How do we know our past? Our history?  One way is to refer to texts. The Asiatic Society of Mumbai was founded by Sir James Mackintosh in 1804 to do just that—pour over and preserve texts. Sanskrit, Prakrit, Arabic, Persian texts abound. These texts tell you about the imagination of poets and writers, but they do not necessarily capture the “truth” of the moment. If history is the story of the victors, it is only the partial story. The texts, thus, need to be corroborated with something more material and “objective”.

It is here that the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) becomes important. This was founded in 1861 by Alexander Cunningham. Especially after the decipherment of the Brahmi script by James Prinsep in 1837, and Cunningham’s excavations of Buddhist monuments in the Nepalese Terai region, he realised there needed to be a place that could fund archaeological excavations and the conservation of Indian monuments. This would give us a richer idea of our history.