Author: S.P. Gupta
Publication: Organiser
Date: September 7, 2003
Archaeology forms part of the discipline
of History but it is also very much different from it. There is a
reason for it. Historians deal primarily with the written records
found in the form of books, manuscripts and inscriptions, etc, which they
get in libraries and museums, but not archaeologists who necessarily have
to go for field-work, explore ancient sites and excavate them slowly and
gradually, uncovering every layer and the material remains associated with
them. They have to collect old organic materials and get them dated
by the Physicists who deal in Radiocarbon Dating techniques, called C14
method. They collect stones and send them to Geologists for their
identification. They collect bones of men and animals and get them
examined to identify their species by Palaeontologists. In other
words, the discipline of archaeology is multidisciplinary and highly scientific.
The "Principle of Stratigraphy",
primarily applicable to Geology, is also the backbone of archaeological
excavations. Hence, archaeologists dig a site layer after layer, the lower
layers are successively earlier in time than the upper layers. The
walls that override the earlier walls are, therefore, later in date than
those walls that are over-ridden. The same applies to floors, pits and
structures of temples, mosques, churches, etc. It is, therefore,
clear that archaeological excavations can reconstruct the past as it was
with greater precision than historical investigations. Exactly the
same principle was applied to all the walls, floors, etc, excavated at
the disputed site in Ayodhya.
No wonder, the Lucknow full bench
of the Allahabad High Court asked the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI)
to excavate the site of Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri structure and inform the Court
"whether there was any temple/structure which was demolished and mosque
was constructed on the disputed site".
The ASI report in two volumes, running
in 308 pages of text, 60 line-drawing figures, 235 colour photographs,
more than 100 charts, and 4 Appendices of scientific reports has taken
into consideration all kinds of evidence unearthed at the site, including
the sequence of structural remains, stratigraphical positions of every
object found in the trenches, architectural fragments of the temples and
the mosque, art objects in the form of terracotta figurines of yakshas,
mother goddesses, elephants, etc, buried in the deposits of different periods,
a large variety of written records in the form of inscriptions, seals,
sealings and coins, carrying Nagari and Persian texts, besides thousands
of beads, glass and metal objects as well as plain and painted potteries,
native and imported (from Persia and China). The report has concluded
that "viewing in totality and taking into account the archaeological evidence
of a massive structure just below the disputed structure, and evidence
of continuity in structural phases from the tenth century onwards up to
the construction of the disputed structure along with the yield of stone
and decorated bricks as well as mutilated sculpture of divine couple and
carved architectural members, including foliage patters, amalakas, kopotapal,
doorjamb with semicircular pilaster, broken octagonal shaft of black schist
pillar, lotus motif, circular shrine having paranala (water chute) in the
north, fifty pillar-basis in association of the huge structure, are indicative
of remains which are distinctive features found associated with the temples
of north India".
Thus, the archaeological findings
are categorical in their pronouncement that there indeed existed a massive
temple of the 12th century A.D. before the coming up of the disputed structure
in 1528-29 of the so-called 'Babri Mosque' at the site of Ramjanmabhoomi.
However, some of the non-archaeologists,
i.e., those who have never excavated a single site in their lives, like
Irfan Habib, have jumped out of their bed to condemn the report as anti-Muslim,
anti-mosque and anti-itself, i.e., the organisation (ASI) which has produced
the report.
One of their funniest of the funny
objections is that the presence of animal bones (presumably of goats and
sheep according to Habib) at the site shows that there could not be a temple.
For the information of our 'historian'
friends, who say that the glazed ware appeared in India with the coming
of Muslims, at Sonkh, Mathura, etc, the glazed ware appeared-in the Kushana
levels of the 1st-2nd century A.D. At Sanjan, on the Western Coast near
Mumbai, I have found them in a variety of colours and decorations from
the levels of 8th-10th century A.D. That it is continued even in the Mughal
period is well known but not relevant in the present controversy.
Irfan Habib talks that the lime-mortar
was used in making floors and bonding of bricks for the first time by the
Sultans of Delhi in the early 13th century. What better example of
historian's ignorance there could be? It was widely used in ancient India
as we know from the 2nd century B.C. Stupa at Sanchi. Belonging to
the Gupta Period (500 A.D., i.e., 700 years before the establishment of
the Sultanate in Delhi) there are virtually hundreds of examples in India-Nalanda
in Bihar and Kausambi in Uttar Pradesh are only two of the well-known examples.
The tradition of the use of lime-mortar continued in all the subsequent
periods. That the lime-mortar was extensively used by the Gahadval
Kings of the 11th and 12th centuries in temples at Sarnath is equally well
known. Therefore, the use of lime-mortar in the pre-Sultanate period
at Ramjanmabhoomi should not surprise anyone. And the pillar-bases,
as many as fifty of them found in the excavations. The observations
of Irfan Habib, Suraj Bhan and others are, to say the least, not only highly
biased, tilted in favour of the claims of a particular community, but also
self-contradictory. On the one hand they dismiss their presence as
fiction and on the other hand they say that they could not carry the heavy-load
of the pillared hall of the temple at the site, only a temporary structure
may have been there such as the "cow-shed". They even go to the extent
of imputing motive to the excavators who had dug the site in recent months,
both Hindus and Muslims- at in order to prove the existence of a temple
they created the "bases" by leaving some portions and throwing away other
materials, and that too in the constant presence of hundreds of police
men, judges, nominees of litigants, etc. This is simply absurd.
The fact of the matter is, as I always maintained here, there is the story
of two temples at the site and not one. Four of the pillar-bases
excavated so far at the site in lower levels belong to a 10th century temple
while the 46 of them, belonging to upper levels, belong to the 12th century
temple.
Irfan Habib calls the "Circular
Temple with Parnala" found at a corner on the southern side of the site
as "Tomb". Whose tomb? No answer. Where is the dead-body?
No answer. What was the role of water-chute (parnala) in the tomb?
If it was not a feature of a temple with Linga worship then in which other
structure does it exist? No answer. Any example of this kind
of tomb anywhere in India of the 7th to 10th century? No answer.
Is there any tomb in India constructed in circular fashion right from the
foundation level? No example.
The inference is, therefore, clear:
these Marxist historians have an axe to grind in denouncing the ASI report
of Ramjanmabhoomi site, because it does not go in their favour. The
report has called a spade a spade.
(The author is Chairman, Indian
Archaelogical Society, New Delhi)
