Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c8.7

c8.7

But the fact that the earlier British settlements were in Bengal, a region still almost wholly unknown from the viewpoint of prehistoric antiquities, and where the natural luxuriance of vegetation renders any ruins invisible within a decade, gave little impetus to the study of field monuments of Indian antiquity. The great contribution of the Bengal School of antiquaries must always be their immense linguistic studies. And although field archaeology and the observation and record of monuments of antiquity, whether prehistoric earthworks or medieval abbeys, had become by the early nineteenth century a recognized English pastime among the educated squirearchy, India was not England. The Western Ghats were something very different from the mild pastoral slopes of Wiltshire: travel was difficult and dangerous; the country unmapped; distances were immense. It is therefore not surprising that archaeological field-work had to wait for altered circumstances, even were the men interested in such pursuits to be found in the services of the Company or the army.