| The
details of the foundation of Indian historiography have been well
narrated, among others, by John Keay in his richly illustrated India
Discovered7 and need not detain us
in this bird's eye view of developments in the last two centuries or
so. Even so tribute must be paid to Warren Hastings who admired the
Hindu inheritance and made its resurrection possible; James Prince,
who deciphered the Brahmi script and thus facilitated the discovery
of Emperor Ashoka, the most remarkable ruler in ancient India we
know of so far; and Lord Curzon who ensured the preservation of
India's great sculptural and architectural inheritance.
But for Curzon, this inheritance was
in grave danger of being further depleted through sheer ignorance,
indifference and vandalism. Curzon appeared on the Indian scene at
the end of the nineteenth century. Much more could have been
preserved if someone with a similar awareness had been India's
governor-general in the first quarter of the century when the great
monuments were discovered and identified. It speaks for the spirit
animating the rulers of independent India that even roads named
after Curzon and Hastings in New Delhi have been renamed.
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