Following Xuanzang’s Trail: How Alexander Cunningham Retrieves Xuanzang’s Itinerary through Central India in His The Ancient Geography of India, Buddhist Period (1871)

Abstract

Alexander Cunningham, a great scholar, archaeologist and art historian, contributed immensely to the cause of Indian art and archaeology. He is rightly hailed as the ‘Father of Indian Archaeology’. He was among the first to acknowledge the role of textual scholarship, particularly in understanding the sites of ancient India and paid particular attention to sculptural art and epigraphic records. His efforts to trace Buddhist history through the architectural remains greatly impacted the consolidation of Buddhist religious identity. He was perhaps the earliest art historian to advance an evolutionary model to study Indian temple architecture. The present study provides a critical and comparative analysis of his work. Though Cunningham is criticized for his ‘text-aided’ approach, the influence of Buddhist sites and his obsession with Chinese pilgrims, yet his grand contribution to preserving Indian art and heritage cannot be ignored. The volume containing 16 articles is an outcome of the effort to bring into print the proceedings of the International Seminar on ‘Sir Alexander Cunningham and the Art Heritage of India’ organized by the Department of History of Art, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, to mark Cunningham’s bicentenary year, and to re-assess his contribution to the cause of Indian art and archaeology. The book is enriched by the contributions of some highly acclaimed scholars in their respective fields. It will be useful to history, historiography, and heritage-related academia and to the general reader interested to know more about Cunningham and the history of our heritage.