Michael A. CREMO[1]

Phd. (honoris causa),
Center for Vedic Science Research
Los Angeles, California, USA

Histories of Indian archaeology usually begin with observations of old temples by 16^th-century European travelers. For example, in the introduction to his History of Indian Archaeology from the Beginning to 1947, Chakrabarti (2001: 1) says, «Without doubt these records constitute the first group of archaeological writings on India.» Paddayya (1995: 112) states, «My main point of emphasis is that archaeology in India is a European innovation.» He goes on, like Chakrabarti, to attribute the beginnings of archaeology in India to ‘[European] travelers and sailors who visited sites like the Elephant caves, rock-cut temples at Mahabalipuram and the temples of Orissa.’ The usual history then moves on to the Asiatic Society, the colonial Archaeological Survey, and finally the professional archaeologists of independent India. But in the Mahabharata we find evidence that archeological activity was recorded in India long before the arrival of the Europeans.

According to the Asvamedha Parva of the Mahabharata (Dutta 1905), in ancient times King Marutta desired to perform a sacrifice, which required gold vessels. The king’s priest, Samvarta, instructed him to go to the Munjaban mountain in the Himalayas and take gold from the mines there. Marutta obeyed, and his artisans turned the gold into sacrificial vessels. After the sacrifice, Marutta distributed some gold vessels to the brahmanas and buried some in the earth[2]. According to the Valmiki Ramayana (C. Goswami 1973, Uttara Khanda 17: 43-44), Marutta lived in the Krta (or Satya) Yuga. A long time later, after the Mahabharata war at the end of the Dvapara Yuga, the sage Vyasa ordered King Yudhisthira to perform an asvamedha-yajna, or horse sacrifice. Much wealth was required for the sacrifice, so Vyasa told Yudhisthira about the gold vessels left by Marutta in the Himalayas. Yudhisthira journeyed to the Himalayas to recover them. Before excavations began, the brahmanas accompanying Yudhisthira determined that the time was astrologically auspicious and performed rituals to pacify Siva along with other gods and spirits. Then the work started.

The king, placing Vyasa ahead, proceeded towards the place where the treasure was buried. Once more worshipping the Lord of treasures [Siva], and bowing unto him with reverence and saluting him properly … the king … caused that spot to be excavated. Then numerous vessels of diverse and delightful forms … were dug out by king Yudhishthira (Dutta 1905: 77)[3].

Is there any reason to think that there is some factual basis to this account, or is it simply an invention? We do have evidence of ancient people collecting artifacts. For example, Woolley (1950: 152-4) informs us that in the sixth century BC the daughter of King Nebonidus put together a collection of Babylonian artifacts. So it is within the realm of possibility that the Mahabharata account of the recovery of the gold of King Marutta has a foundation in actual discoveries.

At first glance, this kind of treasure hunting seems quite different from modern scientific archaeology. But, at least in the popular mind, there is still some connection between treasure hunting and archaeology. And in actual fact, the archaeological community itself has established ongoing relationships with treasure hunters, be they avocational users of metal detectors or private companies searching for gold in shipwrecks. Furthermore, the many archaeologists who do happen to find golden treasures certainly recognize that they have discovered something quite attractive to the popular mind, something that will draw thousands of visitors to museums and provide material for exciting television shows and books. Holtorf (2006: preface) reminds us: «In many ways the reality of professional archaeology is not entirely different from the stereotypical clichés of archaeology that are so prominent in popular culture…. Archaeologists really do find exciting treasures».

Aside from this, how are we to situate a case like the recovery of Marutta’s treasure in terms of modern theorizing about the history of archaeology? Trigger (1989: 28) notes some examples of tribal people collecting artifacts ‘from the unknown past.’ For example, North American Iroquois sites from the 15^th and 16^th centuries contain artifacts made thousands of years earlier. We infer that the Iroquois found these artifacts and saved them. Is this archaeology? Trigger (1989: 29) says he would not use the word archaeology, even «indigenous archaeology,» to characterize such activity. But I would use the word archaeology, because I take it to encompass all human cognitive engagement with physical objects that the discoverers believed were manufactured by or otherwise associated with intelligent beings (whether perceived as human or supernatural) from the past.

However, the recovery of the treasure of Marutta rises above simply finding, by chance, an artifact from «the unknown past» and keeping it. Trigger (1989: 29), in recognition of such cases, offers that in some early civilizations artifacts were ‘valued … as the relics of specific rulers or periods of national greatness and as sources of information about the past.’ The story of Marutta’s treasure meets these criteria. The treasure was regarded as the relic of a specific ruler, and its inclusion in a written historical account shows that it did count as information about the past.

According to Trigger (1989: 30) a case like this still would not be real archeology, because, as with similar cases he records, «There was absolutely no awareness that the material remains of the past could be used to test. . . speculations about human origins and the general outlines of human history.» But modern archeology has come to include more than using physical remains to test theories about the past. Today, a professional archaeologist is much more likely to be working in heritage or cultural resource management (CRM) than in doing excavations exclusively for testing theories. The recovery of Marutta’s treasure does appear to have some similarities with modern archaeological work in heritage management. In this case, knowledge of an archaeologically situated (buried) heritage resource (the gold of King Marutta) was being maintained by Vyasa, a brahmana playing a curatorial role on behalf of the Vedic social order. So the excavation conducted by Yudhisthira was not simple treasure hunting. It was carried out to extract a heritage resource for a legimate social purpose. And it was carried out under strict regulations, which involved placating the local population of gods and ancestral spirits. Although modern scientific archaeologists are not directly involved in placating the local gods and ancestral spirits, they often do have to take into account, sometimes under the compulsion of government regulations, the indigenous peoples who are in fact concerned with the placation of such beings.

In the end, the claim that there was no archaeology in India prior to the coming of the Europeans is much like the claim that there was no history, no historical sense, in the writings of ancient India. The latter concept has been deconstructed by scholars like Romila Thapar (1984: 269), who defined the historical sense «as a consciousness of past events, which events are relevant to a particular society, seen in a chronological framework, and expressed in a form which meets the needs of the society.» With a definition like this, we can see that history will take different forms according to the needs and natures of the societies that record past events. It is not required that the historical sense of one culture conform exactly with that of another culture. Western culture has valued history as something distinct from other forms of knowledge, but ancient Indian culture embedded history within cosmology and theology and ethics, and the Indian historical writings such as the Mahabharata and the Puranas reflect this. Although historical consciousness manifests differently in different cultures, and at different times in cultures, still, there are some commonalities that allow us to recognize a sense of history when we see it. In the same way, we can recognize an archaeological tradition in ancient India, an indigenous or folk archaeological tradition that continued long after the time of the Mahabharata. For example, Gaudiya Vaishnava saints journeyed to the region of Vrindavan, a place sacred to Krishna, in the 15^th and 16^th centuries AD to excavate lost sacred images and sacred sites associated with Krishna (Cremo 2008, forthcoming).

I am not claiming that the recovery of the treasure of Marutta and modern scientific archaeology are isomorphic. What I am proposing here is that there is enough of a resemblance here to warrant including both the recovery of Marutta’s treasure and the activities of modern scientific archaeologists within the boundaries of the term archaeology, despite the vast differences in worldviews associated with the respective practices. And therefore it would be legitimate to mention a case like the recovery of Marutta’s treasure in a history of archaeology in India.

Works Cited

Chakrabarti, D. K. (2001) A History of Indian Archaeology from the Beginning to 1947, New Delhi: Munshirama Manoharlal Publishers

Cremo, M. A. (2008, forthcoming) Excavating the eternal: an indigenous archaeological tradition in India. Accepted for publication in Antiquity.

Dutta, Manmatha Nath, ed. (1905) Mahabharata.Vol. 14. Ashwamedha Parva, Calcutta: Manmatha Nath Dutt

Goswami, C. L. (1974) Srimad Valimiki-Ramayana, Part III, Gorakhpur: Gita Press

Goswami, S. (1996) ‘Govinda darsana: lotus in stone,’ in Case, MH, Govindadeva: A Dialogue in Stone, New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts

Haberman, D. L. (1994) Journey Through the Twelve Forests: An Encounter with Krishna, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Holtorf, C. (2006) Archaeology As a Brand, Oxford: Archaeopress

Paddayya, K. (1995) ‘Theoretical perspectives in Indian archaeology,’ in Ucko, P, Theory in Archaeology: A World Perspective, London: Routledge

Thapar, R. (1984) Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations, Hyderabad: Longman Orient Limited

Trigger, B. G. (1989) A History of Archaeological Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Woolley, C. L. (1950) Ur of the Chaldees, Harmondsworth: Penguin

Michael A. Cremo

Historian of Archaeology

Bhaktivedanta Institute

9701 Venice Blvd # 5

Los Angeles, CA 90034 USA

http://www.mcremo.com

mcremo@cs.com

Michael A. Cremo is an historian of archaeology, specializing in Indian perspectives on human origins and antiquity. He is author of papers on history of Indian and European archaeology, including «Puranic Time and the Archaeological Record» (presented World Archaeological Congress 5, New Delhi, India, and published in T. Murray, ed., Time and Archaeology, One World Archaeology series, Routledge, London, 1999, pp. 38-48. He was invited lecturer on history of archaeology for the Royal Institution of Great Britain, February 2000.