On conserving ancient monuments (Calcutta, February 1900) LORD CURZON (1859–1925)

On conserving ancient monuments (Calcutta, February
1900)
LORD CURZON (1859–1925)

Lord Curzon was amazed at the apathy of Indians towards their own

architectural and archaeological heritage, and conservation became a

passion for him during his viceroyalty (1899–1904). On his official tours, he

tried to impress upon local authorities that the conservation of ancient

monuments was one of the primary obligations of the government and he

returned to this theme when speaking at the annual meeting of the Asiatic

Society of Bengal of which he was the patron. Curzon’s passing of the

pathbreaking Ancient Monuments Preservation Act (1904) was a direct

outcome of the concerns expressed in this speech.

I hope that there is nothing inappropriate in my addressing to this Society a

few observations upon the duty of government in respect of ancient

buildings in India. e Asiatic Society of Bengal still, I trust, even in these

days when men are said to find no time for scholarship, and when

independent study or research seems to have faded out of Indian fashion,

retains that interest in archaeology which is so often testified to in its earlier

publications, and was promoted by so many of its most illustrious names.

Surely here, if anywhere, in this house which enshrines the memorials, and

has frequently listened to the wisdom, of great scholars and renowned

students, it is permissible to recall the recollection of the present generation

to a subject that so deeply engaged the attention of your early pioneers, and

that must still even in a breathless age, appeal to the interest of every

thoughtful man.

I h f d h h I d f h

In the course of my recent tour, during which I visited some of the most

famous sites and beautiful or historic buildings in India, I more than once

remarked, in reply to municipal addresses, that I regarded the conservation

of ancient monuments as one of the primary obligations of government. We

have a duty to our forerunners, as well as to our contemporaries and to our

descendants—nay, our duty to the two latter classes in itself demands the

recognition of an obligation to the former, since we are the custodians for

our own age of that which has been bequeathed to us by an earlier, and

since posterity will rightly blame us if, owing to our neglect, they fail to reap

the same advantages that we have been privileged to enjoy. Moreover, how

can we expect at the hands of futurity any consideration for the productions

of our own time—if indeed any are worthy of such—unless we have

ourselves shown a like respect to the handiwork of our predecessors? is

obligation, which I assert and accept on behalf of government, is one of an

even more binding character in India than in many European countries.

ere abundant private wealth is available for the acquisition or the

conservation of that which is frequently private property. Corporations,

societies, endowments, trusts, provide a vast machinery that relieves

government of a large portion of its obligation. e historic buildings, the

magnificent temples, the inestimable works of art, are invested with a

publicity that to some extent saves them from the risk of desecration or the

encroachments of decay. Here, all is different. India is covered with the

visible records of vanished dynasties, of forgotten monarchs, of persecuted

and sometimes dishonoured creeds. ese monuments are, for the most

part, though there are notable exceptions, in British territory, and on soil

belonging to government. Many of them are in out-of-the-way places, and

are liable to the combined ravages of a tropical climate, an exuberant flora,

and very often a local and ignorant population, who see only in an ancient

building the means of inexpensively raising a modern one for their own

convenience. All these circumstances explain the peculiar responsibility that

rests upon Government in India. If there be anyone who says to me that

there is no duty devolving upon a Christian Government to preserve the

monuments of a pagan art, or the sanctuaries of an alien faith, I cannot

pause to argue with such a man. Art and beauty, and the reverence that is

owing to all that has evoked human genius or has inspired human faith, are

independent of creeds, and, in so far as they touch the sphere of religion, are

embraced by the common religion of all mankind. Viewed from this

d h k l f h B h d l h

standpoint, the rock temple of the Brahmans stands on precisely the same

footing as the Buddhist vihara, and the Mohammedan musjid as the

Christian cathedral. ere is no principle of artistic discrimination between

the mausoleum of the despot and the sepulchre of the saint. What is

beautiful, what is historic, what tears the mask off the face of the past, and

helps us to read its riddles, and to look it in the eyes—these, and not the

dogmas of a combative theology, are the principal criteria to which we must

look. Much of ancient history, even in an age of great discoveries, still

remains mere guess-work. It is only slowly being pieced together by the

efforts of scholars and by the outcome of research. But the clues are lying

everywhere at our hand, in buried cities, in undeciphered inscriptions, in

casual coins, in crumbling pillars, and pencilled slabs of stone. ey supply

the data by which we may reconstruct the annals of the past, and recall to

life the morality, the literature, the politics, the art of a perished age.

Compared with the antiquity of Assyrian or Egyptian, or even of early

European monuments, the age of the majority of Indian monuments is not

great. I speak subject to correction, but my impression is that the oldest

sculptured monument in India is the Sanchi Tope, the great railing of

which cannot possibly be placed before the middle of the third century

before Christ, although the tope itself may be earlier. At that time the

palaces or Chaldaea and Nineveh, the pyramids and the rock tombs of

Egypt, were already thousands of years old. We have no building in India as

old as the Parthenon at Athens; the large majority are young compared to

the Colosseum at Rome. All the Norman and the majority of the Gothic

cathedrals of England and of western Europe were already erected before

the great era of Moslem architecture in India had begun. e Kutub Minar

at Delhi, which is the finest early Mohammedan structure in this country,

was built within a century of Westminster Hall in London, which we are far

from regarding as an ancient monument. As for the later glories of Arabian

architecture at Delhi, at Agra, and at Lahore, the Colleges of Oxford and

Cambridge, which we regard in England as the last product of a dying

architectural epoch, were already grey when they sprang, white and spotless,

from the hands of the masons of Akbar and Shah Jehan; while the Taj

Mahal was only one generation older than Wren’s Renaissance fabric of

modern St Paul’s.

ere is another remarkable feature of the majority of Indian antiquities—

of those at any rate that belong to the Musulman epoch—that they do not

d I d l 

represent an indigenous genius or an Indian style. ey are exotics,

imported into this country in the train of conquerors who had learnt their

architectural lessons in Persia, in Central Asia, in Arabia, in Afghanistan.

More than a thousand years earlier a foreign influence had exercised a

scarcely less marked, though more transient, influence upon certain forms

of Indian architecture. I allude to the Greek types which were derived from

the Greco-Bactrian kingdoms, that were founded upon the remains of

Alexander’s conquests, and which, in the centuries immediately preceding

the Christian era profoundly affected the art and sculpture of North-West

India and the Punjab. Indian sculptures or Indian buildings, however,

because they reflect a foreign influence, or betray a foreign origin, are not

the less, but perhaps the more interesting to ourselves, who were borne to

India upon the crest of a later but similar wave, and who may find in their

non-Indian characteristics a reminiscence of forms which we already know

in Europe, and of a process of assimilation with which our own

archaeological history has rendered us familiar. Indeed a race like our own,

who are themselves foreigners, are in a sense better fitted to guard, with a

dispassionate and impartial zeal, the relics of different ages, and of

sometimes antagonistic beliefs, than might be the descendants of the

warring races or the votaries of the rival creeds. To us the relics of Hindu

and Mohammedan, of Buddhist, Brahmin, and Jain are, from the

antiquarian, the historical, and the artistic point of view, equally interesting

and equally sacred. One does not excite a more vivid, and the other a

weaker emotion. Each represents the glories or the faith of a branch of the

human family. Each fills a chapter in English history. Each is a part of the

heritage which Providence has committed to the custody of the ruling

power.

If, however, the majority of the structural monuments of India, the topes

and temples, the palaces and fortresses and tombs, be of no exceeding

antiquity in the chronology of architecture, and even if the greater number

of those at any rate which are well known and visited, are not indigenous in

origin, it remains true, on the other hand, that it is in the exploration and

study of purely Indian remains, in the probing of archaic mounds, in the

excavation of old Indian cities, and in the copying and reading of ancient

inscriptions, that a good deal of the exploratory work of the archaeologist in

India will in future lie. e later pages of Indian history are known to us,

and can be read by all. But a curtain of dark and romantic mystery hangs

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over the earlier chapters, of which we are only slowly beginning to lift the

corners. is also is not less an obligation of government. Epigraphy should

not be set behind research any more than research should be set behind

conservation. All are ordered parts of any scientific scheme of antiquarian

work. I am not one of those who think that government can afford to

patronize the one and ignore the other. It is, in my judgment, equally our

duty to dig and discover, to classify, reproduce, and describe, to copy and

decipher, and to cherish and conserve. Of restoration I cannot, on the

present occasion, undertake to speak, since the principles of legitimate and

artistic restoration require a more detailed analysis than I have time to

bestow upon them this evening. But it will be seen from what I have said

that my view of the obligations of government is not grudging, and that my

estimate of the work to be done is ample.

If then the question be asked, how has the British Government hitherto

discharged aid, how is it now discharging its task, what is the answer that

must be returned? I may say in preface that were the answer unfavourable—

and I will presently examine that point—we should merely be forging a

fresh link in an unbroken historic chain. Every, or nearly every, successive

religion that has permeated or overswept this country has vindicated its own

fervour at the expense of the rival whom it has dethroned. When the

Brahmans went to Ellora, they hacked away the features of all the seated

Buddhas in the rock-chapels and halls. When Kutub-ud-din commenced,

and Altamsh continued, the majestic mosque that flanks the Kutub Minar,

it was with the spoil of Hindu temples that they reared the fabric, carefully

defacing or besmearing the sculptured Jain images, as they consecrated

them to their novel purpose. What part of India did not bear witness to the

ruthless vandalism of the great iconoclast Aurungzeb? When we admire his

great mosque with its tapering minarets, which are the chief feature of the

river front at Benares, how many of us remember that he tore down the

holy Hindu temple of Vishveshwar to furnish the material and to supply the

site? Nadir Shah during his short Indian inroad effected a greater spoliation

than has probably ever been achieved in so brief a space of time. When the

Mahratta conquerors overran northern India, they pitilessly mutilated and

wantonly destroyed. When Ranjit Singh built the Golden Temple at

Amritsar, he ostentatiously rifled Mohammedan buildings and mosques.

Nay, dynasties did not spare their own members, nor religions their own

shrines. If a capital or fort or sanctuary was not completed in the lifetime of

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the builder; there was small chance of its being finished, there was a very

fair chance of its being despoiled, by its successor and heir. e environs of

Delhi are a wilderness of deserted cities and devastated tombs. Each fresh

conqueror, Hindu, or Moghul, or Pathan, marched, so to speak, to his own

immortality over his predecessor’s grave. e great Akbar in a more peaceful

age first removed the seat of government from Delhi to Agra, and then

built Fatehpur Sikri as a new capital, only to be abandoned by his successor.

Jehangir alternated between Delhi and Agra, but preferred Lahore to either.

Shah Jehan beautified Agra, and then contemplated a final return to Delhi.

Aurungzeb marched away to the south and founded still another capital,

and was himself buried in territories that now belong to Hyderabad. ese

successive changes, while they may have reflected little more than a despot’s

caprice, were yet inimical both to the completion and to the continuous

existence of architectural fabrics. e British Government are fortunately

exempt from any such promptings, either of religious fanaticism, or restless

vanity, or of dynastic and personal pride. But in proportion as they have

been unassailed by such temptations, so is their responsibility the greater for

inaugurating a new era and for displaying that tolerant and enlightened

respect to the treasures of all, which is one of the main lessons that the

returning West has been able to teach to the East.

In the domain of archaeology, as elsewhere, the original example of duty has

been set to the Government of India by individual effort and by private

enthusiasm; and only by slow degrees has government, which is at all times

and seasons a tardy learner, warmed to its task. e early archaeological

researches, conducted by the founders and pioneers of this Society, by Jones,

Colebrooke, Wilson, and Prinsep, and by many another clarum et

venerabile nomen, were in the main literary in character. ey consisted in

the reconstruction of alphabets, the translation of manuscripts, and the

decipherment of inscriptions. Sanskrit scholarship was the academic cult of

the hour. How these men laboured is illustrated by the fact that Prinsep and

Kittoe both died of overwork at the age of forty. en followed an era of

research in buildings and monuments; the pen was supplemented by the

spade, and, in succession, descriptions, drawings, paintings, engravings, and

in later days photographs and casts, gradually revealed to European eyes the

precious contents of the unrifled quarries of Hindustan. In this generation

of explorers and writers, special honour must be paid to two names: to

James Fergusson, whose earliest work was published in 1845, and who was

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the first to place the examination of Indian architecture upon a scholarly

basis, and to General Sir A. Cunningham, who only a few years later was

engaged in the first scientific excavation of the Bhilsa topes. ese and

other toilers in the same field laboured with a diligence beyond praise; but

the work was too great for individual exertion, and much of it remained

desultory, fragmentary, and incomplete.

Meanwhile the Government of India was concerned with laying the

foundations and extending the borders of a new empire, and thought little

of the relics of old ones. From time to time a Governor-General, in an

excess of exceptional enlightenment or generosity, spared a little money for

the fitful repair of ancient monuments. Lord Minto appointed a committee

to conduct repairs at the Taj. Lord Hastings ordered works at Fatehpur

Sikri and Sikandra. Lord Amherst attempted some restoration of the Kutub

Minar. Lord Hardinge persuaded the Court of Directors to sanction

arrangements for the examination, delineation, and record of some of the

chief Indian antiquities. But these spasmodic efforts resulted in little more

than the collection of a few drawings, and the execution of a few local and

perfunctory repairs. How little the leaven had permeated the lump, and how

strongly the barbarian still dominated the aesthetic in the official mind, may

be shown by incidents that from time to time occurred.

In the days of Lord William Bentinck the Taj was on the point of being

destroyed for the value of its marbles. e same Governor-General sold by

auction the marble bath in Shah Jehan’s Palace at Agra, which had been

torn up by Lord Hastings for a gift to George IV but had somehow never

been despatched. In the same regime a proposal was made to lease the

gardens at Sikandra to the executive engineer at Agra for the purposes of

speculative cultivation. In 1857, after the Mutiny, it was solemnly proposed

to raze to the ground the Jumma Musjid at Delhi, the noblest ceremonial

mosque in the world, and it was only spared at the instance of Sir John

Lawrence. As late as 1868 the removal of the great gateways of the Sanchi

Tope was successfully prevented by the same statesman. I have read of a

great Mohammedan pillar, over 600 years old, which was demolished at

Aligarh to make room for certain municipal improvements and for the

erection of some bunias’ shops, which, when built, were never let. Some of

the sculptured columns of the exquisite Hindu-Musulman mosque at Ajmer

were pulled down by a zealous officer to construct a triumphal arch under

which the Viceroy of the day was to pass. James Fergusson’s books sound

d f h b k b ld d h

one unending note of passionate protest against the barrack-builder and the

military engineer. I must confess that I think these individuals have been,

and, within the more restricted scope now left to them, still are inveterate

sinners. Climb the hill-top at Gwalior and see the barracks of the British

soldier and the relics, not yet entirely obliterated, of his occupation of the

palace in the fort. Read in the Delhi guide books of the horrors that have

been perpetrated in the interests of regimental barracks and messes and

canteens in the fairylike pavilions and courts and gardens of Shah Jehan. It

is not yet thirty years since the Government of India were invited by a

number of army doctors to cut off the battlements of the Fort at Delhi, in

order to improve the health of the troops, and only desisted from doing so

when a rival band of medical doctrinaires appeared upon the scene to urge

the retention of the very same battlements, in order to prevent malarial

fever from creeping in. At an earlier date, when picnic parties were held in

the garden of the Taj, it was not an uncommon thing for the revelers to arm

themselves with hammer and chisel, with which they wiled away the

afternoon by chipping out fragments of agate and cornelian from the

cenotaphs of the Emperor and his lamented Queen. Indeed, when I was at

Agra the other day, I found that the marble tomb of Shah Jehan in the

lower vault, beneath which his body actually lies, was still destitute of much

of its original inlay, of which I ordered the restoration.

at the era of vandalism is not yet completely at an end is evident from

recent experiences, among which I may include my own. When Fergusson

wrote his book, the Diwan-i-Am, or Public Hall of Audience, in the Palace

at Agra, was a military arsenal, the outer colonnades of which had been

built up with brick arches lighted by English windows. All this was

afterwards removed. But when the Prince of Wales came to India in 1876,

and held a Durbar in this building, the opportunity was too good to be lost,

and a fresh coat of white-wash was plentifully bespattered over the

sandstone pillars and plinths of the Durbar Hall of Aurungzeb. is too, I

hope to get removed. When his Royal Highness was at Delhi, and the

various pavilions of Shah Jehan’s Palace were connected together for the

purposes of an evening party and ball, local talent was called in to reproduce

the faded paintings on marble and plaster of the Moghul artists two and a

half centuries before. e result of their labours is still an eyesore and a

regret. When I was at Lahore in April last, I found the exquisite little Moti

Musjid, or Pearl Mosque, in the fort, which was erected by Jehangir exactly

h h d d ll d f h f h h h d

three hundred years ago, still used for the profane purpose to which it had

been converted by Ranjit Singh, namely, as a government treasury. e

arches were built up with brick-work, and below the marble floor had been

excavated as a cellar for the reception of iron-bound chests of rupees. I

pleaded for the restoration to its original state of this beautiful little

building, which I suppose not one visitor in a hundred to Lahore has ever

seen. Ranjit Singh cared nothing for the taste or the trophies of his

Mohammedan predecessors, and half a century of British military

occupation, with its universal paintpot, and the exigencies of the Public

Works engineer, has assisted the melancholy decline. Fortunately in recent

years something has been done to rescue the main buildings of the Moghul

Palace from these two insatiable enemies. At Ahmedabad I found the

mosque of Sidi Sayid, the pierced stone lattice-work of whose demi-lune

windows is one of the glories of India, used as a tehsildar’s cutcherry, and

disfigured with plaster partitions and the omnivorous whitewash. I hope to

effect the reconversion of this building. After the conquest of Upper Burma

in 1835, the Palace of the Kings at Mandalay which, although built of the

most part of wood, is yet a noble specimen of Burmese art, was converted

by our conquering battalions into a Club House, a Government Office, and

a Church. By degrees I am engaged in removing these superfluous denizens,

with the idea of preserving the building as a monument, not of a dynasty

that has vanished never to return, but of an art that, subject to the

vicissitudes of fire, earthquake, and decay, is capable of being a joy forever.

ere are other sites and fabrics in India upon which I also have my eye,

which I shall visit, if possible, during my time, and which I shall hope to

rescue from a kindred or a worse fate.

ese are the gloomy or regrettable features of the picture. On the other

hand, there has been, during the last forty years, some sort of sustained

effort on the part of government to recognize its responsibilities and to

purge itself of a well-merited reproach. is attempt has been accompanied,

and sometimes delayed, by disputes as to the rival claims of research and of

conservation, and by discussion over the legitimate spheres of action of the

central and the local governments. ere have been periods of supineness as

well as of activity. ere have been moments when it has been argued that

the state had exhausted its duty or that it possessed no duty at all. ere

have been persons who thought that when all the chief monuments were

indexed and classified, we might sit down with folded hands and allow

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them slowly and gracefully to crumble into ruin. ere have been others

who argued that railways and irrigation did not leave even a modest half

lakh of rupees per annum for the requisite establishment to supervise the

most glorious galaxy of monuments in the world. Nevertheless, with these

interruptions and exceptions, which I hope may never again recur, the

progress has been positive, and, on the whole, continuous. It was Lord

Canning who first invested archaeological work in this country with

permanent government patronage by constituting, in 1860, the

Archaeological Survey of Northern India, and by appointing General

Cunningham in 1862 to be Archaeological Surveyor to Government. From

that period date the publications of the Archaeological Survey of India,

which have at times assumed different forms, and which represent varying

degrees of scholarship and merit, but which constitute, on the whole, a

noble mine of information, in which the student has but to delve in order to

discover an abundant spoil. For over twenty years General Cunningham

continued his labours, of which these publications are the memorial.

Meanwhile orders were issued for the registration and preservation of

historical monuments throughout India, local surveys were started in some

of the subordinate governments, the Bombay Survey being placed in the

capable hands of Mr Burgess, who was a worthy follower in the footsteps of

Cunningham, and who ultimately succeeded him as Director-General of

the Archaeological Survey. Some of the native states followed the example

thus set to them, and either applied for the services of the government

archaeologists, or established small departments of their own.

In the provinces much depended upon the individual tastes or proclivities of

the Governor or Lieutenant-Governor, just as at headquarters the strength

of the impetus varied with the attitude of successive viceroys. Lord

Northbrook, who was always a generous patron of the arts, issued orders in

1873 as to the duties of local governments; and in his viceroyalty Sir John

Strachey was the first Lieutenant-Governor to undertake a really noble

work of renovation and repair at Agra—a service which is fitly

commemorated by a marble slab in the Palace of Shah Jehan. e poetic

and imaginative temperament of Lord Lytton could not be deaf to a similar

appeal. Holding that no claim upon the initiative and resources of the

Supreme Government was more essentially Imperial than the preservation

of national antiquities, he contributed in 1879 a sum of 33/4 lakhs to the

restoration of buildings in the North-West Provinces, and proposed the

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appointment of a special officer, to be entitled the Curator of Ancient

Monuments, which, while it did not receive sanction in his time, was left to

be carried out by his successor, Lord Ripon. During the three years that

Major Cole held this post, from 1880 to 1883, much excellent work in

respect both of reports and classification was done; and large sums of money

were given by the Government of India, inter alia, for repairs in the Gwalior

Fort and at Sanchi Tope. But at the end of this time succeeded a period of

some reaction, in which it appeared to be thought that the task of the

Central Government, in the preparation of surveys and lists, was drawing to

a close, and that local governments might, in future, be safely entrusted

with the more modest, but, I may add, not less critical, duty of

conservation. More recently, under Lord Elgin’s auspices, the archaeological

work of government has been placed upon a more definite basis. e entire

country has been divided into a number of circles, each with a surveyor of

its own, and while the establishment is regarded as an Imperial charge, the

work is placed under local control and receives such financial backing as the

resources of the local governments or the sympathies of individual

governors may be able to give it. In the North-West Provinces, where I was

recently touring, I found Sir A. MacDonnell worthily sustaining, in point

of generous and discriminating sympathy, the traditions that were created

by Sir John Strachey.

For my part, I feel far from clear that government might, not do a good

deal more than it is now doing, or than it has hitherto consented to do. I

certainly cannot look forward to a time at which either the obligations of

the state will have become exhausted, or at which archaeological research

and conservation in this country can dispense with government direction

and control. I see fruitful fields of labour still unexplored, bad blunders still

to be corrected, gaping omissions to be supplied, plentiful opportunities for

patient renovation and scholarly research. In my opinion, the taxpayers of

this country are in the last degree unlikely to resent a somewhat higher

expenditure—and, after all, a few thousand rupees go a long way in

archaeological work, and the total outlay is exceedingly small—upon objects

in which I believe them to be as keenly interested as we are ourselves. I

hope to assert more definitely during my time the Imperial responsibility of

government in respect of Indian antiquities, to inaugurate or to persuade a

more liberal attitude on the part of those with whom it rests to provide the

means, and to be a faithful guardian of the priceless treasure-house of art

d l h h f f b d

and learning that has, for a few years at any rate, been committed to my

charge.