in Pakistan).
• Organisation: the Archaeological Survey of India, which he led as its first Director-General.
• His sources: the travel accounts of Faxian and Xuanzang (4th–7th centuries CE).
• How we know about his work: his own survey records, including his note on the brick robbing at Harappa. NCERT Class 12 Part 1, Ch 1 "Bricks, Beads and Bones" covers him in its discussion and in Timeline 2 ("1875 — Cunningham reports a Harappan seal").

Don't confuse with

• John Marshall: he was Director-General of the ASI from 1902 to 1931 [3], and he announced the Indus civilisation in 1924. Cunningham was the first Director-General, and he missed it.
• Daya Ram Sahni: he excavated Harappa in 1921 and recognised that the seals were very old. Cunningham dug briefly at Harappa in 1872–73 [2] but did not understand what he found.
• Mortimer Wheeler: he became Director-General in 1944 and made stratigraphy the basic rule of digging. Cunningham's method was text-first, guided by pilgrims' accounts.
• Faxian / Xuanzang: these were Chinese Buddhist pilgrims who wrote the travel accounts. They were Cunningham's sources, not archaeologists.

Prelims Hooks

• Alexander Cunningham: first Director-General of the ASI, known as the "father of Indian archaeology".
• Method: he located sites using the accounts of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims (Faxian, Xuanzang; 4th–7th centuries CE). His focus was the Early Historic period.
• Harappa: he made brief excavations in 1872–73 [2] and reported a Harappan seal in 1875, but could not identify it.
• Brick robbing: Harappa's bricks were taken for the Lahore–Multan railway, enough for about 100 miles of track.
• Chronological order: Cunningham's seal (1875) → Sahni at Harappa (1921) → Banerji at Mohenjodaro (1922) → Marshall's announcement (1924) → Wheeler at Harappa (1946).
• Trap: the 1924 announcement of the Indus civilisation was made by John Marshall, not Cunningham.

Mains Points

• Method decides what counts as evidence.
• Cunningham's text-first approach tied archaeology to the Early Historic period and to places named by Chinese pilgrims.
• So a Harappan seal in his hands in 1875 meant nothing to him.

• Only when digging stopped depending on texts could a civilisation without readable texts be recognised. This is the classic Indian example of a change in historical method.

• Founder and limit together. Cunningham built the ASI and gave Indian archaeology a regular, survey-based shape. His belief that Indian history began in the Ganga valley also kept the Harappan age hidden for about half a century. A good answer should show both sides: institution-building, and the limits of the questions he asked.

• History is open to revision. The same ruins at Harappa sat untouched in meaning from Cunningham's 1870s visit to the 1921–24 discoveries. After Marshall, Indian history was pushed back by about 3,000 years. Use this to argue that new methods, not only new finds, change our picture of the past.

Related concepts

• Archaeological Survey of India
• Illustrated London News
• Discovery of the Harappan civilisation
• Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act 1958
• National Monuments Authority
• National Mission on Monuments and Antiquities
• Antiquities and Art Treasures Act 1972
• Repatriation of antiquities

Read more

• Discovering the Harappan civilisation: a historiography case study