An Eastern Perspective: the Society of Antiquaries and Indian Antiquities in the 1780s

Abstract

AbstractThough Britain was the predominant European power in India from the middle of the eighteenth century, British scholars at first lagged behind their European contemporaries in the study of Indian antiquities. There were, quite simply, no British counterparts to such celebrated figures as Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron and Carsten Niebuhr. This paper investigates the efforts made by the Society of Antiquaries of London to remedy this situation, as demonstrated in particular by the publication of two early eighteenth-century accounts of the cave temples at Kanheri and Elephanta near Bombay in volume 7 (1785) of the Society's journal, Archaeologia. It argues that the impetus for the Society's efforts was provided by its Director, Richard Gough, who had family reasons for an interest in India and the East, but that the Society's role was largely superseded when Sir William Jones founded the Asiatick Society of Bengal.