Digging up the past

BOOK EXTRACT

Indian archaeology became professionalised in the early 20th century. Vogel was a Dutch Sanskritist hired to head the Archaeological Survey of India's Northern Circle. He is known for his careful fieldwork and, afterwards, proper museum displays of artefacts. This book contains many of Vogel's photographs. Author Theuns-de Boer manages the photo collection at the Kern Institute in the Netherlands.

This extract contains an exchange between Vogel and his boss, the famous archaeologist John H Marshall, after Vogel was ordered by the Government to dig at Sravasti in UP with 5,000 workers as a famine-relief measure.

Lucknow, 22-1-1908
My dear Marshall,
It has been decided that the excavation at Sahet Mahet [Sravasti] will be started as an ordinary work, but from an interview I had with the L. G. [Lieutenant Governor John Hewett] today it appears that it is his express wish that it will be made a famine relief work afterwards. This would mean employing some 5,000 men till the end of June when the rains break. I tried to point out that from our point of view this is impossible but failed to convince H. H. who evidently attributed my objections to indifference. It is difficult to discuss such questions with persons who have no idea of the real aims of excavation and the labour it involves [...]

What I intend to do is the following. I shall start the work with a few hundred men next week and shall increase the number as much as is feasible without impairing archaeological interests. When I know what the site is like, I shall report on the advisability (or more likely the inadvisability) of carrying on the excavation as a famine work and shall try to make my point as clear as possible. In case the Government insists on it against my advice, I shall have to make an appeal to you and if the final decision is against us, I shall have no choice but to resign. Fortunately, I am not dependent on my salary and need not allow myself to be compelled to an undertaking which I consider against the interests of archaeology.

Yours sincerely,
J. Ph. Vogel.

Marshall's brilliant reply settles the whole matter.

Camp Sarnath, 25-1-1908
My dear Vogel,
I am sorry to hear that you anticipate some trouble about Sahet Mahet, but I think that you may have taken too serious a view of the matter. I quite appreciate however your reluctance to employ thousands of diggers, and I should of course be prepared if the worst came to the worst and [if] there was any danger of ruining the site, to fight the question tooth and nail on your side. I fancy however that you will be able to do much more than you think [...] What I should advise is this. Go to Sahet Mahet to take on as many men as you can to make trials of the site first. You can easily manage 400 to begin with, with the assistance of Daya Ram [Sahni].

Then pick out all those who prove good workers and make them overseers, when the famine labour comes along. At the same time advertise for about 8 to 10 native assistant Engineers on 30 or 40 rupees per month and make them your lieutenants with say 10 overseers under each of them. Supervise yourself any work that you do at the real centres of the site and let the Engineers do all the other work. Even on this small site of Sarnath, I am sure that I could now take some 4000 men if I had the money and they would do no damage, while on the other hand they would make it possible to clear all the superstratum of earth, at any rate, in a few months.

If you organise things well and insist on having competent assistants (we could perhaps find you money for them from Imperial funds), then I do not see why you should not, ceteris paribus, do a fine piece of work at Sahet Mahet, and make for yourself lasting fame over it. [...] As for resignation or any such heroic measures, they are out of the question my dear Vogel. You must not think of any such thing. You are much too valuable; and it is absurd to turn on the local Govt. when they are trying to help on our cause [...].

Yours ever,
J. H. Marshall