J Shaw

Ancient Irrigation and Buddhist History in Central India: Optically Stimulated Luminescence Dates and Pollen Sequences from the Sanchi Dams

This paper presents the results of a recent pilot project aimed at obtaining optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates from a group of ancient irrigation dams in central India. The dams are all situated within an area of 750 km2 around the wellknown Buddhist site of Sanchi, the latter established in c. third century B.C. and having a continuous constructional sequence up to the twelfth century A.D. They were documented during earlier seasons of the Sanchi Survey, initiated in 1998 in order to relate the site to its wider archaeological landscape. The pilot project builds upon earlier hypotheses regarding the chronology and function of the Sanchi dams and their relationship to religious and political history in Central India. The principal suggestion is that the earliest phase of dam construction coincided with the rise of urbanization and the establishment of Buddhism in central India between c. third and second centuries B.C.; and that they were connected with wet-rice cultivation as opposed to wheat, the main agricultural staple today. Similarities with intersite patterns in Sri Lanka, where monastic landlordism is attested from c. second century B.C. onward, have also led to the working hypothesis that the Sanchi dams were central to the development of exchange systems between Buddhist monks and local agricultural communities. The pilot project focused on two out of a total of 16 dam sites in the Sanchi area and involved scraping back dam sections created by modern road cuttings. This cast new light on aspects of dam construction and allowed for the collection of sediments and ceramics for OSL dating. The results confirmed the suitability of local sediments to OSL dating methods, as well as affirming our working hypothesis that the dams were constructed—along with the earliest Buddhist monuments in Central India—in the late centuries B.C. Sediment samples were also collected from cores hand drilled in the dried-up reservoir beds, for supplementary OSL dating and pollen analysis, which shed useful insights into land use.

Buddhist Reliquaries from Ancient India

Introduction: relics and reliquaries early Indian history early Indian sculpture. Catalogue: Sanchi Satdhara Sonari Bhojpur Andher. Appendices: palaeographic chart list of antiquities excavated in the vicinity of Bhilsa.

Ancient dams, settlement archaeology and Buddhist propagation in central India: the hydrological background

Abstract A group of ancient dams (c. second—first century BC) was located during an archaeological study of the Sanchi area in central India. Comparison of reservoir volumes with estimated inflows suggests that their design was based on hydrological understanding.

Ayodhya's sacred landscape: ritual memory, politics and archaeological ‘fact’

Great astonishment has been expressed at the recent vitality of the Hindu religion at Ajudhia [ sic ], and it was to test the extent of this chiefly that … this statement has been prepared. As the information it contains may be permanently useful, I have considered it well to give it a place here. This information is as correct as it can now be made and that is all that I can say CARNEGY(1870: appendix A) After the destruction of Ayodhyas Babri mosque in 1992 by supporters of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), the statement above seems laden with premonition of the events to come (Rao 1994). More importantly, Carnegy’s comments highlight that the mosque’s destruction was not simply the result of 20th-century politics. The events surrounding and following the outbreak of violence in 1992 have resulted in more ‘spilt ink’ than Carnegy could ever have imagined. This literature can be divided into two main categories; firstly, the initial documentation submitted to the government by a group of VHP aligned historians, which presented the ‘archaeological proof’ that the Babri mosque had occupied the site of a Hindu temple dating to the 10th and 11th century AD (VHP1990; New Delhi Historical Forum 1992). This was believed to have marked the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama (hence the name Rama Janmabhumi — literally ‘birthplace of Rama’), and been demolished at the orders of the Mughal emperor Babur during the 16th century. As a response, a second group of ‘progressive’ Indian historians began a counter-argument, based on the same ‘archaeological proof’ that no such temple had ever existed (Gopal et al . 1992; Mandal 1993). The second category is a growing body of literature which has filled many pages of international publications (Rao 1994; Navlakha 1994). Especially following the World Archaeology Congress (WAC) in Delhi (1994), and subsequently in Brac, Croatia (1998), this has been preoccupied with finding an acceptable route through the battlefield which arises as a result of the problematic, but recurrent, marriage between archaeology, folklore and politics (Kitchen 1998; Hassan 1995).

Archaeology of religious change: introduction

This issue explores archaeology’s contribution to the study of religious change, transmission, interaction and reception. While the study of how certain religious traditions move into new areas and relate to pre-existing religious, cultural, political and economic structures has been dominated by sociology, anthropology and comparative religion, archaeology has made significant contributions to the field. The aim of this volume is to bring together recent field-based research on the material correlates of religious change. Of particular interest are those studies which look beyond the traditional ritual-based focus of religious change, to its wider economic, political or ‘practical’ ramifications. The resulting papers encompass a broad chronological and geographical scope, ranging from the fifth millennium BC to the sixteenth century AD, and including case studies from Australia, the Indian subcontinent, South America, Scandinavia, Spain and northern England. Eight out of a total of ten papers deal with three of the major ‘religions of the book’, Christianity, Buddhism and Islam, and their interaction with pre-existing traditions; the remaining two deal with the origins of prehistoric religions in northern Europe (Bradley and Numara), while Eeckhout focuses on early Peruvian traditions prior to European contact.

Historical water resources in South Asia: the hydrological background

Abstract The development of historical water resources in the South Asian subcontinent has been largely dependent on the hydrological background. The runoff patterns are derived from climate statistics and the historical developments in different areas are related to these patterns. Citation Sutcliffe, J., Shaw, J. & Brown, E. (2011) Historical water resources in South Asia: the hydrological background. Hydrol. Sci. J. 56(5), 775–788.

Religion, 'Nature' and Environmental Ethics in Ancient India: Archaeologies of Human:Non-Human Suffering and Well-being in early Buddhist and Hindu contexts

ABSTRACT This paper assesses archaeology’s contribution to debates regarding the ecological focus of early Buddhism and Hinduism and its relevance to global environmentalism. Evidence for long-term human:non-human entanglement, and the socio-economically constructed element of ‘nature’ on which Indic culture supposedly rests, challenges post-colonial tropes of India’s utopian, ‘eco-friendly’ past, whilst also highlighting the potency of individual human:non-human epistemologies for building historically grounded models of Indian environmentalism. For early Buddhism, I mediate between two polarized views: one promoting the idea of ‘eco-dharma’ as a reflection of Buddhism’s alignment with non-violence (ahiṃsā), and the alleviation of suffering (dukkha); a second arguing that early Buddhist traditions have been misappropriated by western environmentalism. I argue that the latter view subscribes to canonical models of passive monks removed from worldly concerns, despite archaeological evidence for socially-engaged monastic landlordism from the late centuries bc. Others cite this evidence only to negate Buddhism’s eco-credentials, thereby overlooking the human:non-human entanglement theme within modern environmental discourse, while the predominant focus on non-human suffering overlooks convergences between modern and ancient ecological ethics and environmental health. Case studies include examples of Buddhist land and water management in central India, set within discussions of human v. non-human-centric frameworks of well-being and suffering, purity and pollution, and broader Indic medico-ecological epistemologies, as possible models for collective responses to environmental stress.

Monasteries, Monasticism and Patronage in Ancient India: Mawasa: a recently documented Hilltop Buddhist Complex in the Sanchi area of Madhya Pradesh

This paper presents data from a recently documented hilltop Buddhist complex called Mawasa, in the Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh, central India, about 15 km to the east of the UNESCO World Heritage site of Sanchi. It was documented during the Sanchi Survey Project, a multi-phase exercise aimed at relating the histories of Buddhist monasticism and urbanism as represented by the sequences at Sanchi and nearby Vidisha respectively to archaeological patterns within their hinterland. The dataset at Mawasa offers a well-preserved and representative sample of many of the main architectural types found at Phase II (c. 2nd - 1st century BC) Buddhist sites in the study area. It includes a well-preserved stūpa, a carved slab with an early and unusual Brahmi donative inscription, and a group of interesting platformed monasteries with well-preserved internal details. All of these provide important new insights into the nature of patronage and the history and chronology of Buddhist monasticism and monastery architecture during this early period of Buddhist propagation. Further, an enigmatic structure, the precise function of which remains unclear is located within the site. It may be a very early shrine of a hitherto unstudied form, and thus has potential relevance for the wider history of early temple architecture.

Archaeologies of Buddhist propagation in ancient India: ‘ritual’ and ‘practical’ models of religious change

This paper assesses the degree to which current ‘ritual’ and ‘practical’ models of religious change fit with the available archaeological evidence for the spread of Buddhism in India during between the third and first centuries BC. The key question is how Buddhist monastic communities integrated themselves within the social, religious and economic fabric of the areas in which they arrived, and how they generated sufficient patronage networks for monastic Buddhism to grow into the powerful pan-Indian and subsequently pan-Asian institution that it became. While it is widely recognized that in time Indian monasteries came to provide a range of missionary functions including agrarian, medical, trading and banking facilities, the received understanding based on canonical scholarship and inadequate dialogue between textual and archaeological scholarship is that these were ‘late’ developments that reflected the deterioration of ‘true’ Buddhist values. By contrast, the results of the authors own landscape-based project in central India suggest that a ‘domesticated’ and socially integrated form of Buddhist monasticism was already in place in central India by the late centuries BC, thus fitting closely with practical models of religious change more commonly associated with the later spread of Islam and Christianity.

Archaeology, climate change and environmental ethics: diachronic perspectives on human:non-human:environment worldviews, activism and care

ABSTRACT This paper calls for archaeological engagement with the ethical dimension of past:present:future global environmental discourse and Anthropocene studies. In contrast to the recent chronological focus of archaeology’s engagement with Anthropocene studies, and its often rather generalised call for recognising the relevance of historically attested adaptive responses to climate change to current challenges, it highlights the need to examine the individual contributing and resulting factors of climate change and extreme environmental events. It advocates an approach that combines archaeology’s traditional focus on the practical and material elements of disaster management, with one that explores historical epistemologies of human:non-human care and entanglement, and socio-religious and collective ideological movements as driving forces behind historically specific environmental ethics. In relation to the ‘non-human’ element of the human:non-human:environment configuration there is special emphasis not only on non-human animals, but also conceptualisations of divine, ‘supra-human’, and numinous entities and spheres such as gods, spirits, and sacred places which are essential for attaining fully syncretic perspectives on diachronic environmental ethics. A key argument is that recognition of the multi-directional dynamics of human:environment entanglement, drawing on developments within religious studies, the environmental and medical humanities, as well as environmental health discourse, is crutical for achieving more widespread engagement with environmental activism, and movement towards long term behavioural changes that ultimately reduce global suffering and increase environmental, economic and human wellbeing.