The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c11.1

c11.1

In the West, where modern archaeology developed, its scope was more or less limited to Prehistory and for the later periods more copious works of a historical character are available to confine the scope and function of archaeology. But, due to various reasons, archaeology in India has come to cover what may briefly be called the material culture of extinct historic and prehistoric peoples. Besides, right from Cunningham onwards, the archaeologists in India have concentrated more on the monuments of the Historical period. As Sir John Marshall explained, the itineraries of Fa-hien and Yuan-chwang, led Cunningham into investigating the old routes and towns visited by him, resulting in his classic studies of Ancient Indian geography, and the light shed on Buddhist art and architecture by him and his colleagues. The general scarcity of historical or even semi-historical literature of a reliable type for constructing the history of Ancient India also justifies the expanded scope of archaeology to include Pre-historic and Historic periods. Hence we can define archaeology as the study of the material relics of past people and the conceptual integration, in time and space, of their material relics.