Indian Antiquary Vol 39

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 71

MARCH, 1910.) METHOD IN THE STUDY OF INDIAN ANTIQUITIES.
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METHOD IN THE STUDY OF INDIAN ANTIQUITIES.1
BY A. M. T. JACKSON, M.A., I.C.S.
J E popular iden of an antiquary las changed but little since the days of Sir Walter
1 Scott. In most minds the word still calls up a picture of the friends and correspondents of Mr. Jonathan Oldback of Monkbarns," who, like himself, measured decayed entrenchments, made plans of ruined castles, read illegible inscriptions, and wroto essays on medals in the proportion of twelve pages to each letter of the legend.' The study of antiquities is regarded either as a harmless hobby on a. par with fret-work or the collection of postage stamps or as the dry and dull pursuit of blear-eyed and anemic scholars who are so absorbed in the past that they have lost all interest in the present.
There is this much truth in popular view, that the study of antiquity tor its own sake is liable to fall into dilettantism on the one hand and into pedantry on the other. To avoid these faults, it is needful to keep steadily in view the relations of archeology to other branches of science.
In this connection, the first point to be emphasized is the unity of all knowledge. How ever theories may differ as regards the order of the universe, all alike are agreed that it is intelligible only so far as it is coherent, that is, in so far as it fornis a single whole. Only to this extent then can it be the object of knowledge, and that knowledge itself must form a singlo coherent whole. But the mass of facts to be noted and classified is grown so great that no one man can now follow Bacon in taking all knowledge to be his portion. Commonly, therefore, we divide knowledge into two great kingdoms, the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of man, and in each of these we make further sub-divisions for the convenience of teaching and research. But it must never be forgotten that the divisions are more or less arbitrary and created for our own convenienco. Even the two great primary divisions are open to criticism, for man himself belongs to the kingdom of nature in respect of his bodily frame, and even his mental processes have been investigated by methods of observation and experiment that belong to the same realm. Still, Renan's two great primary divisions are generally accepted as convenient, and there is little dispute as to the class to which any given fact should be referred. Broadly speaking, wo have to do in the kingdom of man with what a well-known English archæologist (Prof. P. Gardner) has called " Human Science," the study of man as an individual and in society, in the present and in the past. But here again the field is too vast to be studied as a whole, and we break it up into geographical and historical sections that are of more manageable compass.
If now, we take India as one of these sections, we find there three living civilisations--the Hindu, the Arab and the European, wbich subsist side by side, not, it is true, without profoundly influencing one another, but without fundamental change of their original character. Each has its own special outlook on life, its own ideals of public and private conduct, and its own self-contained and coherent theory of the universe. Of these three worlds of thought, we have to deal here with the one that is indigenous to India. This microcosm, which is Indian life, is the embodiment of the Indian spirit, which in art, in religion, and in material civilisation, has deeply influenced all Asia and the islands, from Balkh to Borneo and from Ceylon to Japan. A spirit that could dominate so large a part of civilised mankind is assuredly worthy of the most careful study in all its manifestations. It is not by examining Indian life in a few only of its aspects that we can learn its value as
1 A lecture delivered at the Wilson College, Bombay, August 3rd, 1907.