Alexander Cunningham

See also: Cunningham

Sir Alexander Cunningham (London January 23rd, 1814 - London, November 28th 1893) is a archeologist Britannique and a military engineer.

Cunningham goes in India with his/her two brothers to the research of fortune. It joined the Bengal Engineers at age the 19 years and its first quartering is with Bénarès, close which it discovers the ruins of Sârnâth where it releases a Stûpa. It spends the twenty-eight following years to the service of the British government of the Indies, years when it is useful in the Indies and in Burma, before taking its retirement with the row of Major General in 1861.

In November of this same year, Cunningham off sends a memorandum to Lord Canning recommending the creation of the Archaeological Survey India, the organism in charge to deal with the archeological sites and historical Indian, and he becomes the first director about it (1861 - 1885), a station which he will preserve until his departure for the Great Britain. With this creation, one new era opens for the Indian epigraphy which off reaches its apogee with the publication of its Inscriptions Ashoka (Calcutta, 177), the first volume of the series Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum envisaged by Cunningham. He thus discovers a very great number of inscriptions which, after deciphering often by Cunningham itself, will bring a new lighting on the history of India. He makes also the collection of Indian rare currencies, often the only documents available for the satrap S indo-Greeks, and its work on the matter is always a source impossible to circumvent.

He is made knight in 1867. Its collection of rare Indian currencies belongs today to the British Museum.

It is associated with many excavation campaigns in India, of which Sârnâth, Sânchî, Pundranagarh (Mahasthan), and the Temple of Mahabodhi to Bodh-Gaya, excavations for which it was largely left guided by the writings of the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang.

Random links: