Kevalaodhi Buddhist And Jaina History Of Deccan Vol 2

Author(s): Aloka Parasher Sen, B Subrahmanyam, E Siva Nagi Reddy
Publisher: Bharatiya Kala Prakashan

Page 152

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Kevala-Bodhi-Buddhist and Jaina History of the Deccan
Right from the 1940's the Department of Archaeology at the Deccan College, under the leadership of late Professor H. D. Sankalia, took several steps for educating the public about the past :
1. Already in 1940 Professor Sankalia started a small museum section for displaying estampages
of inscriptions, coins, and other antiquities obtained from field investigations. In 1962 the Department shifted to the present, spacious building and Professor Sankalia devoted its entire first floor for organizing the museum. This museum has ten galleries displaying various kinds of antiquities and features such as maps and dioramas, ancient ceramics, stone and metal objects, various kinds of ornaments, burials, sculptures and images, scripts and coins, and scientific materials such as ancient food grains and animal bones. These galleries depict the entire story of man right from the distant Stone Age to the medieval period and attract every year large numbers of common people as well as school and college students. The Institute has also a special museum meant for display of weapons, coins, maps and other documents belonging
to the Maratha period. 2. The Department organized site exhibitions at important places where it undertook large-scale
excavations in order to make the local people aware of their heritage. 3. Professor Sankalia wrote and encouraged his colleagues to publish popular articles in English,
Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and other languages and was thus eminently successful in bringing
recent archaeological discoveries to the notice of the public. 4. He also formulated in 1965 a project called 'History of Man", which involved the publication
of about 60 booklets to popularize the study of our heritage. The themes of these booklets ranged from ancient hunting-gathering communities to temples and sculptures to ancient scripts, images and coins. In fact Professor Sankalia himself wrote the first book called An Introduction to Archaeology, which has become very popular among people. Unfortunately, the project did not show much progress because the persons to whom the individual topics were allotted
did not respond adequately. There is a real need to revive this project. 5. Professor Sankalia minced no words in putting forth his observations and facts dealing with
the past before the common man in an objective way. In connection with his views on topics like beef-eating in ancient India and location of the Lanka of Ramayana in Central India contrary (to its popular association with Sri Lanka), Professor Sankalia came under criticism
from certain religious groups but he never bent his views under pressure.
On account of these various steps taken for sharing knowledge of the past with the common man Professor Sankalia, although he died in 1989, is still remembered with respect even in rural parts of India. With the lead provided by him, the Institute is undertaking additional activities to promote public education about the past:
1. Holding short workshops for teachers of school in order to extend to them the benefit of
actually handling various types of cultural material ranging from the Stone Age to the medieval period. These workshops have proved to be very useful and popular, and teachers return to their schools with a feeling that they can handle more confidently their classroom lessons in
history and archaeology. 2. Holding popular illustrated lectures in schools and colleges on special occasions like celebrations.