time in India, well-preserved remains of houses, shops and streets, dating as far back as the Mauryan epoch, were laid bare, and numerous minor antiquities recovered, which help us materially to visualize the everyday life of the towns-people in those early days. These discoveries gave a promise of a still richer spoil awaiting the spade at the more important centers of ancient civilization; and this promise has since been amply fulfilled. At Taxila the results obtained have been epoch-making.

The site of Pataliputra, the capital of the great Mauryan empire, which was singled out for excavation simultaneously with that of Taxila, offers to the digger a far less favourable field than the latter; for it has been inundated for centuries past by the waters of the Ganges, and its monuments, if they have not altogether perished, are buried at a depth of 20 feet or more below the surface.

(Marshall 1916, 24–27)

After 1924, the focus of archaeological effort shifted to indus valley civilization sites and to the excavations at Taxila, where Marshall himself excavated until the early 1930s. The method of excavation adopted by him and his officers may simply be described as excavating stratum by stratum, the component of each stratum being structures. Several publications by Marshall will always be regarded as being among the great volumes of Indian archaeology: the report of his detailed work at the Buddhist monument site of Sanchi (Marshall and Foucher 1983), the report of his work at Taxila (Marshall 1951), his analysis of Indus civilization (Marshall, ed. 1931), and last, but not least, his Conservation Manual (Marshall 1923).

Marshall also wrote two guidebooks on Sanchi, which contains Buddhist stupas from the third century b.c. onward, and a third guidebook on Taxila, which contains the ruins of Indian cities from pre-third-century-b.c. levels to early centuries a.d. The modern Archaeological Survey of India, and to some extent its counterparts elsewhere in south asia, have continued this tradition of producing definitive guidebooks on various monuments and sites under their care. The main emphasis of Marshall’s interpretation of the Indus civilization was on its indigenousness and its intimate blending with the later Indian historic tradition.

The impact of John Marshall on the Indian archaeological scene will be clear from the tribute paid to him by a nationalist Indian archaeologist more than fifty years after his departure from the Indian archaeological scene:

The large exposed and conserved sites we see, the gardens around the monuments which we appreciate, the museums we enter and the objects we admire, the objects on which much of our own perception of our past is based—these are all intimately linked with the period which we here have called “the John Marshall period” in the history of Indian archaeology. It was an orderly and secure archaeological universe which, despite threats of retrenchment and financial stringency, went about its own way, building up the archaeological image of and ancient India in its manifold colours and nuances.

(Chakrabarti 1988, 169–170)

Dilip Chakrabarti

References

Chakrabarti, D.K. 1988. A History of Indian Archaeology from the Beginning to 1947. Delhi. Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers.

Marshall, J. 1916. Indian Archaeological Policy. Calcutta.

———. 1923. Conservation Manual. Calcutta.

———. 1951 Taxila. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Marshall, J., ed. 1931. Mohenjodaro and the Indus Civilization. London.

Marshall, J., and A. Foucher. 1983. The Monuments of Sanchi. Delhi.

Mason, Otis Tufton

(1838–1908)

Mason was educated at Columbian College (now George Washington University), from which he graduated in 1861. Mason worked as the principal of a primary school and then in 1872 was appointed to the Department of Ethnology in the smithsonian institution. He became one of the founders and leaders of American museum science and in 1902 was appointed head curator of anthropology.

Mason was especially interested in the technological aspects of human culture, and his papers on Native American basketry, textiles, and weapons were invaluable contributions to ethnology