India Discovered

This volume is a study of the European discovery of India's ancient past. Two hundred years ago, India was seen as a place with little history and less culture. Today it is revered for a notable prehistory, a magnificent classical age and a cultural tradition unique in both character and continuity. How this extraordinary change in perception came about is the subject of this book. The excitement of unearthing a city twice as old as Rome, the realization that the Buddha was not a god but a historical figure, the glories of a literature as rich as anything known in Europe, the drama of encountering a veritable Sistine chapel deep in the jungle, and the delight of categorizing 'the most glorious galaxy of monuments in the world' fell, for the most part, to men who were officials of the British Raj. Their response to the unfamiliar -- the explicitly sexual statuary, the incomprehensible scripts, the enigmatic architecture -- and the revelations which resulted, revolutionized ideas not just about India but about civilization as a white man's prerogative.