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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JULY, 1906.
Lailed its appearance, and a second and enlarged almost, were excavators at the trouble to edition was issued by the Museums authorities unearth the buildings to the basements with a in 1900, of which a much-extended translation view to fix their plans and restore the scheme of into English, with additional illustrations from their decoration; their only care has been to lay the Lahor and Calcutta Museums, was again hands on the sculptures. Again, they did not published by Quaritch in 1901.
trouble to preserve or protect pieces that might
be too heavy or too fragmentary to seem worth More than twenty years ago General Sir A.
removing. In many cases headless trunks and Cunningham and Major Cole bad planned
mutilated reliefs strew the clearings and testify a volume on theso remains, but beyond selecting
to the ignorance and brutishness - if one may the subjects for 83 illustrations no more was done.
use the term with which the exenvntions have Neither of the probably had the equipment to
been cond acted, when most frequently they were make a scientific exposition of the materials, and
left to the supervision of some native subaltern nt that time the Indian Government took no
or even to the discretion of coolies from the practical interest in it.
nearest village." Thus they have been now It was reserved for the French School of the
reduced to "deliberate, not natural ruins." But far East, however, to give us the first really we may ask "whether the remains have not exhaustive treatise on these remains. A mission
suffered more within these latter years by the was committed to Dr. A. Foucher, the author of
vandalism of amateur archæologists, then they this work, and in charge of it he was sent to had done in the course of previous centuries from India in 1895. There he travelled all over the the fan Yusufzsi and part of the Swät districts, examining of treasure-seekers and collectors of bricks and all the sites where sculptures were found, stone." And surely. As the author adds. "it is excavating and photographing or obtaining time that the enlightened Government of India photographs of the sculptures in the museums. should intervene to put an end to the caprices of In 1897 he returned to Europe with a collection would-be European antiquaries at of seventy sculptures, along with some plaster greed of natives. A new and still more menacing heads, &c. Since then he has worked up his danger lies in the fact that the latter bare materials, and now lays the results before his learnt the market value of works of art, and the readers in justification of how he hns carried out enticements of gain have quickly changed them his mission. The first volume is ample proof of from iconoolasts to vendors of images. At the his success and capacity as a trained archeologist. present rate there will soon be left not a single He has discussed the whole subject with a skill historic site either beyond or within the British and research that reveals his mastery of it in all frontier sufficiently intact for the methodical its bearings the work is monumental in its research one would wish in future." The new field.
Act for the Conet vation of Ancient Monuments, The rich antiquarian remains buried in the
it systematically and judiciously applied, bow. Kübul valley and in the Yusufzai district were
ever, may open a new era for the archæology of brought to light, scarcely seventy years ago, by
Gandhāra. Mr. C. Masson, General Ventura, Capt. Court, Dr. Foucher traces briefly the various official and Drs. Gerard and Hönigberger, whose sole surveys that followed one another from 1879 to nim seems to have been to tear open every stūpa
1884, carried out by companies of Sappers and from Manikyāla to. Kabul in search of ancient European officers, often without any satisfactory coins and relic-cankets. Of sculptures or result, and of the expedition planned by Major architectural structure there is little mention: Cole to the hill-country about Kharkai, and their importance was not then considered. After entrusted wholly to a native jamadAr under whom the annexation of the Panjab in 1849, the ruing in " the buildings were badly excavated and the Yusufzai district began to be exploited," mostly," plans most rudimentary," but who was successful as Dr. Foucher remarks, "without any fized plan
in what he doubtless regarded as almoet his and with motives not quite disinterested. The sole duty, the recuring of a numerous collechistory of these depredations is a long and tion of sculptures after the old methods - lamentable ono, from the exploit of the Oolonel without relation to original positions or care for Saheb 'who, as Cunningham teils us, carried off fragments. on twelve camels the statues round the platform at | Against these is placed the excavation made by Jamalgarhi' to those irresponsible diggings, the Colonel Sir H. Deane at Sikri in 1889 - "the first ravages of which, in the scarcely opened district of in Gandhāra to be methodically conducted, and Swát, Col. Deane so justly deplores. Nowhere, from which, by an exception almost unique, we
