came back to India to the newly formed Archaeological Survey of India (after
ASI’s revival in 1871, it had a further decline in 1885 and reinvigoration in
1900). The ASI was an ‘institution of power’, in Anderson’s terms, an institu-
tion which shaped the way in which the colonial power managed its dominion
(Anderson 1991: 164). It directed archaeological practice and helped to unify
India as a visible and observable entity shaped by Britain. The need felt for
this institution contrasts with the lack of anything similar in Britain itself
until much later. The metropolis only enforced aWrst Ancient Monuments
Act in 1882, and the Ancient Monument Boards for England, Scotland, and
Wales were created as late as 1913 (Breeze 1996). In addition to the ASI, in
1902 a Department of Archaeology with headquarters in Mandalay respon-
sible to the Archaeological Survey of Calcutta was organized. This new
institution has to be seen within the framework of the competition created
by the opening of the French School of the Far East in Indochina, and the
Commission in The Netherlands Indies for Archaeological Research in Java
and Madura in Indonesia. The Department of Archaeology of Burma pro-
duced a series of publications modelled on the Annual Circle Reports of the
Archaeological Survey of India. TheWrst number of the Burma Research
Society Bulletin appeared in 1912 (Stadner 1999).
Two of the ‘C’s’ proposed by Livingstone for the colonization of the African
continent (Chapter 10), Civilization and Christianity, were also used as a
justiWcation for the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). It was sanctioned as
an institution that, through the example of the past, would promote the
understanding of the beneWts of uniWcation of the country under foreign
rule. Moreover, it would also help the spread of Christianity through showing
that Brahmanism (Hinduism) was only one of many other religions in the
history of India that, therefore, could now be substituted by the religion
practised by the British (Chakrabarti 1988: 43–4). Cunningham was not the
only person to see the importance of religion in the colonizers’ project for
India’s redemption. As his contemporary Frederic W. Farrar argued, the
adoption of Christianity had stimulated the European Aryans towards pro-
gress, and therefore it was their duty to convert Indians, especially the more
Aryan upper castes, to the faith of Christ (Leopold 1974: 596–7). In 1861 the
major inspiration behind the ASI, Alexander Cunningham (1814–93),
insisted on the beneWts of institutionalizing archaeology, stating that it
would be good for the ‘honour of British government to institute a careful
and systematic investigation of all the existing monuments of ancient India’
(Chakrabarti 1988: 56–7). Through the ASI British colonizers would become
the interlocutors of India’s past, those who objectiWed it, who investigated,
understood and framed its identity. For example, in 1870 the Viceroy of India,
Lord Mayo, aYrmed that:
South and South East Asia 227