Charles Masson and the Buddhist Sites of Afghanistan

254 Pages·2017·14.36 MB·English

Charles Masson
and the Buddhist Sites
of Afghanistan:
Explorations,
Excavations,
Collections
1832–1835
Elizabeth Errington
With contributions by Piers Baker,
Kirstin Leighton-Boyce, Wannaporn
Kay Rienjang, Chantal Fabrègues,
Ian Freestone, Louise Joyner,
Jonathan Mark Kenoyer and
Margaret Sax
To Neil Kreitman, Joe Cribb and Charles Masson
without whom the Masson Project would not have existed
Research funded by the Neil Kreitman Foundation 1993–2011
Published with the support of ERC Project No. 609823
Publishers
The British Museum
Great Russell Street
London wc1b 3dg
Series editor
Sarah Faulks
Charles Masson and the Buddhist Sites of Afghanistan:
Explorations, Excavations, Collections 1832–1835
Elizabeth Errington
isbn 978 086159 215 9
issn 1747 3640
© The Trustees of the British Museum 2017
Front cover: The relic deposit from Bimaran stupa 2, 1st century AD.
British Museum (steatite reliquary 1880.27; gold reliquary 1900,0209.1;
coins IOC.201, IOC.202, IOC. 204, 1960,0407.1; signet ring 1880.3855.a;
see Figs 117 and 119 for all the objects from the relic deposit)
Printed and bound in the UK by 4edge Ltd, Hockley
Papers used by The British Museum are recyclable products made from
wood grown in well-managed forests and other controlled sources. The
manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of
the country of origin.
All British Museum images illustrated in this book are
© The Trustees of the British Museum
All British Library images illustrated in this book are
© British Library Board

All images from Mizuno 1970–1 are © Kyoto University 1965
All other drawings and maps where copyright is not specified are
© E. Errington
Further information about the British Museum and its collection can be
found at britishmuseum.org
Contents Acknowledgements v
Preface 1
Part 1: Charles Masson and His Contemporaries

1. The Life of James Lewis / Charles Masson, 3
1800–53
2. The Discovery of Buddhist Sites in Afghanistan, 15
1824–79
3. From Kabul to London and Beyond: 22
The Dispersal of the Masson Collection
Part 2: The Stupas and Relic Deposits

4. The Buddhist Landscape 28
5. The Relic Deposits 32
6. The Buddhist and Historical Context of the Finds 41
7. Sources of Raw Materials Suggested by the 45
Published Literature
8. Analysis of the Materials Used for Small Finds 49
from the Relic Deposits
Louise Joyner and Ian Freestone
9. Stone Beads from the Relic Deposits: 52
A Preliminary Morphological and Technological Analysis
Margaret Sax, Wannaporn Kay Rienjang and Jonathan Mark Kenoyer
Part 3: Records of the Sites and Catalogue of the 58
Relic Deposits

10. Bamiyan 59
11. Kabul Sites 66
12. Stupas South-east of Kabul: Shakh Baranta 71
Ridge (Modern Monaray Ghar)
13. Sites in Koh-i Daman and Kohistan (between 82
Kabul and Begram)
14. Darunta / Siah Koh Sites 85
15. Chahar Bagh Sites 141
16. Sites in the Jalalabad, Kunar and Safed Koh 153
Regions
17. Hadda Sites 162
18. Wardak / Kohwat Sites 200
19. Finds without Site Provenance 212
Appendix 1 List of Standardized Spelling 215
Appendix 2 Records Relating to the South 217
Kensington Museum 1880 India Museum Inventory
Appendix 3 Documentation of Bead Morphology, 226
Manufacture and Use Wear
Jonathan Mark Kenoyer
References 230
Index 238
iv | Charles Masson and the Buddhist Sites of Afghanistan
When I wandered into the British Library in the early 1990s
Acknowledgements
with the question ‘What are these Masson manuscripts all
about then?’, I never dreamt that I would be embarking on a
project that would take up the rest of my working life and
beyond. Had I foreseen it, would I have fled? Somehow I
doubt it, for the subject has held my interest throughout. In
my tortoise-paced progress I have been blessed with the
encouragement, assistance and hard work of many people
over the decades. I owe an immense debt of gratitude above
all to two people – Neil Kreitman and Joe Cribb – for their
forbearance and unflagging support. The Masson Project
was their brainchild and has been generously funded
throughout by the Neil Kreitman Foundation (1993–2011),
with additional funding from the Townley Group of British
Museum Friends (1998–2004), the Royal Numismatic
Society and the British Museum Research Board and Asia
Department. Publication costs have very kindly been met by
the European Research Council (ERC).
The Masson Project led to my working among the best of
colleagues in the Coins and Medals Department of the British
Museum. In addition to Joe Cribb, former Keeper of Coins
and Medals, I would like to thank in particular the present
Keeper, Philip Attwood, and my fellow Asian coin curators
Helen Wang, Robert Bracey and Vesta Curtis for continuing
to assist and accept me as a member of the Department
despite my official retirement, allowing me unlimited time
and facilities to complete this undertaking. My thanks also to
Michael Willis for his help and for organizing the transfer of
the Asia Department’s Masson holdings to the Department of
Coins and Medals for the duration of the Project, thereby
allowing free access to the collection at all times. He has also
been instrumental in arranging ERC funding for the
publication.
It has proved fortunate that Masson caught the
imagination of many people who have worked on the Project,
occasionally with limited funding, mostly as volunteers. The
ghost-writer contributions of Piers Baker, Kirstin Leighton-
Boyce and Kay Rienjang to this volume are not individually
credited, but are nevertheless extensive. All three worked on
documenting and registering the collection, while Piers and
Kirstin wrote entries for the British Museum’s Collection
Online database that forms the basis of this catalogue.
Kirstin also helped to produce images of the site drawings
and in numbering the catalogue figures. Kay acted as my
long-suffering personal library assistant, checking
bibliographic references, alerting me to relevant publications
and generously sharing her ideas and any new information
she found in the course of her own PhD research on relic
deposits. She and Piers transcribed Masson’s manuscripts on
the cave sites of Kabul and Jalalabad (G41) and Bamiyan
(G42). Piers moreover provided photographs of some of the
key sites and, with Henry Lythe, traced Masson’s family
records in the National Archives and elsewhere. The volume
has also benefited from Chantal Fabrègues’ expertize on
jewellery of the period and region.
During a heat-wave one summer, Paramdip Khera and
Jeanne Dreskin stoically worked in impossible temperatures,
recording the contents of each box of relic deposit small finds
prior to their registration: the computer overheated and gave
up, but they did not. I also greatly appreciate the help from
Acknowledgements | v
Anna McIlreavy and Setsuko Kuga-Cornish in I would also like to thank Harry Falk for his extremely
documenting the finds. useful images of the new Wardak reliquary and for his help
An unexpected bonus has been the Department of in making sense of Masson’s stray Kharoshthi records.
Scientific Research’s contributions on materials and bead Masson’s drawings and manuscripts are all reproduced
manufacture by Margaret Sax, Louise Joyner and Ian courtesy of the British Library. I am grateful to Penny Brook
Freestone, as well as Jonathan Mark Kenoyer and Kay (Lead Curator India Office Records) for sorting out any
Rienjang. On behalf of Louise Joyner and Ian Freestone, questions of copyright. Another major contributor of images
thanks go to Andrew Middleton, Caroline Cartwright and has been Kyoto University who provided invaluable
Susan La Niece for their help in analysing the materials used photographs from their 1965 survey of the sites. This was
for the beads and associated finds, Tony Simpson for his help arranged through the kind auspices of Professor Shoshin
with the images, and Trevor Spingett and Tony Milton for Kuwayama, to whom I am greatly indebted. Last, but not
photography. I also personally wish to thank Caroline least, there are a number of photographs donated over the
Cartwright and Margaret Sax for checking the stone years by Jonathan Lee, Zémaryalaï Tarzi and Francine
identifications and the section on sources of raw materials. I Tissot. It has not proved possible to contact David Peate, but
likewise greatly appreciate the contribution by John Robb I hope he is happy to have his image of the Bamiyan Buddha
(Department of Archaeology, Cambridge University), whose included in this publication.
examination of possible bone fragments, macroscopically Finally I am indebted to Kurt Behrendt for reviewing the
and under low magnification microscopy, showed that volume, Sarah Faulks for seeing it through publication, and
despite Masson’s reports of human ashes and bones in the my husband Nigel for his endless forbearance and support.
relic deposits, none now survive.
vi | Charles Masson and the Buddhist Sites of Afghanistan
It is all too easy to condemn 19th-century explorers and
Preface
excavators of ancient sites as treasure hunters and
desecrators. Some undoubtedly were, but arguably not to
the destructive extent of modern clandestine diggers and
iconoclasts. Charles Masson (1800–53) has also been
dismissed in this way, but the present attempt to reconstruct
and make public his extensive and meticulous unpublished
records hopefully will not only exonerate him in the context
of his times, but establish him as a pioneer in the field of
archaeology at a time predating the concept of this
discipline.
Masson was also an instinctive numismatist, the first to
realize the worth of creating as large a coin database as
possible and recording patterns of distribution as a means
for reconstructing the history of ancient sites and dynasties.
To this end he collected thousands of coins and other finds
from the urban site of Begram and Kabul bazaar between
1833 and 1838. One of the first benefits of this policy was his
realization that the legends in an unknown script on the coin
reverses of Indo-Greek coins stood for the same names and
epithets in Greek on the obverses (Prinsep 1835, p. 329). This
held the key to the decipherment of Kharoshthi. However, it
is his surveys and excavations of the Buddhist sites of
south-eastern Afghanistan that are under consideration
here. The finds of his contemporaries, particularly Martin
Honigberger and James Gerard, and later 19th-century
investigations by Lt Pigou and William Simpson are also
included.
The first site Masson explored in Afghanistan was
Bamiyan in late 1832. Between 1833 and 1835 he surveyed
and recorded over a hundred sites around Kabul, Jalalabad
and Wardak. He also made numerous drawings of the sites,
together with maps, compass readings, sections of the stupas
and sketches of some of the finds. Small illustrations of a
selection of 48 key sites were published in his ‘Memoir of the
topes and sepulchral monuments of Afghanistan’ in H.H.
Wilson’s Ariana Antiqua (Masson 1841), but this barely skims
the surface of his unpublished records held in the India
Office Collection of the British Library. These are contained
in 17 of the numerous volumes of official and private
correspondence on political and antiquarian matters,
journals, narratives, sketches and drawings (MSS Eur.) and
two boxes of miscellaneous Masson Papers (F526/1–2),
supplemented by reports in the East India Company Bombay
Dispatches (E/4) and Bombay Political Proceedings (P/387/71).
The National Archives at Kew hold the original letters (FO
705/32) from Masson to Henry Pottinger, liaison officer for
the Bombay authorities and Resident in Kutch (1820–38)
and Sind (1838–9). Copies of the official papers are also held
in the National Archives of India in Delhi (Garg 1998). It
was the realization of the extent to which this rich resource
could inform research on the Masson Collection in the
British Museum that led to the creation of the Masson
Project in 1993.
In return for funding his exploration of the ancient sites of
Afghanistan, the British East India Company received all
Masson’s finds. These were sent to the India Museum in
London. When it closed in 1878, the British Museum was the
principal recipient of all the ‘archaeological’ artefacts and a
proportion of the coins, although some items were initially
Preface | 1
retained by the South Kensington Museum (precursor of the relic deposits. The coins, ornaments and intaglios purchased
Victoria and Albert Museum). Initially the brief of the Masson in Kabul bazaar and the vast quantity of coins and diverse
Project was to identify and catalogue the Masson coins (c. 500) objects from the urban site of Begram are the subject of a
and other finds from the Buddhist sites and Begram in the separate study, Charles Masson: Collections from Begram and
British Museum. But this expanded substantially in 1995, Kabul Bazaar, Afghanistan 1833–1838 (Errington et al.
when some 10,000 coins (the residue of the India Office forthcoming).
collections including Masson) were transferred on loan from Both volumes are connected to two online resources.
the British Library to the Museum. Small bags of stray finds, References highlighted in bold (e.g. E161/VII f. 16) link
predominantly coins, followed in 2007. directly to the relevant record in The Charles Masson Archive:
Many artefacts, especially coins, had already been British Library, British Museum and Other Documents Relating to the
dispersed prior to the closure of the India Museum in 1878. 1832–1838 Masson Collection from Afghanistan (i.e. Vol. II). In
More followed subsequently, with a major coin auction being addition, a search for Charles Masson on the British
held on 6 August 1887 on behalf of the Government of India Museum Collection Online database (www.britishmuseum.
(Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge 1887). Smaller collections org) will bring up the entire Masson Collection of 9,387
have been traced to the Fitzwilliam Museum (coins: FW entries – 1,970 individual objects or groups of artefacts and
1906) and Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology 7,417 coins – now in the Department of Asia and the
(miscellaneous Begram objects) in Cambridge. Still more Department of Coins and Medals.
are said to have been transferred to the Ashmolean The aim throughout has been to recreate Masson’s
Museum, the Royal Asiatic Society (Desmond 1982, p. 39: archaeological record. To this end his own words have been
not traced) and the Indian Museum Kolkata (unidentified retained as much as possible and it is left to the reader to
coins: FW 19–11–1906). Masson’s signed and annotated interpret his meaning. His accurate and often detailed
personal copy of Ariana Antiqua survives in the Bodleian first-hand accounts of what he saw cannot be bettered. It is
Library, Oxford. Its bookplate states it was acquired for the only his interpretations – dating from the very beginnings of
Indian Institute via the B.H. Baden-Powell bequest and was research in the subject – that have suffered from the
‘bought at the sale of coins, medals etc. of the Revd W.C. inevitable advance of knowledge and these for the most part
Neligan at Sotheby’s, 15/11/81’ (information courtesy of have been omitted.
Emma Mathieson, Modern South Asian Studies Librarian, For simplicity the diverse spellings of place and personal
Bodleian Libraries). names have been standardized in the text; the variations are
The principal aim of the project has been to organize the listed in Appendix 1. Documentation relating to the South
material into an accessible study collection for research on Kensington Museum 1880 India Museum Inventory and tying
the archaeology and history of Afghanistan. Until its start, the objects to India Museum (IM), South Kensington
only a few of Masson’s more spectacular finds such as the Museum (SKM) and initial British Museum (IM.Metal;
gold and steatite reliquaries from Bimaran stupa 2 or the IM.Gems; IM.Rings) registration numbering systems is
inscribed copper alloy vase from Wardak stupa 1 had been found in Appendix 2. In the individual catalogue entries
studied in any detail. The surviving collection actually these are abbreviated e.g. 1880.3496, the silver reliquary
comprises 31 reliquaries, together with c. 450 beads and from Bimaran 4, bears the additional numbers IM 67 /
c. 400 coins, ornaments and other small items from Buddhist SKM 1068.
2 | Charles Masson and the Buddhist Sites of Afghanistan
Part 1: Charles Masson James Lewis – better known by his assumed name, Charles
Masson – was the eldest son of George and Mary Lewis (née
and His Contemporaries Hopcraft), born 16 February 1800 at 58 Aldermanbury, and
baptized at St Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, on 23
March 1800 (Guildhall Library MSS 3572/2; K&J pp.
1272–3). Aldermanbury lies in the heart of the City of
Chapter 1 London, on the west side of the Guildhall, between St Paul’s
Cathedral and the Bank of England. No. 58 was midway
The Life of James along Aldermanbury, on the south-west corner with Addle
Street (Horwood 1813). It no longer exists. The entire west
Lewis/Charles Masson, side of the street, including the church, was bombed during
the Second World War and has been replaced with modern
1800–53 buildings. On the site of no. 58 is the Chartered Standard
Bank, 1 Aldermanbury Square. A garden commemorates
the site of St Mary Aldermanbury since 1966, when the shell
of the Wren church was transported to Fulton, Missouri,
and rebuilt in the grounds of Westminster College as a
memorial to Winston Churchill.
Masson’s father was a member of the Needlemakers
Company (B191.a.iii) and is listed in the Post Office London
Directory 1806–14 as ‘George Lewis & Co., Oil, Colour [i.e.
pigments for artists and dyers], Hop and Seedsman’, with
premises in the vicinity of Cannon Street. His mother’s
family were farmers in Croughton, Northamptonshire, who
subsequently became brewers (Whitteridge 1986, pp. 1–2).
He had a younger brother, George, born 8 January 1803 and
baptized on 23 March 1803 at St Stephens, Walbrook
(Guildhall Library MS8320). In this instance, the baptismal
register lists the local parish as St Bennet Sherehog, which
was united with St Stephens when its church (originally
located at no. 1 Poultry, an extension of Cheapside) burned
down in the Great Fire of London in 1666.
Little else was known of his early life. But in the late
1990s, a first edition of Masson’s Narrative of Various Journeys in
Balochistan, Afghanistan and the Panjab was acquired by the late
American scholar Gregory Possehl (his library now belongs
to the Central Academy of Arts, Beijing). Inside its cover was
pasted a handwritten account of Masson’s early life by
William J. Eastwick (1808–89), the British Assistant Resident
in Sind 1838–41, and later a Director of the East India
Company (1847). The information was probably acquired
first hand from Masson himself, when he stayed at the
British Residency in Tatta (Fig. 2), writing up his notes for
publication in 1838–9.
Eastwick identifies Masson as James Lewis and says that
he went to school in Walthamstow, 6½ miles (10.46km)
north-east of the City of London (Meyer and Brysac 1999, p.
75). This makes sense of another puzzling assumption by one
of Masson’s correspondents that he had been at Harrow with
the barrister, traveller, artist and cricketer, Godfrey Thomas
Vigne (1801–63). The two men met up in Kabul in 1836 and
went on an excursion together to Begram (Whitteridge 1986,
p. 2). Vigne was at Harrow, but only for a year (1817–18)
before being accepted to Lincoln Inn to study law. He was
born – like Masson – in the City of London, ‘within a stone’s
throw of the Bank of England’ into a merchant family of
Huguenot descent supplying gunpowder to the East India
Company (Keay 1977, pp. 82–3), and baptized in St Stephen,
Coleman Street, two streets east of Aldermanbury, another
Wren church destroyed in the Blitz on 29 December 1940.
The Life of James Lewis/Charles Masson, 1800–53 | 3
The family home, however, was at Woodford Wells near Indeed his choice of pseudonym, Masson, is French in
Walthamstow and he must have received a good, probably origin, and a mistaken assumption as to his nationality
local education prior to Harrow. Masson clearly also earned him an entry in a 19th-century French Biographie
received a good education, for he knew Latin and Greek. It is Nationale (Whitteridge 1986, p. 11).
probable they both went to the same school in Walthamstow, The Napoleonic wars and process of unification in Italy
although it is also possible their fathers knew each other from the second half of the 18th century onwards also saw
since they both worked in the same part of the City. Italian political dissidents finding refuge in London. There
At the beginning of the 19th century, boys could only was already a long-established Italian enclave centred in
obtain a good, classics-based education at grammar schools. Clerkenwell (to the north-west of Aldermanbury), but by the
In Walthamstow at that time, the only one of note was early 19th century, this had increased substantially. So
Monoux School (now Sir George Monoux College). It was Masson grew up in a very cosmopolitan neighbourhood,
founded as a ‘public’ – i.e. free – school for the poor in 1527, and it is possible that he learned Italian in much the same
together with almshouses, by George Monoux (c. 1465–1544), way as French, i.e. from native speakers within the local
who was born in Walthamstow, but had strong links with the community. In 1841 this was good enough for W.B. Bayley
City of London. Initially an alderman, he was appointed a (1782–1860), Chairman of the East India Company Court of
Warden of the Drapers Company in 1506, Sheriff in 1509, Directors, to remark that he had always thought Masson was
Mayor of London in 1514 and Parliamentary Burgess of the a Frenchman from the manner in which he wrote French
City in 1523. and Italian (E161/VI: C. Brownlow to Masson 7 April 1841).
According to Eastwick, on leaving school, Masson He certainly had a flair for languages, later learning to speak
worked as a clerk at Durant & Co., brokers for silk, insurance Hindustani and Persian. He also acquired some Pashto,
‘& co.’ at 11 Copthall Court, again within the square mile of although not enough when initially travelling alone through
the City, close to the silk manufacturing centre at certain Pathan territories to escape ‘notice, inquiry, ridicule
Spitalfields, which is located just a few streets east of and insult’ (Masson 1842, I, p. 310). But by 1834, he knew
Aldermanbury and north of the Bank of England (National enough to follow the discussion of some men – who
Archives, Kew, PRO: Robson’s New Directory, London 1819, presumed he couldn’t understand Pashto – openly planning
p. 156; Post Office London Directory 1840, p. 81). This was a to rob him, and was able to take evasive action (1842, III, pp.
standard 19th-century route to material and social 244–5).
advancement for young men of good education to take. He According to Eastwick again, a quarrel with his father
evidently maintained contact with the firm, for it is cited as spurred Masson into enlisting as an infantryman in the
his agent in London in the early 1840s (E/4/1069, pp. army of the British East India Company on 5 October 1821
408–9). The stated business of the firm being insurance and (Meyer and Brysac 2001, p. 73; IOR.L/MIL/9/85–106
brokerage connected with the silk trade, it must have been in Embarkation Lists, vol. 17, 1821–2, p. 182). He sailed for
close contact with the descendants of the local French Bengal on the Duchess of Atholl on 17 January 1822 and served
Huguenot community. Indeed, the name Durant is French in the Third Troop of the First Brigade, Bengal European
in origin and although it first arrived in England with the Artillery, from 6 July that year until 4 July 1827 (IOR.L/
Norman Conquest in 1066, it was also among the surnames MIL/10/143–8 Bengal Army Muster Rolls, 1822–7).
of the later Huguenot refugees. According to Whitteridge (1986, p. 2), ‘it was not unusual for
Following the forced conversions to Catholicism and the men of some education to enlist in the Company’s artillery
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which outlawed in view of the relatively good pay and the excellent prospects
the practice of Protestantism in France, it is calculated that of promotion to clerical appointments’. During his service
c. 32,500 of these committed Calvinists settled in Greater Masson was employed by Major-General Hardwicke, the
London, in particular, in the City, between Spitalfields in Commandant, in arranging and depicting zoological
the east and Soho in the west (Emsley, Hitchcock and specimens for publication (Gray 1832–4).
Shoemaker, www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.0, 27 The 1820s saw little military action in India, apart from
February 2014). The French Huguenots comprised one of at Bharatpur in Rajasthan. As an artilleryman at the siege of
the largest and most distinctive communities in the capital this massive fortress (7 January–18 June 1826), Masson would
throughout the 18th century. They were associated with have been employed in the slow, hard work of digging
clock-making and financial services, but textile defensive parapets to protect the 130 heavy guns and
manufacturing, particularly silk weaving, was the largest ammunition, steadily pushing forwards as new parallels
single occupation and it was centred in Spitalfields. At the were dug, until the breaching batteries were close enough for
end of the 18th century, there was another influx of émigrés the successful storming of the fortress by East India
fleeing the French Revolution. Company troops.
The fact that Masson was apparently fluent in French has On 4 July 1827, while the regiment was at Agra, Masson
often puzzled commentators, but the concentration of a deserted. He leaves no hint of his reasons for doing so.
large community of French origin on his doorstep must have Whitteridge remarks (1986, p. 4) that desertion at that time
given him ample opportunity to learn the language from an was not uncommon, particularly among the troops of the
early age. Little wonder that when he met Jean-François Bengal Artillery during and after the siege of Bharatpur.
Allard (1789–1839) in Lahore in 1829, the two men spoke in The impetuous side of Masson’s nature – already exhibited
French, which Masson noted ‘absence and length of years by his enlisting in the first place – probably played a part, as
had not disabled me from speaking fluently’ (1842, I, p. 405). much as his urge to travel and explore. Assuming the name
4 | Charles Masson and the Buddhist Sites of Afghanistan