An Account of the Districts of Bihar and Patna in 1811-1812

In this two volumes set, Buchanan-Hamilton took to an uncharted road in an effort to unravel the ‘mysteries’ of the land that had come under the British possession in 1765. His survey foregrounded the importance of collecting and arranging the statistical information of an area according to the needs and requirements of the colonial state for an effective governance. Since Bihar emerged as the first field of officially organized archaeological investigation in the colony, these pre-archaeological practices anticipated the spatial imagin­ation of ancient Bihar. In Buchanan's surveys, the territorial imagination of Bihar's ancient past spread across sites to produce a detailed map of antiquarian remains. But what really struck Buchanan in this rather dis­gusting pilgrimage town were the marks of antiquity built into the modem buildings, numerous Hindu temples, and the dwelling places of the Gayawals. Among these rode marks of antiquities built into modern Hindu temples of Gaya, Buchanan noted a prevalence of certain sculpted images, which from his earlier experience of encounters with predominant Buddhism at Ava, he tended to classify as images of the Buddha.