FREDA BEDI CONT'D (#4)

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[x]! Book Format, Authority, and Authorship in Ancient Greek Medical Papyri
by Nicola Reggiani
From Defining Authorship, Debating Authenticity: Problems of Authority from Classical Antiquity to the Renaissance
Edited by Roberta Berardi, Martina Filosa, and Davide Massimo
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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There is a force of exultation, a celebration of luck, when a writer finds himself a witness to the early morning of a culture that is defining itself, branch by branch, leaf by leaf, in that self-defining dawn.1

1 Introduction

The history of writing supports in Antiquity is crossed by a dichotomy between tablet-like formats (waxed tablets, metal leaves, wooden codices, parchment sheets, etc.), devoted to the recording of offhand writings (ephemeral annotations, restricted and sometimes sacred texts, transcriptions of oral discourses), and scroll-like formats (leather/papyrus rolls), devoted to fixing canonized writings to be preserved and transmitted through time.2 The passage to the latter is always framed by concerns about authenticity and authorship.

A religious concern for authenticity (and efficacy) led the Messenian priests to transcribe ancient and precious rituals, earlier recorded on tin foils, onto rolls, for the sake of preservation, as recounted by Paus. 4.27.5. [3] The same claim underlays -- according to C. Calame -- the dichotomy between cultic commentaries on papyrus scrolls, like the well-known Derveni roll, and 'practical' texts on golden leaves, used as 'manuals' for the Netherworld by the initiates in the Orphic religion.4 Even earlier, the big effort of the Athenian tyrants for transcribing (on leather [?] rolls) the oral Homeric poems is embedded with strong concerns about restyling the original oral text with propagandistic interpolations, thus re-creating a canon of authenticity5 that came down to the Alexandrian philological practice.6 Authenticity and authorship get so much embedded into the scroll-like format to be transfigured to myth and to generate the tradition about 'Epimenides' skin', according to which an alleged leather book roll containing the Cretan seer's oracles became to be considered as his own inscribed skin.7

Later on, the spread of the writing practice for 'publishing' a work in roll format becomes a brand of Sophistic authorship and of cultural authority,8 widespread in Classical Athens and criticized as such by conservative authors. The famous parody of the chresmologos in Aristophanes' Birds stages a self-styled seer, who answers every question insistently and irritatingly blaring [x] ('take the book!', five times in ll. 974-89), identifying the written roll with the utmost authority of oracular speech.9 Accordingly, Plato, who notoriously supported a non-fixed transmission of knowledge, mocks those who rely on the sole authority of 'books': [x] (Phdr. 268c2-4), 'They would say, I suppose, that that man was mad and, since he read something in a book or bumped into some medicine, imagined he was a physician, while he did not have any real knowledge of the art'.

2 Book Authority in Ancient Medicine

Plato's criticism introduces us to the much-articulated theme of book authority and book format in ancient medicine, with its close relationship with the issues of authorship. Medical science was, indeed, among those technical disciplines that were object of book divulgation within the Sophists' environment at the end of the 5th century BC;10 however, in technical/practical fields of knowledge such as medicine itself, based on continuous progress, individual experience, and personal/oral teaching,11 fixing a canon is senseless, and the claims for authenticity and authorship take different ways.

Hippocrates himself, the revered 'father' of western rational medicine, stressed that texts are fundamental, but must be evaluated and consciously utilized, relocating the focus from the authority of the books to the authority of their users: [x] (Hippoc, Epid. III 3.16.1-4), 'I consider the ability of evaluating correctly what has been written as an important part of the art. He, who owns knowledge of it and knows how to use it, will not commit, in my opinion, serious errors in the professional practice'.

Some six centuries later, Galen echoes him with the following statement:

[x].12

'Therefore only the exercise and a detailed teaching do produce professionals; and for this reason it seems to me that people well say that the best teaching is that which takes place by means of the voice, and that from a book cannot emerge neither a good pilot nor anyone who practices any other art. The books indeed are a memorandum of what one has previously learnt and of what one already knows, not a complete teaching of what one does not know. Moreover, if someone -- and among them, those who do not have teachers available -- wants to read accurately the books written clearly and diffusely, like those written by us, he will take a great advantage of them, and above all if he does not hesitate to read them repeatedly'.13

 

The 'book', the medical writing, acquires authority from those who handle it, and not vice-versa. Accordingly, Galen claims the authenticity of two books of Hippocrates' Epidemics on the ground of the fact that they had been transcribed (onto rolls) from the latter's tablets (Gal. Diff. resp. 7.855.4-5 K.: 'two are of the great Hippocrates himself, and for this reason they were titled [x], from the small tablet).14 It is through such tablets, containing clinical annotations and therapeutic prescriptions, that medical knowledge was originally recorded and passed down.15 Before Hippocrates, they existed in the form of dedications in the healing god's temples such as the Akslepieia, with a focus on the healed person and the successful therapy rather than on its real 'author', being the god the alleged source.16 According to the tradition, Hippocrates took the medical tablets out of the Asklepieion of Cos and founded his medicine on them, thus starting a new model of textual circulation.17 The Corpus Hippocraticum is indeed unified under the authority of the 'father of medicine', but he is not the author of the entire collection, as everyone was and is aware of.

Though even the more elaborated treatises, conceived of as comprehensive reflections on specific topics of medicine, can be regarded as single steps of a 'work in progress', to which each generation adds its own contribution,18 the most significant witness as regards authorship and authority is what we can address as 'therapeutic literature' (recipes, prescriptions, collections of prescriptions). This is indeed shaped as the gathering of previous individual experiences, enriched by the compilers' personal engagement (and therefore we can find such a personal annotation as [x] 'you will not find anything better', in Hippoc. Mul. 1.78), thus producing a 'knowledge in progress', which undergoes further customized transmission and adaptations.19 The issue of authority and authorship gets more and more blurred, as any author could refer, for instance, to Hippocratic recipes for their authoritative efficacy, but without citing Hippocrates' name at all20 (on the contrary, literal quotes from proper treatises are usually introduced by explicit references). In a parallel and significant case, ancient Egyptian medicine produced written repertories of prescriptions and other practical notions, without mention of the compiler but with traces of personal re-use, in a technical practice that stressed the authority of the text more than of the author.21

3 Authority in the 'Therapeutic Literature'

Annotated evaluations of the medicaments' efficacy start appearing in Greek medical papyri from the first centuries of the Roman Empire onwards,22 reflecting a new trend in the medical practice: the exchange and swapping of single recipes or small collections of prescriptions among professional physicians, as attested in both literary23 and documentary24 records. This 'hunt' for the best or most exact medicaments (that we may summarize in the formula [x], mocking Aristophanes' chresmologos) introduces the need for, on one hand, pursuing authority as a synonym of efficacy and, on the other hand, maintaining the authorship of one's own 'products' (see below for the latter). Galen himself produced pharmacological books that are in fact collections of prescriptions taken from other 'authors' and compilers (the pharmacological compendiasts of the 1st century BC-1st century AD),25 and very often the memory of the original composer is retained in the medicament's name.

In the papyri, sometimes authority is given by the antiquity of the remedy, such as the 'ancient astringent' ([x]) in O. Bodl . 2.2181 1.3 (2nd century AD) and perhaps the [x], the remedy of 'the fathers', in PSI 10.1180r fr. b col. 21. 15 (1st/2nd century AD),26 but the most frequent expedient was to refer to the name of the author (either physician or pharmacist) of a particular prescription. Though this practice is sporadically attested already in the Ptolemaic age -- a collection of prescriptions from the 3rd century BC mentioning remedies 'of Mnason' ([x]), 'of Euedus/Euenus' ([x]), 'of Praxagoras' ([x]), and 'of Dionysius' ([x])27, it is from the 2nd/3rd century AD onwards that we find most of the instances.

Medicaments 'of Theodotus' (?) ([x]),28 'of Aphrodas' ([x]),29 'of Democritus' ([x]),30 'of Nikon' ([x]),31 'of Kollousis' ([x]),32 'of the queen' (i.e. Cleopatra) ([x]),33 'of Ioannes Lucius' [x])34 were undoubtedly famous, though what remains to us is a little more than a name, exhibited as a proof of prestige and efficacy in single recipes or collections of prescriptions. The extant pages of the famous 'Michigan Medical Codex' (P. Mich. 17.758, 4th century AD), a practising physician's working manual on a papyrus codex that includes personal additions and comments,35 record the 'authorities' of 'Azanites' [x] (folio Br I. 2), 'of Dionysios' [x] (folio Cr I. 8),36 and 'of Hygienus' [x] (folio Dr II. 4-5), while the second hand adds prescriptions 'of Heras' [x] (folio Er I. 5) and 'of Telamon' [x] (folio Er I. 9).37

This last example (Telamonios) shows a further step in marking the authorship of a medicament: the connection with its creator is so strong that the product is called with a derivative of the physician's name. We find three more attestations of this trend: [x] from Archagathus,38 [x] from Artemon,39 and [x] from Theodotos.40 Nevertheless, this was not a rule at all, as is shown for example by P. Scholl 1 5 (6th century AD), reporting an anonymous antidote that others call [x] 'of Philon.'41 This is explained by the fact that the formulations could be changed, adapted, customized by each individual physician, partly losing the connection with the original recipes. Such circumstances generated the second issue mentioned above, maintaining the authorship of one's own 'products' by means of stratagems like deploying an incomprehensible handwriting, symbols, more or less intentional alterations,42 to preserve some sort of 'authorial primacy' (or 'copyright', so to say) in a fluid environment without canons of any kind.

4 Conclusions

In general, and to sum up, in the 'therapeutic literature' authorship and authenticity are stressed not at the book level, but at the level of each single prescription, transmitted and collected as one fragment of a fluid and ever-changing knowledge.43 This made the tablet-like format particularly fitting as the recipient of texts 'in progress'. Recipes usually circulated in papyrus tickets/sheets or parchment 'notebooks' and subsequently were very often collected in codex formats,44 which are open to collections, annotations, additions, modifications, updates, making the concepts of 'authority' much more fluid and unstable, towards the definition of a 'multi-authorship', and stresses once more the importance of the book format for the transmission of texts and for the definition of their authenticity/authorship. Even when the prescriptions are transcribed in papyrus roll, there is room for previous and subsequent textual revisions. This is the case, for instance, with P. Berl. Moller 13, the remains of a roll from 4th-century AD Hermopolis Magna, which is a free elaboration of Heras' recipes as preserved by Galen, with a space left blank likely for further additions or annotations by the user.45 A case like Onomacritus', who was banned by the Athenian tyrants because uncovered while forging some oracular texts to be collected in a written edition,46 was not conceivable anymore.

_______________

Notes:

1 From D. Wolcott's 1992 Nobel Prize lecture, quoted in Hirsch (1995) 307.
 
2 Cf. Reggiani (2010), Reggiani (2018), and Reggiani (2020). Consequently, as I discuss in the  cited contributions, the 'book revolution' at the end of Antiquity (i.e. the rise of the book in the  codex format) consists in the change of purpose of the tablet-like format, which was then used  to record and transmit canonized writings. Unless otherwise stated, translations are to be  considered mine.
 
3 Cf. Henrichs (2003) 245-7.
 
4 Cf. Calame (2011).
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110684629-011
 
5 Cf. Aloni (1984) and (2006) 101-18. On the writing support of the Homeric poems cf. Irigoin  (2001) 8-19, and (2009) 9.
 
6 On the cultural activity of the Alexandrian library see recently Berti/Costa (2010) and forthcoming,  with earlier bibliography.
 
7 Cf. Reggiani (2019b).
 
8 It was a 'culture of the book' as a means of 'popular' knowledge, promoting a new and different  type of fruition of texts, exemplified by Isocrates' words [x] (Antid.  193.5; cf. Santamaria Alvarez [2008] 65-71). The book, apart from facilitating a practice of more  and more private and repeated reading, became the main means of 'publishing' philosophical  and rhetorical teachings, recovering the traditional meaning of the roll as authoritative writing  but translating it into a proper editorial practice. The importance granted by the Sophists to the  'written word' is very likely due to the inadequacy of orality for their didactic activity; as teachers  of political virtues they seek the power to control the logos and to discuss in an effective  way. Their interest for the texts is mostly devoted to word plays, rhetorical virtuosity and erudite  show, but also to real analyses of language (cf. Scollo [2013]). On the 'editorial culture' in  late Classical Athens cf. Turner (2001) 16-24 and Kleberg (2002) 27-30.
 
9 Cf. Baumgarten (1998) 42-43; Dunbar (1998) 547-50: Henrichs (2003) 216-22.
 
10 Cf. Gemelli Marciano (2009).
 
11 Cf. Andorlini (2018) 15-18.
 
12 Gal. Alim. fac. 1.1 = 6.480.3-12 K.
 
13 cf. Roselli (2002) 36-43.
 
14 cf. Manetti/Roselli (1982) 167; Reggiani (2018) 131-2.
 
15 cf. Perilli (2007).
 
16 Strab. 8.6.15; cf. Angeletti (1991); Girone (1998); Gregis (2017); Reggiani (2018) 130-1.
 
17 Cf. Reggiani (2018) 129-30 with earlier bibliography.
 
18 Hippocrates himself, in the incipit of his treatise De diaeta (1.1), dealing with the philosophical foundations of medicine, treats the medical science as a progressive knowledge: [x] ('If I thought that any one of my predecessors to  write on human regimen in its relation to health had throughout written with correct  knowledge everything that the human mind can comprehend about the subject, it would have  been enough for me to learn what had been correctly worked out by the labours of others, and to make use of these results in so far as they severally appeared to be of use. As a matter of fact, while many have already written on this subject, nobody yet has rightly understood how he ought to treat it. Some indeed have succeeded in one respect and others in another, but nobody  among my predecessors has successfully treated the whole subject. Now none of them is  blameworthy for being unable to make complete discoveries; but all are praiseworthy for attempting  the research. Now I am not prepared to criticise their incorrect statements; nay, I have  resolved to accept what they have well thought out. The correct statements of my predecessors  it is impossible for me to write correctly by writing them in some other way; as to the incorrect  statements, I shall accomplish nothing by exposing their incorrectness. If, however, I explain  how far each of their statements appears to me correct I shall set forth my wish. These preliminary  remarks are made for the following reasons: most men, when they have already heard one  person expounding a subject, refuse to listen to those who discuss it after him, not realising  that it requires the same intelligence to learn what statements are correct as to make original  discoveries. Accordingly, as I have said, I shall accept correct statements and set forth the truth  about those things which have been incorrectly stated. I shall explain also the nature of those  things which none of my predecessors has even attempted to set forth ' (transl. W.H.S. Jones).
 
19 Cf. Reggiani (2018).
 
20 On the Hippocratic tradition in the Greek papyri from Egypt cf. Andorini (2018) 105-16.
 
21 The reference is to Papyrus Ebers, a 16th-century BC catalogue of recipes (loosely arranged  by disease) and clinical cases, collected along with anatomical sections to serve as a reference manual for practicing physicians. Marginal annotations, added by the user, record the physician's individual experience ('really effective'). On Papyrus Ebers see recently Scholl (2002). Updated bibliographic references (up to May 25, 2018) are available at the following link: <http:/sae.saw-leipzig.de/fileadmin/redakteure/user_upload/Literaturliste_pEbers.pdf.; on the marginal additions cf. Andorlini (2018) 16 n. 5.
 
22 Cf. Lang (2013) 180 n. 164.
 
23 Gal. Comp. med. sec. loc. 1.1 = 12.423.13-15 K.: [x] 'This medicament, written as it is, has been found by our colleague Claudianus in a folded parchment, having its user died'; Indol. 33-5: [x] 'The recipes of all these medicaments were safely kept in two folded parchments that one of the heirs, a great friend of mine, spontaneously gave me without asking him. This was the first stroke of luck that put the medicaments at my disposal, and listen to the second one. When I came to Rome for the first time [ ... ] [x] I found a fellow citizen and student of mine, Teuthras, who lived in the city, and who had received the parchments of physician Eumenes, who was from Pergamum as well, loved the medicines, and was richer in medicines than the other doctors. Such parchments were gathered in one [scil. notebook] from all over the world, so to say, thanks to his continuous travels [ ... ]. From such preparatory annotations, if someone was in possess of an extraordinary medicine, I obtained it easily, giving two or three similar recipes in exchange'.
 
24 P. Mert. 1.12.13-24 (AD 59, letter from Chairas to Dionysos): [x]. 'You sent me two copies [scil. of recipes], one of Arcagathus' plaster, the other of the cicatrizing one. Archagathus' one is correctly composed, while the cicatrizing one lacks the dosage of the resin. Please let me know of a strong cicatrizing medicament that can heal without risk the soles of the feet, since I need it urgently. As to the hard one, you wrote me that there exist two types of it: please send me the recipe of the dispersing one; indeed, the tetrapharmakon is hard as well'.
 
25 Essential reference to this matter is still Fabricius (1972). For the papyrological evidence of this tradition cf. Andorlini (2018) 226-9.
 
26 Cf. Andorlini (2004) ad loc.
 
27 SB 8.9860, respectively at fr. a col. 1 I. 1 and fr. b col. 4 I. 8; fr. a col. 1 I. 17; fr. b col. 2 I. 1; fr. b col. 3 I. 4. Cf. Tsoukalas (1962) ad locc.
 
28 PSI 10.1180r fr. b col. 2 I. 5 (1st/2nd century AD). Cf. Andorlini (2004) 115 ad loc.
 
29 SB 24.159171.19 (2nd century AD). Cf. Reiter (1997) 811-2 ad loc.
 
30 GMP 2.5 col. 6 I. 12 (2nd/3rd century AD). Or Damocrates: cf. Hanson (2009) 98 n. 40.
 
31 BGU 3.953 I. 1 (3rd/4th century AD).
 
32 GMP 2.8, verso (5th century AD). This mention acts as a docket tag on the back of a prescription. The name can be a variant of [x] cf. Mitthof (2009) 140 ad loc.
 
33 P. Ant. 3.127 fr. 5b II. 4-5 (7th century AD) if it is not Bacc[ou), cf. Andorlini (2018) 89-91; perhaps also PSI 10.1180r fr. b col. 2 I. 22 (1st/2nd century AD) if it is not [x] 'royal' (Andorlini [2004] 116 ad loc.).
 
34 P. Ant. 3.127 fr. 2b II. 3-4 (7th AD). Cf. Andorlini (2018) 88-89 also for the attestations of this source in Galen and the connection between Galen and the papyrus tradition.
 
35 Cf. Ann Hanson's introduction to Youtie (1996).
 
36 Perhaps the same as SB 8.9860b mentioned above. The reference is accompanied by the citation [x] indicating the 'second book' of said physician as the source for the following formulation.
 
37 Cf. Youtie (1996) ad locc.; Andorlini (2018) 6. On Azanites (attested also in Oribasius) cf. also Andorlini (2018) 93-94.
 
38 P. Mert. 1.121. 14 (AD 59), see above. Cf. Andorlini (2018) 26.
 
39 PSICongr.XXI 3 col. 2 I. 9 (1st century BC); the same name is attested in Gal. Comp.med.sec.loc. 4.7 (12.780.7-11 K.).
 
40 P. Haun. 3.47r = SB 18.13310, II. 1 and 4 (2nd century AD); the same name is cited also by Gal. Comp. med. sec. loc. 4.8 (12.754.10-18 K.), Celsus Med. 6.6.6, Marcellus Empiricus 8.15 Niedermann, Alexander of Tralles 2.51 Puschmann, and Paulus of Aegina 7.16.26 Heiberg. Cf. Youtie (1985).
 
41 Paul. Aeg. 7.11.13.1-3 Heib.; Orib. Syn. ad Eust. 3.182.10-11.
 
42 On the peril of the transmission of prescriptions, see Gal. Antid. 1.5 = 14.31.10-15 K.: [x], 'Some prescriptions are transcribed badly, because some people alter them purposely when they give them to those who requested them, while others move away from the copies received; and indeed, of the books kept in the libraries, those containing the symbols of the numbers (scil. for the dosage) are easily forged'. See also Gal. Comp. med. gen. 4.7 = 13.726.5-17 K.; cf. Andorlini (2018) 34-35. Elsewhere, Galen says that the parchment recovered by his colleague Claudianus (see above) was written very badly, almost in symbols. For incorrect transcriptions see also Chairas' letter in the Merton papyrus cited above.
 
43 Cf. Reggiani (2018) and (2019a).
 
44 See Reggiani (forthcoming).
 
45 For details see Reggiani (2018) 138.
 
46 Hdt. 5.90.2 and 7.6.3-4. Cf. Baumgarten (1998) 48-52. 

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Part 1 of 6

Was Europe's First Advanced Civilization Faked? The Secret of the Phaistos Code.
A Film by Michael Gregor
Writer and Director: Michael Gregor
Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries
Oct 21, 2022

The Minoans have long been considered Europe's first advanced civilisation. However, a group of sceptics are now throwing that assumption into question.



Transcript

This channel is part of the history hit Network.









[Narrator]They are among the masterpieces of our past.





But what is genuine,



and what is fake?



[Dr. Jerome Eisenberg, Art dealer] I found to my shock that so many pieces that, in my opinion, were ancient, were not ancient.

[Narrator] These works of art were found by ambitious archaeologists.



Arthur Evans excavates the Palace of Knossos.



He makes sensational discoveries, and raises money for new excavations.



And, he's knighted by King George V.



In contrast, Luigi Pernier excavates at Phaistos, and he doesn't find anything really spectacular.



Funding threatens to dry out, until he is able to present the Phaistos Disc,



the oldest written artifact in Europe.



[Dr. Alessandro Greco, Archaeologist] It was an incredible achievement of Pernier. He managed to excavate the entire palace in just a few years.



[Dr. Jerome Eisenberg, Art dealer] It was for glory and for cash.



[Narrator] Evans and Pernier have brilliant restorers



at their side: Gillieron, father and son.





Did this quartet reinvent our past?



THE SECRET OF THE PHAISTOS CODE

A Film by Michael Gregor



[Narrator] In 1900, Arthur Evans starts work



on Excavating the Palace of Knossos.



The British archaeologist has purchased a piece of land near Heraklion for this purpose.



Evans is clearly interested in more than just archeology.



Prestige back home is also important to him.



He quickly produces some spectacular finds.



Evidence of an ancient high culture which had previously only been described



in myths and legends. According to the ancient tales,



the labyrinth of Knossos was home to the Minotaur,



half-man and half bull, who lurked there waiting for human sacrifices. Evans is thrilled by the discovery. And for him, there is no doubt that the ruins of a magnificent culture



will now re-emerge on the island of Crete.



The Empire of King Minos in ancient times,



symbolizing luxury and abundance.





Meanwhile, in the south of Crete, Italian archaeologists have rediscovered the Palace of Phaistos.



For them, in this period of nationalism, the reputation of Italian archeology is at stake.



[workers speaking in foreign language]

Just as Arthur Evans did in Knossos,



the chief excavator, Luigi Pernier, is determined to find something unique.



And Pernier achieves his aim.



Today, in the Cretan capital Heraklion, his disc forms the main attraction for visitors to the National Museum, an icon of Minoan culture comparable to the bust of Nefertiti in Berlin.



However, dissent can be heard to this very day. Some people claim the Phaistos Disc is a hoax.



But if that is true, who could have been involved?



The British archaeologist had the experienced restorer



Emile Gillieron, at his side. And the popular image we have today of Minoan life is due to Gillieron's work under Evan's supervision.



But was it really like that? Today, experts are critical of Gillieron's methods.



Emile Gillieron's staggering career begins in 1877, when the Swiss man arrives in Athens. The city is undergoing an astonishing revival during this decade.



Now that Greece is independent from the Ottoman Empire,



wealthy citizens are investing in education and the arts.



In the shadow of the Acropolis,



a millionaire, who is later to achieve great fame, has a magnificent villa constructed.



Heinrich Schliemann made a fortune trading in golden arms.



Now he plans to make a dream from his youth come true by rediscovering Troy and Mycenae,



the cities of Homer's heroes. The young Emile Gillieron hopes to find employment with Schliemann. Schliemann tests his abilities.



At least, this is the story that has come down to us. The archaeologist presents Gillieron with three fragments from a fresco, and demands nothing less than a reconstruction of the entire picture. At first Gillieron is bewildered, but then Emile produces a sophisticated reconstruction from his own imagination. He draws a charioteer with a spear. Schliemann is delighted. "That's what it must have looked like!" But then Gillieron suddenly sketches a temple guard. What's more, this isn't the last draft. He carries on producing various alternatives, until the irritated Schliemann finally hires him.



After Schliemann's death,



Arthur Evans has Gillieron brought to Crete. Evans has experienced a stroke of good fortune. Not long after starting the excavations, he made some significant finds. Now the fragments need to be reconstructed. Emile Gillieron can carry on in Knossos in the same way that he worked for Schliemann.



His son accompanies him to Crete.



The young man is also called Emile. The island is a paradise for archaeologists. Emile Jr. trains his eye on classical structures which have just been excavated,



and on the expressive faces of the locals. It becomes apparent that young Emile has inherited from his father not only a talent for drawing,



but also entrepreneurial skills. And a certain unscrupulous attitude when dealing with the truth, as later critics will claim.



Gillieron is quite prepared to make his employer a hero, if that's what he wants.



Emile Jr. draws incessantly, neatly, and with an obsession for detail. Years later, he will take his father's place in the team that is tirelessly excavating Knossos.



For four decades, father and son Gillieron, dominate the image of ancient Crete that has become known worldwide,



and is still popular today, despite its discrepancies that "of a paradise island, in the midst of the wine dark sea, a fair land, and a rich beget with water," as the poet Homer proclaimed.

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Part 2 of 6

The French Archaeological Institute in Athens



is a meeting point for artists and scientists. Its director is Alexandre Farnoux.



Only a few days ago, the archaeologists gained access to the former private archives of the Gillieron family, so he can provide an expert evaluation.

[Alexandre Farnoux, Director, The French Archaeological Institute in Athens] This is the order book of Gillieron Senior.



It's the original form of the catalog used by the Gillierons to offer copies of the archaeological finds. This book contains all the important objects



discovered during the excavations,



complete with photographs of the restored pieces, and explanations.



Here, for example, it says "vase from Pylos" documented by the former German archaeologist Muller. Then it states the size of the vase, and price.



[Narrator] For a long time, archaeologists were only able to provide reasonably accurate depictions of the original archaeological finds



with the help of illustrators, who sketched them and used watercolors. So, Gillieron Sr. is in the right place at the right time, and with the right people to develop his talents to the full. He has to capture the shades of color, and the intensity,



precisely at the moment of discovery.



The skillful illustrator quickly finds an artistic mode of expression for the style of Bronze Age Crete.



At least the way his boss Evans pictures the Empire of King Minos.

[Prof. Alexandre Farnoux, Archaeologist] This is a drawing by hand



made directly from the original of the Fresco.



With the outlines of the excavated fragments, and the additions that Gillieron has suggested in order to recreate the picture.



The Minoan tradition of bull-leaping, involved acrobats racing straight towards the animal and jumping over it.



This dangerous practice was part of the religious cult rituals, and could end in death..

Europe and the USA quickly became gripped by Cretan fever. The newly-discovered works of art



inspire artists and fashion designers, although others dismiss it all



as merely a kind of archaeological fantasy-land.



[Prof. Alexandre Farnoux, Archaeologist] The Gillierons produced drawings as if on a conveyer belt, which they then embellished with watercolors. Here's the famous detail from the "Procession Fresco."



It was a kind of exercise in graphics,



which was then reproduced and sold everywhere in Europe.



[Narrator] The Lily Prince is a revealing example of Gillieron's working method.



Gillieron simply reinvented the figure.

[Prof. Alexandre Farnoux, Archaeologist] In the case of the "Lily Prince Fresco",



we now know precisely that it has in fact been composed from completely different frescoes.



Gillieron did it because that's what Evans wanted in order to illustrate the Minoan Empire.





And we experts are still impressed by it, even though the background is much better known today.



[Narrator] Arthur Evans continues to excavate.



Utterly convinced that he has a mission to perform, Evans hardly appears bothered by scruples.



Non-Minoan architecture is simply disposed of.



He names ruins at the palace but his sole discretion.



When an alabaster throne is found, Evans immediately declares it to be the Throne of King Minos,



although there is no evidence of the throne's function,



or even of the existence of King Minos.

He doesn't have to wait long to achieve recognition back home. King George V Knights him.





Luigi Pernier has far greater difficulties to deal with. In the south of the island where he is excavating, the coastline is bleak and uninviting. The early archaeologists here have to be good climbers, because many of the sites are in remote valleys,



or on high mountains, where access is extremely difficult.



Beyond the mountains lies the Libyan sea.



This ocean connected the Minoans with the developed cultures of the near East and Egypt, but it also provided protection against foreign invaders.



Professor Diamantis Panagiotopoulos has been studying the history of Crete in this area for decades.



His arduous expeditions along dusty tracks have proved worthwhile, because away from the major palace complexes,





there are many cult sites that have still hardly been subject to expert investigation.



The mountains along the coast were always a bulwark. In the past, they held back invaders intent on attacking Crete.



While today, they make it difficult for curious travelers to make any progress. The inhabitants of Crete have always formed a closed community towards strangers.



At the same time, anyone who wants to excavate here could hardly make any progress



without local assistance.



The Greek Professor from Heidelberg has many friends on the island. The knowledge they share with him has been passed down from generation to generation. Countless caves lie hidden in the mountains.





In many cases, the entrances are only known to shepherds.



The Cretans have always regarded caves as sacred places. Gods were born in them,



including the father of all the gods, Zeus.



Archaeologists still come across surprising finds in these sacrificial sites. Double-sided cult axes made from bronze or gold.



And bare-breasted priestesses in clay. Or are these representations of goddesses? They provide fuel for the myth that Crete was a matriarchy, a society governed by women.




Professor Panagiotopoulos's excavation site is at the edge of the mountains above the Messara Plain. Today, many of the locals are leaving the area.



A large number of villages have been abandoned. However, during the Minoan period



there was a flourishing settlement here on the hilltop. The remains have been excavated and studied.



[Prof. Diamantis Panagiotopoulos] What interests us is the question,



"Why a certain region was of great importance at some periods in history, while in other periods it was abandoned?"

[Narrator] It is not due to the climate. This has hardly changed on Crete over the last 4,000 years. And yet, after the decline of the Minoan culture, Crete never again achieved the importance it had enjoyed during its golden age.

[Prof. Diamantis Panagiotopoulos] Crete is still a puzzle for us archaeologists, even 100 years after the first major discoveries at the beginning of the 20th century.



It's pretty amazing that a developed culture arose here, which could justifiably be compared with the great cultures of the orient.



[Narrator] For thousands of years, the fertile soil of the Messara Plain has been a source of prosperity. This was the basis of both the cultural development and political power.



Crete is on the crossroads of ancient trading routes. Since the Cretans had a large fleet of ships,



trade with people all around the Mediterranean flourished. This was how the first major culture of Europe arose, with its population established early on in centers such as Knossos and Phaistos.





And Phaistos is where the greatest puzzle of the Minoan empire was found. Luigi Pernier's disc.



[Dr. Alessandro Greco, Archaeologist] Italian archeology on Crete began in a very special historical situation. Greece had achieved independence from Turkey in the middle of the previous century. Then Crete was divided into several protectorates: Italian, French, and British. It was due to this environment that archaeologists from Italy were able to work without any obstacles.



These early archaeologists, like Luigi Pernier, had to explore Crete on the back of donkeys. They had to struggle against malaria, and other unimaginable difficulties.

[Narrator] In the year 1900, when Luigi Pernier lands on Crete,



the island is still officially ruled by the Ottoman Turks. At that time, the idea that the first High culture of Europe had once blossomed here, appears unbelievable.



And yet, Pernier discovers evidence of this past everywhere.



During the Roman period, the Messara Plain was ruled from Gauteng.



Here is the Great Code [Gortyn Code], the oldest legal text in Europe. This was rediscovered by Federico Halbherr, a leading Italian archaeologist. Originally Pernier worked for him.



This find was to make Halbherr famous.

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Part 3 of 6

In Phaistos, Luigi Pernier is at first only the deputy on excavations led by Halbherr. Pernier is regarded as extremely ambitious.



He is descended from a family of Roman Aristocrats with French roots. His opportunity arises when Halherr becomes involved in a political intrigue.



The affair leaves Pernier the new boss in Phaistos. He prepared for his mission



at the famous Sapienza University in Rome, studying literature and archeology.



Today, the linguist and archaeologist Alessandro Greco teaches here.



[Dr. Alessandro Greco, Archaeologist] During the period from 1800 to 1700 BC, Crete was a cultural focal point. This was known as the New Palace period, when the major structures were built whose ruins can still be seen today.



[Narrator] It was in these palaces



that archaeologists found clay tablets with what became known as Linear A script. And despite decades of research, to this day



it has not been possible to decipher this written language.



Alessandro Greco is therefore obliged to try a different route. He is analyzing all visual information that has been found so far,



in order to gain knowledge about the religion, social structure, and everyday life of the Minoans. His main problem here is that virtually



all authentic images are only available in miniature format.



[Dr. Alessandro Greco, Archaeologist] We don't know who's depicted here. Is it a king, or queen, a prince, or a God? And we don't know how their minds worked.



[Narrator] Even the visual language of the rings is still puzzling. The function is known.



They were used by rulers to place their seals on documents and letters.



At Heidelberg University, Professor Diamantis Panagiotopoulos is evaluating his series of excavations.



He occupies the famous Chair of Classical Archeology here.



The Practical work of an archaeologist



includes analyzing and archiving the finds. In Heidelberg, a scientific mega project is being performed



involving 130 experts from 13 countries. This is the famous Corpus of Minoan and Mycenaean Seals, a gigantic collection of data, including hundreds of thousands of photographic negatives



and 9,000 prints from clay seals.





[Prof. Diamantis Panagiotopoulos] It's a collection of the most varied materials, forms, and above all patterns in the images on clay seals, which provides us with a wealth of extremely important information about the social structures, ideologies, and mentalities of these societies. Of course, there are a number of signet rings which cannot be guaranteed in terms of authenticity.



We compare these problematic examples with seals from systematic archaeological excavations,





objects which have been proven to be authentic.

[Narrator] The work of these experts often resembles the proverbial search



for a needle in a haystack. The collection also contains a ring with an inscription





that has not been deciphered. The spiral shape in script form resembles that of the Phaistos Disc.



Does this ring indicate that Pernier's mysterious clay disc is genuine?



One of the problematic examples is the Ring of Minos,



which has been suspected for many years of being a forgery.



Arthur Evans bought the gold ring from a priest, although many experts warned him against doing so.



Today, the Ring of Minos is in Heraklion Museum. If it really is a modern forgery, who might the forger have been? In this case too, the name of Gillieron is on the list of main suspects.



Were the Gillierons engaged in forgery for decades? Final proof is contained in the Heraklion Museum, but it cannot be accessed.



The British archaeologist and linguist Gareth Owens has made Crete his second home. The focus of his research is on early scripts from the Minoan period, like the disc. The Phaistos Palace complex exerts an almost magic attraction over him.



[Dr. Gareth Alun Owens, Linguist] The Minoan civilization of the second millennium BC is based around the palatial economy. And the palaces like we are here in Phaistos is the center of bureaucracy and religion.

[Narrator] Gareth Owens knows every inch of the ruined palace. For decades he has studied each detail here,



such as the so-called Queen's Throne Room.



Pithoi like this were used to store the commercial wealth of the Cretans. To this day, traditional urns are produced from clay as they have been for thousands of years.



The craftsman in the ancient palace workshops became masters of this art, and their reputation even reached as far as the court of the Egyptian pharaohs, who ordered clay vases and silver bowls from Crete.



[Dr. Gareth Alun Owens, Linguist] The Minoan palaces and the economy of Crete



is based very much on agricultural products. Very excellent olive oil and wine, still very good today indeed.



They were keeping it here in the storerooms. They were exporting throughout the Mediterranean very widely indeed, traveling throughout the Mediterranean Sea. Very, very international. The first palace was very rich, destroyed about 1700 BC, which is probably the date of the Phaistos disc,



and it's no surprise that writing is developed in this southern part of Crete.



[Narrator] This first palace at Phaistos was constructed in 1900 BC. 200 years later, a huge earthquake caused it to collapse. The doors and ceilings were made of wood, and they were set on fire by the flames from the oil lamps. It must have been an inferno.





Although the building has been constructed in a special way, it could not withstand the massive earthquake.



The fire spread at incredible speed. The inhabitants fled in panic, but nevertheless many did not survive.



The entire palace complex was ruined.





[Dr. Gareth Alun Owens, Linguist] The Phaistos Disc is part of that destruction horizon, importantly, deliberately baked. Not accidentally baked, like the destruction level that saved the other linear tablets. It was actually found with a linear tablet, and with really nice Kamares-style pottery. And this part of the palace seems to be for storing valuable objects.



[Narrator] It was found lying together with numerous other artifacts, indicating to Pernier that the disc



had fallen from one of the upper stories. But attempting to reconstruct the catastrophe scenario raises new problems.





How could a fragile clay disc survive a fall of several meters, and crash down onto a hard stone floor without any apparent damage?



A crucial question that neither Luigi Pernier nor his successor in Phaistos, were ever able to answer satisfactorily.





In New York, Jerome Eisenberg deals in ancient artifacts. This internationally renowned specialist has spent decades studying items to establish whether they are genuine, or forgeries.





[Dr. Jerome Eisenberg, Art dealer] It's been fired very thoroughly, very evenly.



And the only time ancient tablets were fired was during a fire, and they'd be unevenly fired.



And the edges are very, very sharp. And you wouldn't have any ancient tablet, anything made out of clay with sharp edges, that could easily be damaged.



It had too many things wrong with it. If you have two or three things that don't make sense, I can accept it. But when you have eight or nine different things that are wrong with the piece, then I certainly would condemn it as a forgery.



[Narrator] If Eisenberg's suspicions are correct, it would mean that Luigi Pernier falsified the exploration record. However, it is also conceivable that he himself was tricked. To this day it has not been established exactly



who was present at the excavation when the object was found.



Alessandro Greco thinks it inconceivable that Pernier himself faked the object.





[Dr. Alessandro Greco, Archaeologist] It was an incredible achievement of Luigi Pernier's,



to excavate and even evaluate the entire palace within the space of just a few years.



[Narrator] In addition to his excavation activities, Luigi Pernier was also employed in Florence as an antiques inspector.



His jurisdiction included the city's archaeological museum.



Finds from the Etruscan period have pride of place in the collection here.



The Etruscans were among the most powerful people around the Mediterranean. Paola Rendini is a specialist in a Etruscan script.



In the magazine, Dr. Rendini and the museum director study one of the most valuable items,



the Magliano Disc. It represents one of the most important examples of Etruscan script. Today, the 70 words can be read, while in the days of Luigi Pernier this was not possible.



At eight centimeters in diameter, it is half the size of the Phaistos Disc.



The words and sentence sections are separated by dots,



while on the Phaistos Disc, vertical lines are used.





[Dr. Paola Rendini, Archaeologist] It was found at the end of the 19th century in 1882. The Archaeological Museum in Florence bought it in 1888.



It's an extraordinary object because the disc is made of lead. It measures 8x7 centimeters. This isn't very large, but it contains one of the oldest examples of Etruscan writing known to us. Near the location where this was found,



an Etruscan cemetery was discovered with even older graves, from the late 7th and early 6th Century BC.



[Narrator] This cult object originated a thousand years after the palace fire in Phaistos.



Cultural exchange between Etruscans and Minoans would appear extremely unlikely.



Consequently, the great similarity between the two discs is inexplicable.





However, while he was working in Florence, Luigi Pernier could have studied the Magliano Disc extensively before he discovered the Phaistos Disc in Crete.





As far as Jerome Eisenberg is concerned, this is a crucial clue.



[Dr. Jerome Eisenberg, Art dealer] It has many unique characteristics it. It has nothing to do with any other work of ancient art. Physically, it's the only large disc that's found in the Near East or in the Mediterranean area.



Nobody can decide what it is, and where it came from.

Evidence for suspect authenticity:

1) peculiarity of the object
2) punctuations at beginning/end of lines and at various heights
3) abbreviations not elsewhere attested
4) dimensions not corresponding to ancient units of measurement
5) seriality

The genuineness of the object is, in my view, challenged by at least four elements -- or rather five -- which I was able to detect after an accurate inspection. First, its peculiarity. In fact, this tablet does not belong to any of the well-known categories of the so-called instrumentum inscription. It is not a Tabla Lusoria -- a game board. It is not a Tessera hospitalis -- a hospitality token, nor a Tessera Nummularia -- a bronze tag for money changers. It is not a Signaculum, a stamp, because it is not written in reverse order, and it has no handle. Likewise, it is not a label to be attached to an object, because it is written on both sides. And it was not tied to an object, since it has no hole. And so it is quite impossible to define the typology of this artifact, which for the sake of simplicity, we shall simply call a "tablet." The Second point: its punctuation. Punctuation marks are located at the beginning and at the end of the lines at various heights, and this is not how the Romans usually punctuate their texts. Third, the sequence of single letters on the back cannot identify with any of the abbreviations commonly used for Latin epigraphy in the early Imperial times. And Fourth, the dimensions and the weight of the object do not correspond to ancient Roman units. And this is quite a strong argument, in my view, in favor of the falseness of these objects.

Indeed, to these four considerations one might add one final point, that of seriality. Seriality and repetitiveness can often be identified as markers of forgery. Forgers often fabricated more than one sample of their counterfeit products, which may now be inadvertently considered to be genuine artifacts in different parts of the world. For instance, in archaeological museums. So, of course, there are inscriptions which were produced in more than one copy in ancient times, but generally speaking, one should always be cautious when identical, or even slightly different texts, can be found on different physical objects  

-- Epigraphic Criticism and the Study of Forgeries: A Historical Perspective, by Lorenzo Calvelli

[Narrator] One of Pernier's successors at the Italian excavation site in Phaistos, also finds the disc extremely puzzling.



[Dr. Alessandro Greco, Archaeologist] The disc is a unique object, with a unique inscription, for Crete and the entire Eastern Mediterranean. It's a script that features open syllables,



like ka-ke-ki-ko-ku, or ta-te-ti-to-tu. It probably originated In Crete, because all other Cretan scripts, such as linear A and B, are also the open syllable type.

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Part 4 of 6



[Narrator] In the Heraklion Museum, the disc is the main attraction. It is 3,600 years old, according to the museum.



The inscription is said to be a prayer, a record of battles, or an archive register.





What is known for certain is that the disc has a diameter of 16 centimeters,



and is stamped with 45 different symbols arranged in a spiral from the outer rim to the center,



forming a total of 242 stamped impressions.



[Dr. Gareth Alun Owens, Linguist] Too many signs for an alphabet. Too few signs for a system like Chinese or Egyptian.



So what we decided to do was to try to progress with systematic epigraphic work. So if a sign is the same in different scripts, it has the same sound value.



And those 45 signs, the sound values can be found amongst the 90 sound values of Linear B, which is a script of roughly the same time, from the same place, which has been deciphered.



[Narrator] While the linguistics expert believes there may soon be a breakthrough, Jerome Eisenberg sees examples of suspicious errors.



[Dr. Jerome Eisenberg, Art dealer] This inscription basically goes from right to left,



as in Egyptian hieroglyphs. On the other hand, Minoan script a Linear A and Linear B are read from left to right.



These are all too highly realistic to be in an ancient script. This is an interesting symbol.





This is a gloved hand, or a caestus in Latin, which only occurs in the Roman period,



which is about 1500 years later. They just don't make sense together.



[Narrator] If Jerome Eisenberg is right, how could the forger have achieved this?



It must have been somebody familiar with classical script types.



Obtaining the raw material for the clay disc wouldn't have been a problem. There are potters close to Phaistos. If the price were high enough,



they would have remained silent.



Luigi Pernier had access to the excavation records, and might have desired the fame for himself,



and for Italy. Whether he had the necessary handicraft skills to produce the forgery himself is doubtful.



While the spiral pattern almost looks as though it was produced by a child,



the symbols were printed with seals molded in a sophisticated process. Jerome Eisenberg believes Pernier commissioned the work at most.



[Dr. Jerome Eisenberg, Art dealer] It was said that Gillieron was present at the time the disc was discovered, and that Pernier was not, that he was probably taking a nap.



[Narrator] The exact circumstances when the Phaistos Disc was found can't be established definitively.



No archaeologist was a direct witness. It may be significant that the Gillierons



are once again directly implied in archaeological forgery.





Did their greed overpower their moral scruples?





Evidence of the Gillierons' salesmanship can be found in the Humboldt University in Berlin.





The archaeologist Nadine Becker, is researching



the purchase of artifacts by the university during the pre-war period. The Wincklemann Institute is proud



of its lavishly-made copies from the Gillieron workshops. They are objects of study for experts and students, all in original sizes,



like the throne of King Minos. These exclusive replicas came at a price. Catalogues, purchase orders, and correspondence



with the Gillierons have been preserved to this day in the archives.



Original invoices and customs documentation indicate the astonishing sums the Gillierons demanded, which were paid by the buyers.



Using a process which was technically revolutionary at the time, the metal copies were produced



by a galvanoplastic method in the Wurttemberg Metalware Factory, WMF.





The Gillierons sold the exclusive items to their international customers for outrageous prices.



But the Gillierons did not only place replicas on the market.





Experts at the renowned museums of Boston and Toronto,



have also found indications of criminal activities.



[Speaker 1] The museum purchased her in 1931.

[Speaker 2] She's a beautiful piece of work, isn't she?

[Speaker 1] Sir Arthur Evans called her "Our Lady of Sports."



[Speaker 2] You know, another interesting thing here is the fact that she's wearing this gold codpiece.





Now that codpiece, in fact, is a penis sheath.



[Speaker 1] Oh! Not quite appropriate.



[Speaker 2] Not entirely appropriate.



And it's also interesting that the majority of the ivories that turned up, you know, early in the 20th Century AD, are female figures. And this is because Sir Arthur Evans was very much looking for representations



of a prominent female deity, this mother goddess.



And that's probably why he called her "Our Lady of Sports,"



because it's a direct reference to the Virgin Mary.



[Narrator] The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.



Here too, an ivory figure from the Minoan period was part of the collection -- until recently.



It has now been banished to the archives.



Quite a comedown for the "Snake Goddess."



[Speaker 2] So what made you suspicious?



[Speaker 1] Especially strange is the damage to her face.



The proper left side, you can see, has kind of sheared away. And ivory flakes. This is what ivory does. But the features that survived there are centered on what survives. But if that damage took place after the carving, rather than before the carving, what survives should be asymmetrical, or damaged.



The scientific analyses are quite interesting.



And I was really surprised when they came back. If the statuette is ancient, the ivory should date to about 1450 BC. When the results came back, they were really surprising, because they did come back at 1450,



but AD, not BC. So the ivory that was tested, if not a corrupt sample, is far too recent to be ancient Minoan ivory.



[Speaker 2] So who do you think made her?

[Speaker 1] Well, it would have to be someone who is very familiar with the archaeological material. I believe that the father-son team,



the Gillierons, who worked for Evans, and had a very profitable business in making replicas,



were well-positioned to create forgeries like this.

Art plays a special role in tellings of the myth of matriarchal prehistory. This is in part because the most compelling evidence of matriarchal prehistory for contemporary feminist observers is that of prehistoric female figurines. But art is attractive for reasons beyond its evidentiary power. It is an excellent medium for communicating mythic themes, and for reaching larger audiences. With this in mind, matriarchal myth has become the subject of museum exhibits, slide shows, glossy art books, and even "goddess cards" intended for divination or meditation. [23] Some of these media draw on feminist art of the past thirty years. in addition to the more typical fare of prehistoric "goddess" figures. This feminist art is itself a way in which matriarchal prehistory is communicated to a contemporary audience. For example, Monica Sjoo's painting God Giving Birth, first exhibited in London in 1968, consists of a large woman, face half-black and half-white, in the act of childbirth, her child's head emerging from between her legs. This painting initially touched off a storm of controversy, which only encouraged the production of art pieces expressing similar themes. Increasingly, this art has incorporated images from archaeological sites believed to date to matriarchal times. This trend was already evident in 1982, when Helene de Beauvoir painted her Second Encounter with the Great Goddess, in which a naked woman holding a snake in each hand is positioned alongside the prehistoric Minoan "snake goddess" (see Fig. 2.1).

***


FIG. 7.25 Faience female figures from Knossos, Crete, c. 1600 BCE. The figure holding the snakes in front of her is 34 cm tall; the one holding the snakes in the air is 20 cm tall without her head. Neither was found intact, and both were reconstructed under the supervision of Sir Arthur Evans, the site's first excavator.

What captures feminist matriarchalists' imagination more than all else, however, is elegantly-crafted figurines of the Minoan "snake goddess": a bare-breasted woman holding snakes in each of her hands (see Fig. 7.25). Feminist matriarchalists have devoted extensive attention to interpreting this figurine (which is unmatched in number of modern reproductions by any save the Venus of Willendorf), as can be seen in this passage from Anne Baring and Jules Cashford's The Myth of the Goddess:

The open bodice with the bared breasts is eloquent of the gift of nurture, while the caduceus-like image of intertwined snakes on the belly suggests that the goddess whose womb gives forth and takes back life is experienced as a unity .... The trance-like, almost mask-like expression ... composes a meditation upon this theme of regeneration .... The net pattern on her skirt, which gathers significance from its Palaeolithic and Neolithic ancestry, suggests she is the weaver of the web of life, which is perpetually woven from her womb. Her skirt has seven layers, the number of the days of the moon's four quarters, which divide into two the waxing and waning halves of the cycle .... Although seven was also the number of the visible "planets," this is probably a lunar notation of series and measure, so that sitting in the lap of the goddess, as the overlapping panel of her gown invites, would be to experience time supported by eternity, and eternity clothed in time. For the goddess, by virtue of holding the two snakes, is herself beyond their opposition; or rather, she is the one who contains the two poles of dualism and so prevents them falling apart into the kind of opposition that our modern consciousness assumes as inevitable. [68]

Whatever their meaning, it is clear that the "snake goddesses" have been given a symbolic role out of proportion to their very modest number. Though this has been described as "a deity very popular in Minoan times," there are actually only two such figurines from the entire palace period in Crete, both uncovered from the same pit in the palace at Knossos. As Nanno Marinatos writes, one may as well "speak of a Lily, Goat, Lion, or Griffin Goddess." [69]

69. Hutchinson, Prehistoric Crete, 208; Marinatos, Minoan Religion, 276-77, n. 5. Part of the reason the "snake goddesses" have been given such an exaggerated importance probably has to do with the eager reception they received when they were first discovered (one served as the frontispiece for the first volume of Sir Arthur Evans's Palace of Minos, published in 1921), and the fact that at least one, and probably several forgeries were successfully sold on the international antiquities market to museums (see Butcher and Gill, "The Director," 383, 401).

-- The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future, by Cynthia Eller

[Narrator] Jerome Eisenberg feels this investigation confirms his views.



[Dr. Jerome Eisenberg, Art dealer] I attended an exhibition of ancient art in Boston, in Cambridge, and I was shocked at how many pieces, in my opinion, were forgeries. Between 1958 and 1965, I bought some 40,000 pieces, and of those some 22,000 came out of Egypt,



and I became rather expert on detecting the forgeries.




[Narrator] Are visitors to the museum in Heraklion



admiring a sophisticated forgery, as Jerome Eisenberg claims? However, recent archaeological discoveries could indicate that the disc is genuine.



A bronze axe is also kept in Heraklion.



On the head of the double ax there are three lines with overlapping signs engraved upon them. Linguistic experts like Gareth Owens



see a parallel here with the stamped symbols on the disk.



Gareth Owens and his colleagues have withdrawn to within sight of ancient Phaistos



in order to resolve the last mystery of the oldest script in Europe.



Now he believes he has finally achieved the breakthrough. He considers that the texts on the disc



can be deciphered and read.



[Researcher speaking in foreign language]



[Dr. Gareth Alun Owens, Linguist] What we have here is definitely a Minoan prayer, because we found these words elsewhere on Minoan Crete, as well. We have a Minoan prayer for a goddess.



My suspicion is that it could be the Minoan Astarte. And IQEKURJA, which is the key word on the Phaistos Disc,



could well mean pregnant goddess. IQE is known from Linear B to be the word for goddess.



And KURJA, kuria, could be the word for pregnant.



This wouldn't be surprising when we think that the words on the Phaistos disc were also found on the top of mountains where Minoan people were making dedications, tamata, to the goddess on the top of the mountains.



Another attribute of Astarte: she is the Queen of the Mountain.



[Narrator] Mount Juktas Towers over Knossos. The mountain is a magical place. It is said that the father of the Gods, Zeus, is buried here. For thousands of years, people have been attracted to the mountain peak, which, from a distance, resembles a sleeping man.



Gareth Owens also returns to this place repeatedly. On one side of the mountain, an orthodox chapel with three naves was constructed. Archaeologists then discovered that a sacred edifice with three naves



stood on the same site during the Minoan period, almost 4,000 years ago.



[Dr. Gareth Alun Owens, Linguist] It's fascinating to look at the offerings and think that what the Greek Orthodox people



are doing today is similar to what the Minoans were doing 36 centuries ago.



People don't change. They worry about the same thing. There is continuity. People are worried about their health, and they're asking a higher power for help. And some of the words that have been found



on the Minoan inscription, on the same holy mountain, on a very small libation offering that they were doing there, and they were dedicating with parts of the body, but at that time made from clay, not just from silver,



have also been found on the B side of the Phaistos disc.

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Part 5 of 6



[Narrator] Not long ago, an apparently insignificant sacrificial bowl was discovered.



Linguistic symbols that had not been encountered previously are engraved on it. They are almost identical to those on the disc. A forger 100 years ago could not possibly have known these signs.





Does this mean the disc is now accepted as genuine?





[Dr. Alessandro Greco, Archaeologist] The Phaistos Disc is a problem.



[Dr. Jerome Eisenberg, Art dealer] The clay is not the same clay as found on Crete.



We don't know where the clay came from, because we don't have an analysis of it.



And the museum will not allow us to take any test on the disc, or even to handle it.



[Narrator] Berlin, the Egyptian Museum. Rumors have begun to circulate



that the bust of the beautiful Nefertiti is a forgery.



A scientific investigation will provide a definitive answer, despite the high risk of moving the precious object. With great care, and with extensive security measures in place, the highlight of the museum is taken to the Charite Hospital in Berlin.

Nefertiti Bust
Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung [Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection]
by Staatliche Museen zu Berlin [State Museums in Berlin]
Preussischer Kulturbesitz [Prussian cultural heritage]
Accessed: 12/19/22


Nefertiti Bust, Egypt, Tell el-Amarna, New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1351–1334 BC, donated by James Simon © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung / Sandra Steiß

The Bust

“Life-sized painted bust of the queen, 47 cm high. With the flat-cut blue wig, which also has a ribbon wrapped around it halfway up. Colours as if paint was just applied. Work absolutely exceptional. Description is useless, must be seen. Counterpart to the bust of the king from p. 39. Only the ears a[nd] part of the r[ight] side of the wig damaged.”

This quote from the 1912 excavation diary is the first known description of the bust of Nefertiti. It was written by Ludwig Borchardt, who led the excavation at Tell el-Amarna, and has often been cited, above all because of the succinct passage: “Description is useless, must be seen”.

Description Is, in Fact, Useful

Although Borchardt rightly emphasised that the beauty of the bust can only be appreciated through first-hand observation, he himself undertook a description of it for the first detailed publication on the piece in 1923, 11 years after it was found. Even from our present perspective his words can still be considered authoritative. Borchardt first repeats the later famous entry in his diary, “description is useless, must be seen”, and then continues:

Today I would like to write the same again, as I am convinced that my words cannot portray the impression left by this work of art, and that even the colour reproduction […] does not clearly illustrate the vivacity and delicacy of the original, but only suggests them. […]

The preservation is astoundingly good. The erect portion of the cobra is broken off, as are two small pieces of the sharp upper edge of the wig on the right and left; on the left side a larger section of the plaster coating has flaked off; both ears are damaged, on the right some fragments have now been reattached. The inlay is missing from the left eye; since however no traces of a binding agent were detected in the eye socket, and the background is smooth and not in any way recessed so as to accommodate an inlay, it is certain that the left eye was never filled with an inlay. On the right shoulder as well a small piece chipped off; additionally, here and there scarcely noticeable scratches on the face, nose, etc. In several places traces of impure moisture, probably from rain water, which flowed contaminated through the already leaky roof and fell on the bust still standing on its shelf. […]

The muscles of the nape and sides of the neck are so delicately rendered that one imagines one sees them flexing under the delicate skin, which is rendered in a healthy hue.

Egyptian sculptors hardly ever attempted to express any emotion in the faces of their artworks [...], but this face is the embodiment of serenity and composure. Viewed from the front, it exhibits complete mirror symmetry, and yet it will be utterly clear to the viewer that he is not looking at some constructed ideal here, but instead at the stylised, though nonetheless thoroughly recognisable image of a specific person with a strongly striking appearance.

The subsequent descriptions of the details of the queen’s mouth, nose and eyes also reveal Borchardt’s enthusiasm for the beauty of the bust in vivid terms.

Even though Borchardt’s reconstruction of the model chamber and the purpose for which the busts were made are open to renewed debate from a contemporary perspective, his concluding commentary on the bust remains understandable to this day: “In any case, the finished and colourful portrait is the finest and most elaborate one I know.”


Nefertiti Bust, Egypt, Tell el-Amarna, New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1351–1334 BC, height: 49 cm [19.29 in]; width: 24.5 cm [9.64 in] depth: 35 cm; material: limestone, painted stucco, quartz, wax; ref. no. ÄM 23100; find date: 06.12.1912; house P 47.2; room 19, donated by James Simon © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung / Sandra Steiß

Structure and Materials of the Bust

The core of the bust consists of limestone, over which a layer of stucco of varying thickness was applied for the final modelling. The consistency of the limestone as well as the thickness and the layer-by-layer application of the stucco were documented in CT scans produced in 2006 in collaboration with the Imaging Science Institute Charité – Siemens. These new scans provided several details not seen in previous images generated in 1992 at the Charité’s Virchow-Klinikum.

Egyptian Blue, Beeswax and Rock Crystal

What makes the effect of the bust so extraordinary, however, is above all its vibrant colours, which are unique in their state of preservation and which give the bust its extraordinarily lifelike quality. Without the painting and the inlaid eye the bust would still rank as a masterpiece of craftsmanship, but would have a completely different effect.

The paints used here are in keeping with the well-known spectrum of ancient Egyptian natural pigments, including red ochre, yellow orpiment, green frit and carbon black, as well as the artificially produced “Egyptian blue”, applied in a variety of shades, to create the queen’s skin tone, for example. The multi-layered application of the paint was documented with the highest level of accuracy in contact-free tests carried out by the Rathgen-Forschungslabor of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in 2009.


Nefertiti Bust (detail) © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung / Sandra Steiß

All these examinations underscore the absolute precision of the ancient Egyptian artists’ work, from the almost perfect symmetry of the facial structure to the extremely delicate individual hairs of the eyebrows, applied in cross-hatched lines. It is also notable, however, that the utmost attention was paid to attaining perfection in the face, while the collar was given a more superficial treatment.

The iris and pupil of the right eye were made of beeswax dyed black, covered with a thin piece of polished rock crystal as a cornea.


Nefertiti Bust (detail) © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung / Sandra Steiß

The Missing Left Eye

Immediately after the bust was found on 6 December 1912 Ludwig Borchardt ordered a search for the missing inlay from the left eye. In his initial publication of 1923 he notes:

[…] and in the left eye the inlay was missing. The debris, even that which had already been removed, was immediately searched, and some of it sifted. A few more fragments of the ears were found, but not the eye inlay. Only much later did I realise that it had never existed.

The definitiveness of this last remark in particular is the subject of critical discussion today. Nevertheless, we can safely assume that the eye inlay, if it ever existed, was not present at the time of discovery, any more than the gold leaf overlay from the bust of Akhenaten found in the same room, or the missing uraeus from the same sculpture.

Non-Transportable

The aforementioned examinations carried out by the Rathgen-Forschungslabor and the CT scans indicate that the bust is extremely fragile: there are air pockets between the limestone core and the applied stucco, which have been identified as highly vulnerable points. Portions of the painted decoration are also extremely fragile.

In addition, the rock crystal inlay must be considered highly sensitive. From a curatorial and conservational point of view the bust, like many other objects in the museum’s collection, has therefore now been classified as “non-transportable”.

Busts in Ancient Egypt

While we often encounter busts as a genre of portraiture from classical antiquity through the early modern period, they were seldom found in ancient Egypt. One reason for this may be that a bust, as a three-dimensional portrait of an individual that usually ends at the middle of the torso, is a “cut-off” and therefore incomplete representation. In ancient Egypt, however, it was extremely important that images appear complete and intact.

Nonetheless, a small number of sculptures that can be called busts do exist, primarily from the realm of ancestor worship. Aside from a few examples from the Old Kingdom (ca. 2570–2400 BC), busts appear relatively frequently from the Amarna period until the end of the New Kingdom (ca. 1350–1100 BC). Most of these can be assigned to the realm of private ancestor worship in the domestic sphere or in the context of burials, and are therefore often reminiscent of Egyptian death masks or the upper portion of a human-shaped sarcophagi.

The Busts of the Royal Couple

The few known royal examples include the bust of Nefertiti, which, as the excavator Ludwig Borchardt already quite rightly noted, is impossible to imagine without its counterpart, the bust of her husband. The bust of Akhenaten was found in the same room as that of the queen, but had been destroyed by iconoclasts.


Bust of Akhenaten, Egypt, Tell el-Amarna, New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1351–1334 BC, ref. no. ÄM 21360, donated by James Simon © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung / Sandra Steiß

It was probably originally even more elaborate than that of Nefertiti: along with the painted decoration, evidence of gold leaf overlay has also been documented, and the inset head of the uraeus was made of precious materials. Both busts were certainly not intended for a funerary context, but instead probably served the veneration of the royal couple in a temple or palace.

Sculptor’s Model or Finished Artwork?

Ludwig Borchardt’s interpretation of the bust of the queen as a “sculptor’s model” has predominated among Egyptologists since the 1923 publication, and has only rarely been questioned. Borchardt writes:

Regarding the bust’s purpose it is hardly necessary to say anything. […]. Its cut indicates that it was not meant to be a separately fashioned part of a larger statue. The left eye socket, for which the inlay never needed to be made because the work was superfluous, as it would have been the mirror image of that in the right eye, is left empty; in short, everything clearly shows that the piece is a model.

Aside from the fact that Borchardt was unable to conceive of the sculptural form of the bust as an independent work of art, he lists the unpainted sides of the shoulders as the most important indication that this piece was intended as a model. Whether his final argument, the missing eye, can be taken as convincing proof of this hypothesis, however, remains an open question. Recent investigations have failed to provide conclusive evidence.

The Riddle Remains Unsolved

Since use of the bust as an autonomous sculptural genre is documented in ancient Egypt, the mode of representation alone cannot be cited as an argument for the bust of Nefertiti having been created as a model. Comparison with other plaster casts found alongside the portraits of Nefertiti and Akhenaten in the double chamber R. 18/19 provides further evidence. These 23 portraits, nine of which depict royalty, were left unpainted except for minimal black and red contour lines, and are clearly identifiable as sculptor’s models. The two royal busts in question, by contrast, seem to have been almost completely finished.

In addition, for a master of that period, a perfect application of paint as seen on the bust of Nefertiti would probably not have been regarded as necessary for a model. The colour palette for crowns, collars, and skin tone followed standardised norms, meaning there was no need for a template. Thus neither of the possible interpretations clearly outweighs the other, and the mystery of whether the bust of Nefertiti was intended as a model or was an (almost) finished work of art remains unsolved.


Nefertiti Bust, Egypt, Tell el-Amarna, New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1351–1334 BC, donated by James Simon © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung / Sandra Steiß

Here, the bust of the woman





reputed to be the most beautiful of all,



is subjected to computer tomography.





The proof that is so important



for the Museum Island of Berlin is now forthcoming.



The world-famous bust is not a fake from modern times.



The risk and the expense have been worthwhile.



The museum Halle is also posed with a problem.



The Museum houses what it believes is a sensational object:



the Nebra sky disk,



a bronze disc adorned with representations of the heavenly bodies in gold.



This incredible find was brought to light by grave robbers,



and now there are claims that the disc could be a forgery.



An analysis using scientific techniques



will resolve the matter.



The extensive technical study is performed



in the BESSY particle accelerator in Berlin.



By employing high-intensity x-rays, the composition of the gold plating can be determined without damaging it.



In this way, conclusive proof is obtained:



the sky disc is the oldest known calendar of mankind.



What about the disc which is the main attraction in Heraklion?



[Dr. Jerome Eisenberg, Art dealer] On the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the disc, 1908 to 2008, I wrote again to the director of the museum,



and he said that that since it's a national treasure, it can't be touched or moved.



And if it turned out to be a forgery,



it would be a disaster for tourism even.



[Narrator] Year after year, millions of tourists come to the island of Crete. Tourism is the most important commercial activity,



securing half the entire income of the island. Knossos, Phaistos, and the museum in Heraklion, are huge public attractions,



important features of this mega-business.



Critical questions?



They're not welcome.



Thus it is that an air of suspicion continues to hang over the collection in the national museum.

[admin]

Part 6 of 6



Is the beautiful world of the Minoans depicted here



a mere invention



thought up by Arthur Evans and Luigi Pernier,



put into practice by the Gillierons?

[Geraldine Norman] In Auvers, Vincent stayed in a little auberge [inn] run by the Ravoux family. He lived there for just over two months and is credited with having painted eighty-three pictures -- which means more than a picture a day. Some of them must be fakes, and were probably painted by the Gachet circle. Dr. Gachet was a painter, and so was his son Paul known as Coco. After he had shot himself, Vincent struggled back to the auberge mortally wounded.

[Dominique Janssens, Institut Van Gogh, Auvers-Sur-Oise] Adeline, the daughter of the innkeeper, had seen that he was [inaudible]. That's why she came up to his room to check what happened. And then they called the local doctor. And the local doctor didn't want to take care of Vincent, because everybody in the village knew it was Dr. Gachet who takes care for the painters. So Dr. Gachet came over, and then when he had seen there was nothing to do, he asked the neighbor, [Perchick?], to go to Paris to pick up Theo. So Theo arrived at about 12 o'clock, and at one o'clock in the morning he died here in his room. Now Dr. Gachet came over with his son, and he said to his son, "roll, Coco." Because the more he was rolling the paintings, the more he could bring them back home. And that's how he got a collection of paintings on Van Gogh, which are today in the museum at Orsay.

[Geraldine Norman] Dr. Gachet and his son seemed to have taken as many paintings as they could. Gachet specialized in mental illness and homeopathy, but had been a keen amateur painter since his student day. His home attracted many artists, including Renoir, Pissarro and Cezanne, who came to him for medical advice, and loved experimenting with his etching press. Dr. Gachet died in 1909, but his son lived on in the house, becoming more and more eccentric and reclusive. He never had a job, and seems to have lived off selling the pictures and antiques that his father had crammed into the house. One villager, who has devoted her life to the study of local history, is Madame Claude [Migon?].

[Madame Claude (Migon?)] [Speaking French] He wouldn't tolerate people coming to the house. Not even local tradesmen, or people interested in the works.

[Geraldine Norman] [Speaking French] How could he live like that? He had to eat!

[Madame Claude (Migon?)] [Speaking French] It's a mystery. Like many things in this man's life. He was truly his father's son.

[Geraldine Norman] He kept very quiet very quiet about the Van Goghs, until he made a series of donations to French national collections in the 1950s. His gifts, now in the Musee d'Orsay, include works by Van Gogh, Renoir, Pissarro, and Cezanne. He also gave the nation paintings by his father and himself. He signed his pictures, including copies of works by other artists, with the pseudonym Louis Van Ryssel. His father called himself Paul van Ryssel. The museum has reacted to the controversy by having the Gachet Van Goghs scientifically investigated, and announcing that they will mount an exhibition of all Gachet's donations to public institutions in the autumn of 44:30 1998. This is sure to spark another explosive argument.

[Dominique Janssens, Institut Van Gogh, Auvers-Sur-Oise] You have seen when you walk up to the cemetery, the countryside is exactly how it was a hundred years ago. Japanese, they don't come only to visit, but also to bring offers for Vincent. And certain days we just clean the cemetery. And you have lots of little pots of sake, brushes, and also a lot of Japanese who died in in Japan, their dream is to be buried with Vincent. So a lot of Japanese bring over the ashes here, and then they put it on the graves of Vincent and Theo.

[Geraldine Norman] The number of Japanese tourists who come to worship at the van Gogh shrine in Auvers, got a big boost when Yasuda bought the sunflowers in 1987. It will be a terrible disappointment to the nation if they discover their famous sunflower picture is not really by Van Gogh.

[To Tom Hoving, Ex-Director Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC] What do you think Yasuda is going to say if they actually have to face the fact that they are landed with a fake?

[Tom Hoving, Ex-Director Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC] Oh, I don't think they'll face it. I think they hope it'll go away. I do not think that the people in charge of the insurance company are going to let regiments of experts in to take it off the exhibition, and look at it, and maybe even do some analysis, and so on. I just don't think they're gonna do that. I think it would be a very great loss of face. I think the picture was purchased because the only other Vincent van Gogh in Japan prior to the United States firebombing of Tokyo, was a sunflowers, which was destroyed.

[Geraldine Norman] It is said that the painting was relined after its arrival in Japan, which may mean that important evidence has been lost.

We asked Yasuda if we could talk to them about this, and our views on the sunflowers problem. Yasuo Goto, the chairman of the company, replied, "We have no intention of participating in any discussion of sunflowers' authenticity, as we hold no doubts whatsoever that it is genuine. We also have no intention of answering the questions mentioned in your letter." I personally find it impossible to believe that the Yasuda sunflowers is by Van Gogh. There's too much evidence against it. It's not mentioned in the letters, or other early documents. It first appears in the hands of Emile Schuffenecker, whose name has long been linked with faking. And it is generally agreed that it is visually inferior to the other two. It does disturb me, however, that so many experts still think it genuine. They aren't talking to each other, and don't know each other's arguments. Which is why the muddle persists. If the experts, the Van Gogh Foundation, and Mr. Goto from Yasuda, could be persuaded to divulge what they know, the truth about the Yasuda picture could be found. Using secrecy to protect their reputations and huge investments just won't do. Christie's has both money and reputation at stake, and has opted for silence. They refused to be interviewed, and issued a statement saying, "We see no reason, on the evidence so far produced, to alter our original opinion that the sunflowers is an authentic work by Van Gogh."

[Tom Hoving, Ex-Director Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC] You don't ever get a concert of opinion in art. Very seldomly you get it. And so this, I think, will just kind of go on forever. And since it's not going to ever be for resale, does it matter?

[Dr. Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, Prof. History of Art, University of Toronto] Most of us who know Van Gogh -- and I think a lot of us do, or profess to know a lot about Van Gogh -- know that this very simple man, filled with great humility and compassion for mankind, saw these works as different legacies than financial ones. I think he would be horrified, and distraught beyond anything you can imagine, to see himself somersaulted to such tremendous value, and such crass commercialism. I think it would have been something that he couldn't have ever tolerated.

-- Is Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' A Fake?: The Fake Van Gogh's, narrated by Geraldine Norman, World History Documentaries

At one point, the Gillierons created



the "Saffron Gatherer" fresco from a few fragments. Further finds prove, however, that the figure depicted here



was, in fact, a monkey.



Jerome Eisenberg has no doubt at all about it.



The Phaistos Disc is a fake, and Luigi Pernier is a con man.

[Dr. Jerome Eisenberg, Art dealer] He was in need of funds for excavation. Also, he wanted the glory of having discovered a famous piece.



So it was for glory and for cash.



Arthur Evans also complained that he always needed funds, and that his discoveries on Knossos



aided him to have rich people contribute money.

Hitherto in his search for Kapilavastu Anton Fuhrer had only had the clues contained in the Buddha Kanakamuni inscription on the Asokan pillar at Nigliva Sagar and the contradictory accounts of the location of Kapilavastu in relation to the Kanakamuni relic stupa provided by the Chinese pilgrims. Dr. Waddell had, of course, very obligingly published his belief that Kapilavastu was to be found seven miles to the north-west of Nigliva but Dr. Fuhrer had no wish to be seen to have acted on his rival's lead. Now, however, with the unambiguous identification of Lumbini Garden he now had two further sets of directions from the Chinese pilgrims to go on. Indeed, he would afterwards claim that 'the discovery of the Asoka Edict pillar in the Lumbini Grove enabled me to fix also, with absolute certainty, the site of Kapilavastu and of the sanctuaries in its neighbourhood. Thanks to the exact notes left by the two Chinese travellers I discovered its extensive ruins about eighteen miles north-west of the Lumbini pillar, and about six miles northwest of the Nigali [Nigliva] Sagar.'

But, of course, the Chinese did not leave exact notes, only conflicting ones. The reader will recall (see p. 92) that to get from Kapilavastu to Lumbini, Faxian had walked east: 'Fifty le east from the city was a garden, named Lumbini'. By Cunningham's method that would place Kapilavastu about eight miles west of Lumbini. Xuanzang (see p. 102) had reached Lumbini indirectly by way of the sacred spring south-east of Kapilavastu known as the Arrow Well, first walking south-east for 30 li and then north-east for 'about 80 or 90 li.' These directions placed Kapilavastu approximately fourteen miles west-south-west of Lumbini. Dr. Fuhrer's subsequent actions show that when faced by four sets of contradictory directions from the Chinese travellers he plumped for Dr. Waddell's advice, which was to look for Kapilavastu 'about seven miles to the north-west of the Nepalese village of Nigliva.'

Before being summoned to Padariya by General Khadga, Dr Fuhrer had planned to excavate at and around the site of the Buddha Kanakamuni pillars using the General's Nepali sappers. Indeed, he afterwards reported that he had done so, excavating down to the base of the pillar carrying the Asokan Kanakamuni inscription, which 'was found to measure 10 feet 6 inches in depth and its base 8 feet 2 inches in circumference; and 'still fixed in situ, resting on a square masonry foundation 7 feet by 7 feet by 1 foot.' But Fuhrer had come to Nigliva Sagar expecting to add real bricks to his so far imagined Kapilavastu and the equally imaginary Kanakamuni stupa -- instead of which he had been summoned to Padariya to witness General Khadga's momentous discovery of the Lumbini inscription. All might have been well if Anton Fuhrer had been allowed to return to Nigliva Sagar to do his excavating. But then the General dropped what amounted to a bombshell by announcing that he 'did not think any other operations feasible on account of the severe famine.'

There had indeed been very severe famine throughout the tarai country that summer and autumn, when the initial failure of the summer monsoon had been followed by the failure of the lesser October rains known as the hatiya. General Khadga was directing relief operations in the Western Tarai, for which he needed all the manpower he could get. It meant that he was removing the sappers that Dr. Fuhrer needed to make his case.

This was an awful blow to Dr. Fuhrer -- and not just because of his extravagant claims about Kapilavastu and the Kanakamuni stupa. The fact was that the very existence of the Archaeological Department of the Government of the NWP&O -- and, with it, his own post as Archaeological Surveyor -- was under threat, with rumours of severe cuts in the funding of the PWD circulating. Furthermore, after ten years of loyal service he was still on the same salary at which he had started: 400 rupees a month or about £400 per annum. A striking example of the value of his department and of his own worth was required -- which he duly provided.

On or about 20 December Fuhrer emerged from the Nepal Tarai to despatch a telegram to the Pioneer newspaper in Allahabad announcing a double discovery: he, Dr. Anton Alois Fuhrer, had found Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha, and he had found Kapilavastu, too, the city where Prince Siddhartha had been raised. The Pioneer ran its exclusive on 23 December 1896 and other newspapers quickly picked up the story, which was reported in the London Times on 28 December.

Five weeks later Professor Buhler gave his public support to Fuhrer's claims in a letter entitled 'The Discovery of Buddha's Birthplace' published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society: 'Dr. Fuhrer's discoveries are the most important which have been made for many years,' he declared. 'They will be hailed with enthusiasm by the Buddhists of India, Ceylon and the Far East. ... The [Lumbini] edict leaves no doubt that Dr. Fuhrer has accomplished all the telegram [first published in the Pioneer] claimed for him. He has found the Lumbini garden, the spot where the founder of Buddhism was born.'

-- The Buddha and Dr. Fuhrer: An Archaeological Scandal, by Charles Allen

[Narrator] Arthur Evans was able to make his dream come true. For four decades, his very personal vision



of the palace of King Minos, grew on Crete.



He was working also for the fame of the British Empire. And by the end of his life,



he was able to call himself Sir Arthur Evans.





Even if critics dismiss Knossos as Disneyland, each year millions of visitors stroll around the structures made of plaster and concrete.



Today, however, some archaeologists advocate to dismantle Evans' Knossos.



[Alexandre Farnoux, Director, The French Archaeological Institute in Athens] Today, the Palace of Knossos is the way it is. And that's the way people imagine the Minoan world in the year 1900.



The reputation of the Gillierons deserves to be restored, because our way of judging the history of art



from a modern perspective, as if in a courtroom, and condemning it, is unfair. When it comes to any sort of scientific work, you always have to take into account the time of its creation.

German philosopher Karl Jaspers described science as methodical insight that is mandatorily certain and universal. It is the ethos of modern science to want to reliably know on the basis of unbiased research and critique....

Misconduct and fraud in science do not only offend against its inherent norms and rules summed up in the ‘scientific ethos’ but also make a mockery of its goals—namely gaining knowledge as profound as possible, which again motivates further research and can be practically applied. Scientists depend on cooperation with each other as well as on productive, constructive and trusting relationships with possible investors, users of scientific results—especially patients—and the general public. Trust and honesty is vital for any kind of successful research. Violations of good scientific practice do not only affect those directly concerned but also science and society in general, and, if permitted, we run the risk of undermining the public’s trust in scientific practice as a whole.

Despite numerous cases of research misconduct being made public, this issue is still a taboo topic among the scientific community....

It would be too narrow-minded to question only the individual integrity of the scientist. Very often, if we look into these seemingly isolated cases of research misconduct further, structures can be identified in scientific practice, which benefit such misconduct if not promote it....

A study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) proves that retractions of already published articles have become more frequent in the past 30 years. Between 1977 and 2011, 2047 articles were retracted in the fields of biomedicine and life sciences, with research misconduct being the most frequent reason for retraction. Twenty-one percent of the cases claimed unintentional errors as a reason for retraction, whereas 43% of the articles were retracted owing to ‘fraud’ or ‘suspected fraud’, which has increased 10-fold since 1975....

The average period between publication and retraction of articles was 33 months in all cases; it was highest in cases of ‘fraud’, reaching 47 months....Before retraction, many articles are frequently cited. Concerning articles published in highly prestigious journals (such as the Lancet, Nature Medicine, Cell, Nature, New England Journal of Medicine) and later retracted, between 234 and 758 quotations were counted for the period between 2002 and 2010. Thus, it can be assumed that the misconduct of the respective researchers has caused considerable harm to the scientific community....

Possible mistakes have to be differentiated from misconduct with intent and fraud. Characteristics of fraud range from plagiarism to the violation or assumption of the intellectual property of other authors and data forgery. What is considered as fraud is data misuse, the manipulation of results and their presentation, the independent invention of data, the concealment of undesired results, the disposal of original data, submission of false data, disturbance of the research of other scientists and deception. Fraud also encompasses active participation in misconduct of other researchers, joint knowledge of the forgeries of other authors, coauthorship of forged publications and the gross neglect of responsibility.

In 1998 the DFG published a memorandum on safeguarding good scientific practice. Good scientific practice implies to work ‘lege artis’, to always entertain doubt and self-criticism, to mutually check and examine results, to be accurate when securing quality, to be honest and to document and store primary data to ensure reproducibility. In research institutes and research groups, transparency of the organisational structure, unambiguous responsibilities, information, on-going training and supervision of staff and colleagues are part and prerequisite of good scientific practice. This also includes regulations for storing data, for the allocation of authorship, accountability and responsibility for observing the guidelines and regulations of dealing with possible misconduct....

Good scientific practice is first of all subject to the self-control of scientists within their community. Self-control seems to be reasonable, especially because, respectively, qualified scientists can themselves judge best, which results are plausible and which appear rather suspicious. However, the principle of self-control presumes that a scientific community is able and willing to control itself sufficiently. Especially in highly interconnected research—nationally and internationally—concerning complex questions and problems, trust is a crucial but fragile principle. In general, between cooperating scientists, research misconduct is considered impossible, and mistrust, a poor partner. Yet, the recently disclosed cases of research misconduct make it very obvious that self-control, if taken seriously, is a high demand placed on authors, which is very often limited by personal factors or by pressures linked to their university, institution and/or funding body....

The possible consequences of a violation against good scientific practice comprise labour law-related sanctions (e.g. warning, dismissal), academic sanctions (e.g. the revocation of an academic degree), sanctions according to civil law (e.g. compensation) and criminal sanctions (e.g. due to forgery). A revocation must be made and the subject matter must be set right. Violations against good scientific practice must be communicated to all cooperating partners, research communities, professional associations and to the public....

Considering the principles of science and the many cases of fraud recognised over recent years, the question of reasons for research misconduct is becoming increasingly topical. Misconduct does not simply result from poor character or the misjudgement of individual scientists. Although personal factors are certainly not irrelevant, the manner in which research institutions are organised must also be taken into consideration. No scientist can be a priori certain that he or she does not commit errors one way or another—even though unintentionally—or that he or she is not affected by the misconduct of others; however, prevention of research misconduct is becoming ever critical. The following arguments are addressed to explain possible reasons for research misconduct....

When wishing to make a personal career as a scientist and to increase the ‘success’ of one’s institution, one has to publish regularly, quickly and in high-ranking journals. Hence, scientific research is subject to high pressure, which is increased by financial incentives. If there is little success (i.e. only few publications or numerous publications but in lesser-ranked journals), it is unlikely that the career of the scientist will continue long term. One’s own research has to be successful in the sense of ‘publish or perish’ to guarantee a job and income in the future....

High competition for limited funds is generating more pressure on scientists to be the ‘best’, judged by the number of publications and the journals in which they are published....

Research not only fulfils one’s own ambitions as a scientist but also exterior demands for solving important questions for the future of our society. It also establishes and stabilises the so-called ‘research sites’.

The insights of science do not only have value within the field but also in a further reaching way for society and the economy. This is generally held true for countries like Germany, which is rather poor in natural resources but whose know-how is their most important resource in the globalised world....

The impetus for researching may go beyond interest in scientific knowledge; research also serves as a means of self-fulfilment, self-representation and not least the vanity of the agents. For the scientist, this development involves the danger of failing oneself and one’s own aspirations, since despite any highly specialised knowledge: Scientists are no better people.

Presently, we feel that communication between scientists is ‘disturbed’; self-control does not really work. High research activity and great dependency on external funding influence the culture of communication. This has had an effect on scientific journals over recent years, with an exponential increase in the number of publications, and also in the creation of new peer-reviewed journals.

Publication of articles is subject to the self-control of scientists. An article submitted for publication is usually assessed in the form of an anonymous review, normally by two independent scientists....The number of experts who are qualified for reviewing is limited, their time is limited, and in addition, regarding the present national and international research networks, their independence can no longer be guaranteed.

Despite there being a number of strategies and programmes for detecting plagiarism, their usage often exceeds the effort reasonable for those reviewing in an honorary capacity, which may result in a degree of unintentional incompleteness when reviewing....

A loss of a critical discussion culture harms the quality of research. Adverse factors conditioning misconduct can be observed at conferences and congresses....One can do nothing else but congratulate. Hardly ever are negative results or one’s own mistakes addressed. Our ‘togetherness’ finds itself in a rather care-free and positive atmosphere; arguments on a matter can seldom be found. What is thus not promoted is dealing critically with research results....

The appreciation of authors whose effective part in the respective article is limited or minor becomes a disadvantage if they become unaware accomplices, even in individual cases of research misconduct. Being accepted in the context of many experts promotes one’s reputation and career; however, this way of thinking might be damageable for the integrity of science. Networks can also obstruct the clarification of research misconduct: If one ‘falls’, many others will ‘fall’ too. Who would really want that?...

The very successful scientists of today (sometimes called ‘heroes of science’ or ‘giants in medicine’) generally have such a high number of publications that outsiders may feel ‘dizzy’.... Publishing more and more and better each time increases the danger of losing control over the content and of not fulfilling a researcher’s responsibility....

Taking part in many activities eventually makes us reach the limits of our possibilities. The genuine interests of a scientist must not be dominated by ‘always wanting’ and ‘always participating’.

Thus, it is not honest to ‘devote oneself’ to a research project, unless the project is an exact fit with one’s own interests and qualifications, just to get the money. A researcher’s capacity and productivity is limited and cannot be stretched infinitely by external funds. If the expectations are not fulfilled and the necessary honesty is missing, money can become a disadvantage for research....

[T]hose who already have a lot are persuasive and are therefore more likely to receive future funding and perhaps higher volumes. The result of this is thematically and methodically concentrated, and nowadays highly upgraded centres, or ‘research factories’, which show high productivity and growth rates and secure futures. These centres suppress smaller work groups that struggle to compete. The concentration of research in the name of ‘success’ creates power structures and endangers the breadth and quality of research.... high profit (i.e. high scientific output) means everything.

Consequently, a publication in a prestigious journal demands a further publication in an also prestigious journal and so on: Scientific growth is seemingly continued to infinity....

Failure is not provided for: Those who receive high funds are doomed to be successful (i.e. there has to be a result); however, this is obviously a case of positivism misunderstood. Research funding is beneficial, but at the present height, it also means a risk to research, because ‘more’ money does not automatically mean ‘more’ knowledge. This (at least felt, if not always admitted) discrepancy may affect scientists behaviour in a negative way....'

Discussing problems, our mistakes and causes in an open and self-critical way should serve to raise awareness and warn researchers of the potential dangers and consequences of misconduct. In cases of fraud or plagiarism, the agents are not just ‘black sheep’. Individual responsibility shall not be denied and must not be downplayed. However, we have to be aware that generally all researchers bear the risk of research misconduct, violations of good scientific practice are possible for each of us and each scientist is liable to the pressures that fuel such behaviour or, indeed, help disguise it.

Academic work requires transparency. Researchers should be subject to internal and external assessment that verifies their research and relates it to respective control mechanisms. It has to be discussed—not only within the research system, but in a wider context. On the one hand, freedom of research must be ensured, but on the other hand, research responsibility must be realised. Without doing away with self-control, it however becomes apparent that self-control alone is not sufficient and that concepts of external control must be developed and evaluated....

Scientific work also demands modesty; overestimating oneself and one’s own thematic coverage will backfire....

Even though external control may be effective, scientists should still be obliged to self-control. Acting as a researcher does not only serve the purpose of furthering knowledge and progressing personally, but relationships with others must also be considered. Rules of good scientific practice have to be accepted by all of us and embedded into attitudes and personalities....

The pressure to succeed imposed by highly financed research institutions and groups has to be reduced. The fundamental values of science must self-evidently and always have priority; they are honesty, decency, objectivity, credibility, doubt, responsibility and openness.

What increases the risk of research misconduct is working only for profit (i.e. the number of publications and the height of the IFs) and growth (i.e. more and more publications). Thus, research that is libertarian and at the same time only oriented towards the market contradicts the idea of science. Research institutes should overcome the temptation of only seeing themselves as players of the market.

The volume of research fraud that has become known begins to demand a quality offensive to be produced. It could imply proactive controls and random samples, the vocation of quality assurance commissioners, the central filing of data and documents, the obligation to take part in regular self-trainings or even workshops on ‘error learning culture’.

Researchers of today are voluntarily or involuntarily part of a media-marketed academic life. It is not only about the secrets of nature, discoveries and problems that have to be solved effectively; science ‘charms’. Results affect researchers (who gain an impetus for their work out of this) and academic journals (which ‘sell’ well if the stories are ‘good’), and also the ‘world’ (which wants to be helped and entertained by scientific knowledge). The scientist should know the inherent risk of this ‘charm’; the limitations of science itself and, of course, also the personal limits of the scientist are always present.

-- Fraud in science: a plea for a new culture in research, by M J Müller, B Landsberg & J Ried

[Narrator] The fact that the finds of Heinrich Schliemann and Arthur Evans met with such resonance,



is partly due to the work of the Gillierons. They too have had a crucial influence



on our image of Europe's first high culture.



The idea that King Minos's Crete was a paradise on Earth, and his subjects were peaceful art lovers.

Ashoka means “without sorrow” which was most likely his given name. He is referred to in his edicts, carved in stone, as Devanampiya Piyadassi which, according to scholar John Keay (and agreed upon by scholarly consensus) means “Beloved of the Gods” and “gracious of mien” (89). He is said to have been particularly ruthless early in his reign until he launched a campaign against the Kingdom of Kalinga in c. 260 BCE which resulted in such carnage, destruction, and death that Ashoka renounced war and, in time, converted to Buddhism, devoting himself to peace as exemplified in his concept of dhamma. Most of what is known of him, outside of his edicts, comes from Buddhist texts which treat him as a model of conversion and virtuous behavior.

The empire he and his family built did not last even 50 years after his death. Although he was the greatest of the kings of one of the largest and most powerful empires in antiquity, his name was lost to history until he was identified by the British scholar and orientalist James Prinsep (l. 1799-1840 CE) in 1837 CE. Since then, Ashoka has come to be recognized as one of the most fascinating ancient monarchs for his decision to renounce war, his insistence on religious tolerance, and his peaceful efforts in establishing Buddhism as a major world religion.

Although Ashoka's name appears in the Puranas (encyclopedic literature of India dealing with kings, heroes, legends, and gods), no information on his life is given there. The details of his youth, rise to power, and renunciation of violence following the Kalinga campaign come from Buddhist sources which are considered, in many respects, more legendary than historical....

-- Ashoka the Great, by World History Encyclopedia

[Narrator] Like his father, Emile Gillieron Jr.,



was never accused of any art forgery. He started a business in Athens. This family company produced successful copies of antique objects right up to modern times.

In Phaistos, Gareth Owens has almost achieved his goal,



after decades of working on the mysterious disc. As far as he is concerned, the disc is one of the most important examples of ancient scripts.

[Dr. Gareth Alun Owens, Linguist] We like to think that we are offering



a reading that is more secure than has been offered in the past. And we hope people will take advantage of that to move on to the next stage, which is trying to understand.



[Narrator] Jerome Eisenberg refuses to be distracted by Gareth Owen's success.



[Dr. Jerome Eisenberg, Art dealer] I still believe that it is 100% a forgery.



There is no question in my mind.



[Narrator] The suspicions attached over the decades about the authenticity of his disc, didn't appear to damage Pernier's career as an archaeologist. For 30 years, he performed research in Phaistos,



ignoring all the doubts and all the doubters.

[admin]

Shaun Greenhalgh [Sean Greenhouse] [and George Greenlaugh and Olive Greenlaugh] [George Greenhouse and Olive Greenhouse]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 12/22/22

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Shaun Greenhalgh


George Greenhalgh


Olive Greenhalgh

Born: 19 September 1961, Bromley Cross, Lancashire, England, UK
Criminal status: Released
Parent(s): George and Olive Greenhalgh
Criminal charge: Conspiracy to commit fraud, money laundering
Penalty: 4 years and 8 months in prison

Shaun Greenhalgh (born 1961) is a British artist and former art forger. Over a seventeen-year period, between 1989 and 2006, he produced a large number of forgeries. With the assistance of his brother and elderly parents, who fronted the sales side of the operation, he successfully sold his fakes internationally to museums, auction houses, and private buyers, accruing nearly £1 million.[1]

The family have been described by Scotland Yard as "possibly the most diverse forgery team in the world, ever". However, when they attempted to sell three Assyrian reliefs using the same provenance as they had previously, suspicions were finally raised.[2]

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London held an exhibition of Greenhalgh's works from 23 January to 7 February 2010.[3]

The Metropolitan Police's Art and Antiques Unit built a replica model of the shed where the works were created. Many of Greenhalgh's fakes, including the Amarna Princess, a version of the Roman Risley Park Lanx, and works supposedly by Barbara Hepworth and Thomas Moran, were displayed.[4]

Family roles

Greenhalgh's family was involved in "the garden shed gang". They established an elaborate cottage industry at his parents' house in The Crescent, Bromley Cross, South Turton, which is about 3.5 miles (6 km) north of Bolton town centre.[3] His parents, George and Olive, approached clients, while his older brother, George Jr., managed the money.[5][6][7]

Other members of the family were invoked to help establish the legitimacy of the fake items. These included Olive's father who owned an art gallery,[8] a great-grandfather who it seemed had had the foresight to buy well at auctions,[2] and an ancestor who had apparently worked for the Mayor of Bolton as a cleaner and was given a Thomas Moran paintng.[5]

Shaun Greenhalgh left school at 16 with no qualifications.[9] A self-taught artist, undoubtedly influenced by his job as an antiques dealer, he worked up his forgeries from sketches, photographs, art books and catalogues.[2][5][10] He attempted a wide range of crafts, from painting in pastels and watercolours, to sketches, and sculpture, both modern and ancient, busts and statues, to bas-relief and metalwork. He invested in a large range of different materials – silver, stone, marble, rare stone, replica metal, and glass.[2][5] He also did meticulous research to authenticate his items with histories and provenance (for instance, faking letters from the supposed artists) in order to demonstrate his ownership.[11] Completed items were then stored about the house and garden shed. The latter probably served as a workshop as well.

Detective Constable Ian Lawson of Scotland Yard, who searched the house, gave an indication of Greenhalgh's activities:

There were blocks of stone, a furnace for melting silver on top of the fridge, half-finished and rejected sculptures, a watercolour under the bed, a cheque for £20,000 dated 1993, and a bust of an American president in the loft. I’d never seen anything like it.[2]

A next-door neighbour recalled: "I was finding bits of pottery and coins around the edges of the garden over 20 years back – [things like] bits of metal with old kings on."[12] While this sounds as though materials were openly displayed, it was perhaps not quite that obvious. Angela Thomas, a curator from the Bolton Museum, actually visited the family at home prior to the purchase of the Amarna Princess and reported nothing untoward.[11]

Yet for all his daring – he once boasted that he could create a Thomas Moran watercolour in half an hour[5] and claimed to have completed an "Amarna" statue in three weeks – Shaun Greenhalgh needed the help of his parents.[11] At the trial it was said by the lawyer, Brian McKenna, that Greenhalgh's mother, Olive (1925–2016),[13] made the telephone calls "because he was shy and did not like to use the telephone."[14]

Olive may have been a peripheral figure,[14] but Shaun's father, George (1923–2014),[13] was more involved. He was the frontman, who met face-to-face with potential buyers. "He looks honest, he's elderly and he shows up in a wheelchair."[15] For example, George Sr. told the Bolton Museum that he was "thinking about using [the Amarna Princess statue] as a garden ornament".[5]

Greenhalgh's parents helped establish a logical explanation for why the Greenhalghs had possession of such items in the first place, namely as family heirlooms. It allowed them to offload items when they were discovered as fakes, such as the "Eadred Reliquary", and an L.S. Lowry painting, The Meeting House.[2][11][16][17]

The Amarna Princess


The Amarna Princess

Main article: Amarna Princess

In 1999, the Greenhalghs began their most ambitious project.[5] They bought an 1892 catalogue which listed the contents of an auction in Silverton Park, Devon, the home of the 4th Earl of Egremont. Among the items listed were "eight Egyptian figures."[18] Using the leeway this vague description allowed, Greenhalgh manufactured what became known as the Amarna Princess, a 20-inch statue, apparently made of a translucent alabaster. It later emerged within a Panorama documentary that he had bought the tools to produce this "masterpiece" from B&Q."[16]

Done in the Egyptian "Amarna period" style of 1350 BC, the statue represents one of the daughters of the Pharaoh Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti. At the time, as Greenhalgh had researched, only two other similar statuettes were known to exist in the world.[5][19] He "knocked up" his copy in his shed in three weeks out of calcite, "using basic DIY tools and making it look old by coating it in a mixture of tea and clay".[5][16]

George then approached Bolton Museum in 2002,[14] claiming the Amarna Princess was from his grandfather's "forgotten collection", bought at the Silverton Park auction.[2] He pretended to be ignorant about its true worth or value, but was careful to provide the letters Shaun had also faked, showing how the artefact had been in the family for "a hundred years".[5][16]

In 2003, after consulting experts at the British Museum and Christie's, the Bolton Museum bought the Amarna Princess for £439,767. It remained on display until February 2006. It has been subsequently re-displayed, since September 2018, as part of Bolton Museum's "Bolton's Egypt" Gallery as an example of fake Egyptian artefacts in the "Obsessions" section .[14]

Revenue

Had the Greenhalghs managed to sell all 120 artworks they had offered it is estimated that they could have earned as much as £10m.[2][5][20] This would have made the average value of each piece more than £83,000, although money received varied between £100 (for the Eadred Reliquary) and £440,000 (for the Amarna Princess). The Greenhalghs did not manage to offload most of their works. Many which they did sell, such as the Eadred Reliquary, purportedly were undersold, garnering only minimal amounts.[citation needed] Others, such as the Lowry painting The Meeting House, only gained in value from their repeated resale, which would not have benefited the Greenhalghs.

As time went on, more ambitious, expensive pieces of work were produced, some of which did sell, like the Risley Park Lanx. However, these were subject to more scrutiny and indeed it was one of these, the Assyrian reliefs, which led to their exposure and arrests, which suggests that the longevity of their scam was concentrated on the passing-off of lower level items.[21]

Balanced against this must be the success of sales to private individuals. They are unlikely to have had the same level of expertise at their disposal as institutions, and are probably less willing to advertise their losses once the forgeries were detected. Certainly they have not had the same exposure as the debacle surrounding the Bolton Museum, for example.[11] Two individual buyers, "wealthy Americans" have been identified, but only after they donated their purchase to the British Museum.[5]

Another piece sold to an unnamed private buyer came to light when the Art Institute of Chicago announced that The Faun, a ceramic sculpture on display since 1997 as the work of the 19th-century French master Paul Gauguin, was also a forgery by Shaun Greenhalgh. The museum purchased the sculpture from a private dealer in London, who had bought it at a Sotheby's auction in 1994.[22]

In addition, the bank records of the Greenhalghs only went back six years,[19] so in the final analysis the exact amount of monies involved over the seventeen-year scam has not been determined. What is known is that "two Halifax accounts... one containing £55,173 and the other £303,646" were frozen, pending a confiscation hearing in January 2008, and Shaun Greenhalgh was convicted for "conspiracy to conceal and transfer £410,392."[14] Estimates of the amount of money the Greenhalghs actually made vary from £850,000 to £1.5 million.[5][15]

Exposure

Possibly encouraged by their success in fooling experts, the Greenhalghs tried again using the same Silverton Park provenance. They produced what were purportedly three Assyrian reliefs of soldier and horses, from the Palace of Sennacherib in 600 BC.[5]

The British Museum examined them in November 2005, concluded that they were genuine, and expressed an interest in buying one of them, which seemed to match a drawing by A. H. Layard in its collection. However, when two of the reliefs were submitted to Bonhams auction house, its antiquities consultant Richard Falkiner spotted "an obvious fake".[23]

Bonhams consulted with the British Museum about various suspicious aspects, and the museum then spotted several improbable anomalies. The horses' reins were "not consistent"[15] or "atypical" with respect to other Assyrian reliefs; and the cuneiform inscription contained a spelling mistake,[5] an absent diacritical mark, which was considered extremely unlikely in a piece "destined for the eyes of the king". These concerns became full blown suspicion when George seemed too willing to part with the items at a low price.[10] The museum contacted the police, who investigated the Greenhalghs for the next 20 months.[24]

Court case, convictions and sentencing

At their trial at Bolton Crown Court in 2007, the three defendants pleaded guilty to creating the forgeries and laundering the money they received.[25] On 16 November, Shaun Greenhalgh was sentenced to 4 years and eight months, while his mother received a 12 month suspended sentence. The parents were using wheelchairs at their appearance for sentencing.[25] Judge William Morris, in sentencing Shaun Greenhalgh, stated: "This was an ambitious conspiracy of long duration based on your undoubted talent and based on the sophistication of the deceptions underpinning the sales and attempted sales. I speak of your talent but not in admiration. Your talent was misapplied to the ends of dishonest gain."[26] George Greenhalgh's sentence was delayed for medical reports in 2007,[25] eventually he received a suspended sentence of two years. If his age had not been grounds for mitigation, Judge William Morris said, he would have been sentenced to 31⁄2 years imprisonment. The prison service was unable to hold someone with his infirmities.[27]

Detective Sergeant Vernon Rapley, from the Metropolitan Police Arts and Antiquities Unit said shortly after the Greenhalgh's were sentenced: "Looking at them now I'm not sure the items would fool anyone, it was the credibility of the provenances that went with them."[16] The list of experts and institutions who were fooled is long, and includes the Tate Modern,[5] the British Museum, the Henry Moore Institute, and auction houses Bonhams, Christie's, Sotheby's and other experts from "Leeds to Vienna."[19] The Faun was displayed at the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam;[28] while the Amarna Princess went on display at the South Bank Hayward Art Gallery, in an exhibition opened by the Queen.[7] Other unnamed galleries, and various private collectors were fooled as well.[5]

Motivations and aftermath

The Greenhalgh family did not appear to make much use of the money they gained. They lived a "far from lavish life"[2] in a "shabby"[5] council house; among their possessions were "an old TV, battered sofa, and a Ford Focus", but not a computer.[2][16] According to Detective Sgt Rapley of the Metropolitan Police, the conditions were "relatively frugal" even "abject poverty".[19] Olive Greenhalgh claimed that she had "not even travelled outside of Bolton."[16]

As they did not display wealth, explanations other than desire for money have been proposed. Police suggested that Shaun Greenhalgh was motivated less by profit than by resentment at his own lack of recognition as an artist. This "general hatred"[16] became a need to "shame the art world" and "show them up", but this was denied by Greenhalgh in his autobiography, A Forger's Tale. The defence lawyer Andrew Nutall characterized Shaun Greenhalgh as a shy, introverted person, obsessed with "one outlook and that was his garden shed". The forgeries were an attempt to "perfect the love he had for such arts". By implication, the forgeries were a mere unintended, if unfortunate, consequence.[19]

In fact, institutions proclaimed the works and their achievement in obtaining them. The Art Institute of Chicago described The Faun sculpture as a "major rediscovery" and included it in their "definitive" exhibition on Gauguin.[28] Bolton Museum hailed their purchase of the Amarna Princess as "a coup," calling George Greenhalgh "a nice old man who had no idea of the significance of what he owned."[11]

After the trial, Bolton Museum scrambled to distance itself and described itself as "blameless"[11] insisting that it had followed established procedure.[14] The presiding judge, William Morris, exonerated the institution and any Council staff involved, preferring to focus on what he saw as "misapplied" talent and an "ambitious conspiracy;"[14] while the Metropolitan Police Arts and Antiquities Unit would only admit that Greenhalgh had succeeded "to a degree".[19]

However, the general public was notably more cynical in its reaction, being unimpressed by what they perceived as the experts' incompetence, and the law's heavy-handedness.[2] Richard Falkiner, the antiquities expert from Bonhams said, "I took one look at the relief and said 'don't make me laugh'...It was an obvious fake. It was far too freshly cut, was made of the wrong stone and was stylistically wrong for the period."[23]

Known forgeries


Greenhalgh's The Faun, which was passed off for a sculpture by Gauguin

During the trial, 44 forgeries were discussed, while 120 were known to have been presented to various institutions.[2][14] However, given the family's bank records only extended back for a third of the period they were operating, and Shaun Greenhalgh's high level of productivity, there are probably many more. On raiding the Greenhalgh home police discovered many raw materials and "scores of sculptures, paintings and artifacts, hidden in wardrobes, under their bed and in the garden shed."[15] In fact, "there can be little doubt that there are a number of forgeries still circulating within the art market."[19]

A description of known forgeries includes:

• 1989. Eadred Reliquary. A small 10th century silver vessel, containing a relic of the true cross of Jerusalem. George Greenhalgh turned up "dripping wet" at Manchester University, claiming he'd found it in a river terrace, at Preston. University determined vessel was a fake; but unsure about the wood. Purchased it for £100.[29] The subject of an academic thesis.[19]
• 1990. Samuel Peploe still life painting, purportedly inherited from Olive's grandfather, sold for £20,000. However, paint began to flake off and the buyer cancelled the cheque. Scotland Yard failed to make an arrest at the time due to "organisational restraints."[30][31]
• 1992. The Risley Park Lanx. A Roman silver plate bought for £100,000 by private buyers and donated to the British Museum, who displayed it as a genuine replica.[31][32]
• 1993–1994. Thomas Moran sketch and watercolour acquired by Bolton Museum. "The former was a gift given by the Greenhalghs; the latter was purchased for £10,000."[33]
• 1994. The Faun. A ceramic sculpture by Paul Gauguin. Authenticated by the Wildenstein Institute, sold at Sothebys auction in 1994 for £20,700 to private London dealers, Howie & Pillar. Bought by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1997 for $125,000. On display until October 2007.[28]
• 1995. Anglo-Saxon ring. Tried to sell it through Phillips Auctioneers; determined by British Museum to be a fake.[31]
• 1995. 24 sketches by Thomas Moran sold in New York. Police believe up to 40, worth up to £10,000, were created by Greenhalgh, six or seven of which are unaccounted for. He claimed each one only took him thirty minutes to forge, and that a former mayor of Bolton had given them to an ancestor of his who worked for the mayor as a cleaner.[5][8][34]
• L.S. Lowry. The Meeting House (a pastel, one of a "clutch of paintings").[2][5][16] The Greenhalghs claimed it was a 21st birthday present by Olive's gallery owner father,[8] and even that some were given by Lowry himself. They had copied letters from the artist, inserting their names in to make it look like they were great friends. For example, this letter dated 16 June 1946:

Dear George, Thank you very much for your recent letter and cheque for the paintings. I have about finished the [illegible] but I will hold onto it untill I am(?) ready. I will slip round to the yard on Wed. L S Lowry. Received 45.0.0 for paintings

One of the Lowrys, perhaps the one mentioned above, sold as a replica, for somewhere between "several hundred pounds"[8] and £5,000. Eventually put up for auction by new owners in Kent as genuine item, for £70,000.[2]
• 1999. Two gold Roman ornaments. George Greenhalgh withdrew them from Christie's when the auction house wanted to do a scientific analysis on them.[31]
• Barbara Hepworth goose sculpture. Only a photograph known to exist, before item lost in the late 1920s. The Greenhalghs claimed it was given to the family "by the curator of a museum in Leeds" in the 1950s. Worth approximately £200,000 it was later sold to the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds for £3,000.[5][8][29]
• Work by Otto Dix. Stolen from Dresden in 1939. Apparently recovered by the Greenhalghs then presented to the Tate Gallery .[12]
• Work by Man Ray.[12]
• Another Paul Gauguin, a vase.[35]
• An ancient Celtic fibula (or brooch)[15]
• Horatio Greenough. Bust of Thomas Jefferson,[5] sold at Sotheby's for £48,000.[31] And/or Thomas Chatterton[34]
• Henry Moore. A carved stone head by Henry Moore, which Greenhalgh Snr tried to convince the Tate Modern, London to buy, claiming to have got it via his grandmother.[5]
• 2003 Amarna Princess, a statuette. In the family for "a hundred years." Authenticated by the British Museum and Sothebys, bought by Bolton Museum for £440,000, it was on display for three years. A police raid on the Greenhalgh home discovered two more copies.[2][5][16][30]
• 2005. Three Assyrian marble reliefs from Nineveh, including one of an eagle-headed genie and another of soldiers and horses. They were dated by the British Museum at around 681BC, supposedly from the Palace of Sennacherib, and thought to be worth around £250,000 to £300,000. But alerted by Bonhams, their discrepancies were revealed, and the forgery exposed.[5][9][16][23]

Career after release

Following Shaun Greenhalgh's release in early 2010, he launched a website selling his artworks. These comprise works the website describes as "examples of my old style of work...'fakes'," signed and sold as works by him, as well as sculptures in his own style. A member of the Metropolitan Police Art and Antique Squad stated "If a work is not copyrighted, it is not illegal to copy that work and sell that copy, as long as it is made very clear the work is not an original."[36]

La Bella Principessa claim


La Bella Principessa on display at Villa Reale Monza in 2015

In November 2015 as part of the publicity for the upcoming A Forger's Tale, an article in The Sunday Times put forward Greenhalgh's claim that he was the creator of La Bella Principessa attributed to Leonardo da Vinci.[37]

A December 2015 article in The New York Times also promoted Greenhalgh's claimed authorship of the work, which it said he had made in the late 1970s, around the age of 20, using vellum recycled from a 16th-century land deed and the face of a supermarket check-out girl named "Alison" who worked in Bolton.[38]

Greenhalgh repeated his claim to be the creator in a May 2017 interview with Simon Parkin in The Guardian, observing that he had studied the work again when it was exhibited at the Villa Reale di Monza in 2015.[39] The Postscript chapter in Greenhalgh's 2017 autobiography provided further details about his claim, identifying the sitter as "Bossy Sally from the Co-Op" (p. 356).

Art historian Martin Kemp said he found the claim hilarious and ridiculous.[40]

Television programmes

On 4 January 2009, BBC Two broadcast a dramatisation of the Greenhalgh story called The Antiques Rogue Show, a play on the title of the BBC series Antiques Road Show,[41] already used by headline writers. In a letter from prison to the Bolton News, Shaun Greenhalgh complained about the depiction of himself and his family, calling the drama "character assassination".[42]

Shaun Greenhalgh appeared in the 2012 BBC documentary The Dark Ages: An Age of Light and is listed as "Craftsman" in the credits.[43]

In October 2019, he appeared in Handmade in Bolton on BBC2, a short documentary series fronted by Janina Ramirez, directed and narrated by Waldemar Januszczak, in which he remade four objects from the past using traditional materials and methods.[44]

Autobiography

His autobiography A Forger's Tale: Confessions of the Bolton Forger was originally published in a limited edition in 2015 by ZCZ Editions. The first full edition was published on 1 June 2017 with an Introduction by Waldemar Januszczak.[45] It won The Observer's Best Art Book of the Year, 2018.

References

1. The Guardian "How garden shed fakers fooled the art world", 16 November 2007.
2. O’Neill, Sean; Jenkins, Russell (17 November 2007). "The £10m art collection that was forged by a family in their garden shed in Bolton". The Times. Archived from the original on 17 May 2011.
3. "Armana Pricess: "I dismantled art forgers work without realising"". Bolton News. 19 December 2009. Retrieved 21 December 2009.
4. "The Metropolitan Police Service's Investigation of Fakes and Forgeries – V&A future exhibitions". Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 22 December 2009.
5. "The artful codgers: pensioners who conned British museums with £10m forgeries". This is London. 16 November 2007.
6. Smith, Amanda (21 April 2007). "£1m fake statue: family charged". The Bolton News.
7. Stokes, Paul (1 August 2007). "Family sells fake Egyptian statue for £400,000". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 24 August 2007.
8. Chadwick, Edward (17 November 2007). "Antiques Rogues Show: Update 3". The Bolton News.
9. Chadwick, Edward (21 November 2007). "Con artist set to appeal". The Bolton News.
10. Milmo, Cahal (19 November 2007). "Family of forgers fool art world with beautifully crafted fakes". New Zealand Herald.
11. Linton, Deborah. "Family con that fooled the art world", Manchester Evening News, 16 November 2007.
12. Grove, Sophie. "Fake It Till You Make It", Newsweek, 15 December 2007.
13. "Guardian interview for A Forger's Tale". Retrieved 15 November 2020.
14. Chadwick, Edward. "Antiques rogues show update", The Bolton News, 17 November 2007.
15. "Elderly couple, son sentenced for creating knockoff art and antiques for 17 years". International Herald Tribune. 16 November 2007.
16. Kelly, James (17 November 2007). "Fraudsters who resented the art market". BBC News.
17. See also discussion of this in Reactions section.
18. Malvern, Jack. "The ancient Egypt statue from Bolton (circa 2003)", Times Online, 27 March 2006.
19. Ward, David (17 November 2007). "How garden shed fakers fooled the art world". The Guardian.
20. "Authentication in Art List of Unmasked Forgers".
21. Thompson, Clive. "How to make a fake", New York Magazine, 24 May 2004; accessed 26 December 2007.
22. Artner, Alan. "Art Institute of Chicago discloses Gauguin sculpture in fact a forgery", Chicago Tribune, 12 December 2007.
23. Macquisten, Ivan. "It was Bonhams and ATG columnist who first raised alarm over Greenhalgh fakes", Antiques Trade Gazette, 3 December 2007.
24. Hundley, Tom (11 February 2008). "A masterpiece of deception". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 11 July 2022.
25. Lovell, Jeremy (16 November 2007). "82-year-old art forger sentenced". Reuters. Retrieved 11 July 2022.
26. "British art forger jailed for four years". The Irish Times. PA. 16 November 2007. Retrieved 11 July 2022.
27. Pallister, David; Carter, Helen (29 January 2008). "Curtain falls on antiques rogue show as last of family forgers convicted". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 July 2022.
28. Bailey, Martin (12 December 2007). "Revealed: Art Institute of Chicago Gaugain sculpture is fake". The Art Newspaper.
29. Bunyan, Paul (18 November 2007). "Downfall of council house art fakers". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 17 November 2007.
30. Flynn, Tom. "Faking It" (PDF). Art Quarterly (Summer 2007). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 October 2011.
31. Pallister, David. "Background:'The antique road show,", Guardian, 28 January 2008.
32. British Museum: The Risley Park Lanx (copy), replica, lanx, Romano-British, Risley Park
33. Bolton Museum, (no byline). "Amarna Princess statement" Archived 20 November 2008 at the Wayback Machine, Bolton Museum, 29 November 2007.
34. Milmo, Cahal (17 November 2007). "Family of forgers fooled art world with array of finely crafted". The Independent. Retrieved 13 December 2007.
35. Lovell, Jeremy (17 November 2007). "Octogenarian British art forger sentenced". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 9 November 2011.
36. "Bolton Evening News article". 2 December 2011.
37. Boswell, Josh; Rayment, Tim (29 November 2015). "'It's not a da Vinci, it's Sally from the Co-op'". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 1 December 2015. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
38. Reyburn, Scott (4 December 2015). "An Art World Mystery Worthy of Leonardo". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 December 2015.
39. 'I wasn’t cock-a-hoop that I’d fooled the experts': Britain's master forger tells all
40. Kemp, Martin (29 November 2015). "La Bella Principessa is a "forgery"!!!". Martin Kemp's This and That.
41. "BBC programme details".
42. Paul Keavaney (27 January 2009). "I do not believe my family has been portrayed fairly". The Bolton News.
43. The Dark Ages: An Age of Light, episode # 4.
44. BBC: Handmade in Bolton
45. Greenhalgh, Shaun (2017). A Forger's Tale: Confessions of the Bolton Forger (first ed.). London: Allen & Unwin. ISBN 9781760295271.

Sources

• Artner, Alan. "Art Institute of Chicago discloses Gauguin sculpture in fact a forgery", Chicago Tribune, 12 December 2007; accessed 13 December 2007.
• Bolton Museum, (no byline). "Amarna Princess statement", Bolton Museum, 29 November 2007; accessed 15 December 2007.
• Bailey, Martin. "Revealed: Art Institute of Chicago Gaugain sculpture is fake", The Art Newspaper, 12 December 2007; accessed 13 December 2007.
• Bunyan, Nigel. "Downfall of council house art fakers", Telegraph, 18 November 2007; accessed 13 December 2007.
• Chadwick, Edward. "Antiques rogues show update", The Bolton News, 17 November 2007; accessed 18 November 2007.
• Chadwick, Edward. "Antiques rogues show: update 3", The Bolton News, 17 November 2007; accessed 30 November 2007.
• Chadwick, Edward. "Con artist set to appeal", The Bolton News, 21 November 2007; accessed 30 November 2007.
• Fenton, James. "Fakes and counterfeits", The Guardian, 24 November 2007; accessed 30 November 2007.
• Flynn, Tom. "Faking It", Art Quarterly, Summer 2007; accessed 13 December 2007.
• International Herald Tribune (no byline). "Elderly couple, son sentenced for creating knockoff art and antiques for 17 years", International Herald Tribune, 16 November 2007; accessed 18 November 2007.
• Grove, Sophie. "Fake It Till You Make It", Newsweek, 15 December 2007; accessed 17 December 2007.
• Kelly, James. "Fraudsters who resented the art market", BBC News, 16 November 2007; accessed 17 November 2007.
• Linton, Deborah. "Family con that fooled the art world", Manchester Evening News, 16 November 2007; accessed 18 November 2007.
• Lovell, Jeremy. "Octogenarian British art forger sentenced", New Zealand Herald, 17 November 2007; accessed 20 November 2007.
• Macquisten, Ivan. "It was Bonhams and ATG columnist who first raised alarm over Greenhalgh fakes", Antiques Trade Gazette, 3 December 2007; accessed 17 December 2007.
• Milmo, Cahal. "Family of forgers fool art world with beautifully crafted fakes", New Zealand Herald, 19 November 2007; accessed 20 November 2007.
• Milmo, Cahal. "Family of forgers fooled art world with array of finely crafted", Independent, 17 November 2007; accessed 13 December 2007.
• Smith, Amanda. "£1m fake statue: family charged", The Bolton News, 21 April 2007; accessed 30 November 2007.
• Stokes, Paul. " Family sells fake Egyptian statue for £400,000", Telegraph, 1 August 2007. Accessed 30 November 2007.
• This Is London, (no byline). "The artful codgers: pensioners who conned British museums with £10m forgeries", This Is London, 16 November 2007; accessed 18 November 2007.
• Times Online, (no byline). "Octogenarian art-forgers bought to justice", Times Online, 16 November 2007; accessed 22 November 2007.
• Thompson, Clive. "How to make a fake", New York Magazine, 24 May 2004; accessed 26 December 2007.
• Ward, David. "How garden shed fakers fooled the art world", The Guardian, 17 November 2007; accessed 17 November 2007.

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Art Institute of Chicago discloses Gauguin sculpture in fact a forgery: Sculpture sold as a Gauguin is fake
By Alan G. Artner
Tribune art critic
December 12, 2007


Faun Sculpture Chicago Art Institute. The Art Institute of Chicago has discovered that a sculpture alleged to be a 19th Century work by Paul Gauguin is a forgery. (Photo courtesy The Art Institute of Chicago / December 11, 2007)

For about a decade, “The Faun,” a ceramic sculpture, has been at the Art Institute of Chicago, presented as a work of the 19th Century French master Paul Gauguin.

On Tuesday, the museum announced that the work, which it bought in 1997, is a forgery. “The Faun” has been confirmed to be one of a long string of contemporary forgeries by the Greenhalgh family, which Scotland Yard had been investigating for 20 months.

The museum purchased the sculpture from a private dealer in London, who had bought it at a Sotheby’s auction in 1994.

“Everyone who bought and sold [the work] did so in good faith,” said Erin Hogan, director of public affairs at the institute.

“No one could think of any other instance in which anything like this happened here,” Hogan said. “So we don’t have experience in this area. We’re talking to both Sotheby’s and the private dealer about how to proceed” to get compensated for the money it spent to buy the work. As is customary, the institute did not reveal the purchase price.

The piece was the object of art historical research upon acquisition, but there was no reason to believe it was anything other than represented, Hogan said.

The sculpture was on display at the museum until October. Shaun Greenhalgh, who made all the objects forged by the family, confessed to authorities that “The Faun” was his handiwork. The family had consigned it to Sotheby’s.

Buyers at major auctions generally are protected by an indemnification clause that allows the sale to be rescinded if the works turn out to be inauthentic. Sotheby’s might go back to the Greenhalgh family to refund the purchase price.

Shaun Greenhalgh received a prison sentence of 4 years and 8 months last month. His mother, Olive, 83, was given a 12-month suspended sentence. The father, George, 84, salesman of all the forged objects, had a deferred sentence pending medical reports.

For 17 years, the family carried on one of the most sophisticated forgery operations in modern history, faking scores of objects including antiquities, watercolors, paintings and modern sculpture, authorities said. Many of the pieces were copies of ancient objects or artworks thought to be lost.

Their “reappearance” caused great excitement. Family members brought several pieces to experts and museums with elaborate stories of inheritance. Detailed accounts of previous owners also were supplied — and also were invented.

According to the Daily Mail in London, “the conspiracy secured them around 1.2 million [euros],” or about $1.77 million. “Had all the items forged been sold, experts estimated the family could have earned as much as 14 million [euros],” or about $20.6 million.

———–

[email protected]

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Jailed for Fake Statue: Forgery factory run from council house
Family's 17-year con with forged paintings, documents and artifacts Worth Millions
by The Bolton News
17th November 2007

AN elderly couple and their son who tricked Bolton Council into parting with £440,000 for a fake statue conned the art world with a string of elaborate schemes for nearly two decades.

Shaun Greenhalgh was a talented artist and sculptor who used his skills to create copies of rare and sought-after masterpieces at the family's home in The Crescent, Bromley Cross.

His wheelchair-bound father, George, aged 84, acted as a convincing salesman and provided carefully researched stories about the origins of every fake they passed off as real.

Olive Greenhalgh, aged 83, made phone calls to unwitting buyers to arrange meetings.

The artworks included a copy of the 3,300-year-old Amarna Princess statue bought by Bolton Council in 2003 after being convinced by George Greenhalgh that it was a family heirloom.

Instead, it was the family's most elaborate and audacious con - and even fooled Egyptology experts at the British Museum.

It was revealed at Bolton Crown Court yesterday that Shaun Greenhalgh, aged 47 - a self-taught artist - had carved it himself in a garden shed in just three weeks.

The deceit was exposed only when other stone carvings, purported to date from 900BC, were spotted to be modern copies.

The court heard about 44 other items which the family sold or attempted to sell between 1989 and 2006 - among them copies of work by LS Lowry, Paul Gaugin and Bolton-born painter Thomas Moran.

Detectives say dozens of fakes may still be in circulation.

Shaun Greenhalgh was jailed for four years and eight months after admitting defrauding art institutions between 1989 and 2006 and conspiracy to conceal and transfer £410,392.

His mother was given a 12-month suspended sentence and her husband will be sentenced at a later date pending medical reports.

But Judge William Morris made it clear the pensioner was facing a jail term.

Both admitted the same charges as their son.

The judge told Shaun Greenhalgh: "This was an ambitious conspiracy of long duration based on your undoubted talent and based on the sophistication of the deceptions underpinning the sales and attempted sales.

"I speak of your talent but not in admiration. Your talent was misapplied to the ends of dishonest gain."

Judge Morris said the fraud had cheated private collectors and galleries out of £850,000.

Bolton Museum was approached by George Greenhalgh in 2002. He asked staff if they would like to view the 20-inch statue which he said had been passed down from his great-grandfather.

He told them he knew little of Egyptian antiquities and said the item had been valued at £500 before allowing the member of staff to take it away for examination.

His claims were backed up by a catalogue from the sale of a house and its contents in 1892.

Shaun Greenhalgh used details in the catalogue to manufacture a copy of the statue, said Peter Cadwallader, prosecuting.

The figure was taken to Christie's and the British Museum where experts said it was genuine after comparing it to a similar item at the Louvre in Paris.

After Bolton Council paid £439,767 to the family, the purchase was hailed as a coup as the statue was believed to be worth £1 million.

It was said to represent one of the daughters of Pharaoh Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti, the mother of Tutankhamun.

It remained on show until February, 2006.

Curators at the British Museum called police when they became suspicious about three pieces of stone with raised "reliefs" which were offered to them by George Greenhalgh in October, 2005.

Although they were initially believed to be genuine and worth as much as £250,000, experts at the museum and Bonham's auctioneers realised they were fakes and phoned police.

In February, 2006, Bolton Museum was contacted by the Metropolitan Police's arts and antiques unit which raised doubts about the Amarna Princess.

The purchase was funded by grants as well as a donation of £4,000 from the Friends of Bolton Museum.

Judge Morris said there could be no criticism of anybody within the council or museum for falling for the con.

Andrew Nuttall, defending Shaun Greenhalgh, said: "As an artist, Shaun Greenhalgh does not have a style of his own. What he can do is copy.

"He was completely self-taught. In some respects that may make him unique."

Brian McKenna, defending Mrs Greenhalgh, said she had made phonecalls on behalf of her son because he was shy and did not like to use the telephone.

"In terms of involvement in this conspiracy, she was on the periphery, but it would be wrong of me to suggest that she did not know what was going on," he said.

Outside court, Stephanie Crossley, assistant director of adult services at Bolton council, said the incident had been "regrettable but the council carefully followed established practice.

She added: "We welcome the judge's comments. He said that we were victims of the most clever deception'.

"The museum did not rely on its own judgment. He said that he could see no criticism of Bolton Museum in what it had done and no criticism of any individual."

No council money had been contributed towards the sale, she added.

Two Halifax accounts in the name of Shaun Greenhalgh, one containing £55,173 and the other £303,646, have been frozen and a confiscation hearing will be held at Bolton Crown Court on January 25 next year.

[admin]

Part 1 of 3

Chapter Two: The Oral Tradition, From "Education in Ancient India"
by Hartmut Scharfe
2002
© Copyright 2002 by Koninklije Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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On one of the main tributaries of the Ganges, a smaller river known as the Yamuna, sits the city of Delhi. Delhi is one of the oldest cities in the world. It has been continually inhabited for more than 8,000 years. The soil on the banks of the Yamuna is rich, and so, the people here have always flourished. It's in this region of northwestern India, during the period following the collapse of the Indus Valley civilization, that the earliest examples of written texts were laid down in the ancient northern language of Sanskrit. These texts began to be written around three and a half thousand years ago, and they are known as the Vedas. Unfortunately for us, many of these early texts were written on fragile, perishable substances, many of them on paper made of the bark of the Himalayan birch tree, using inks made of ash. Some of these texts, remarkably, have survived from as far back as the third or fourth centuries, but in most cases they have been lost. The oldest of these Sanskrit texts, known as the Rigveda, was probably transmitted orally from at least the second millennium BC, or more than four thousand years ago. In it is contained a poetic vision of how written language developed in this region.

When in giving names, they first set forth the beginning of language. Their most excellent and spotless secret was laid bare through love. When the wise ones formed language with their mind, purifying it like grain with a winnowing fan, then friends knew friendships, an auspicious mark placed on their language.

The publication of these texts had an enormous impact. For about a thousand years after 300 BC, the language of Sanskrit, once spoken only in the north of India, would spread to eclipse all others, becoming the common language of art, science, religion, and poetry, much as Latin once was in Europe. It was in this period that the Vedic religion formed based on the script of the Vedas, and from this, after a number of adaptations and evolutions, would emerge the religion we know today as Hinduism.

-- Vijayanagara: The Last Emperors of South India, by Paul Cooper, Fall of Civilizations

 
CHAPTER TWO: THE ORAL TRADITION
  
The outstanding feature of the oldest Indian education and Indian culture in general, especially in the centuries B.C., is its orality. The Vedic texts make no reference to writing, and there is no reliable indication that writing was known in India except perhaps in the northwestern provinces when these were under Achaemenid rule, since the time of Darius or even Cyrus. Those who write down the Veda go to hell, as the Mahabharata tells us,1

1 Mahabharata XIII 24.70 vedanam lekhakas caiva te vai niraya-gaminah.

and Kumarila [700 A.D.] confirms: "That knowledge of the truth is worthless which has been acquired from the Veda, if the Veda has not been rightly comprehended or if it has been learnt from writing."2

2 Tantra-varttika 13 (p.86); p.123.20 in K.V. Abhyankar's ed., Pune 1970. Al-Biruni (Alberuni's India, trans. E.C. Sachau, London 1910, vol.1 p. 125) reported in the eleventh century: "They do not allow the Veda to be committed to writing."

Kumarila Bhatta (fl. roughly 700) was a Hindu philosopher and a scholar of Mimamsa school of philosophy from early medieval India. He is famous for many of his various theses on Mimamsa, such as Mimamsaslokavarttika. Bhaṭṭa was a staunch believer in the supreme validity of Vedic injunction, a champion of Purva-Mimamsaand a confirmed ritualist. The Varttika is mainly written as a subcommentary of Sabara's commentary on Jaimini's Purva Mimamsa Sutras. His philosophy is classified by some scholars as existential realism...

The birthplace of Kumarila Bhatta is uncertain. According to the 16th-century Buddhist scholar Taranatha, Kumarila was a native of South India. However, Anandagiri's Shankara-Vijaya states that Kumarila came from "the North" (udagdeśāt), and debated the Buddhists and the Jains in the South.

Another theory is that he came from eastern India, specifically Kamarupa (present-day Assam). Sesa's Sarvasiddhanta-rahasya uses the eastern title Bhattacharya for him. His writings indicate that he was familiar with the production of silk, which was common in present-day Assam. Yet another theory is that he comes from Mithila, which has similar culture to Assam, and produced another scholar on the subject Mandana Misra....

According to legend, Kumarila went to study Buddhism at Nalanda (the largest 4th-century university in the world), with the aim of refuting Buddhist doctrine in favour of Vedic religion. He was expelled from the university when he protested against his teacher (Dharmakirti) ridiculing the Vedic rituals. Legend has it that even though he was thrown off of the university's tower, he survived with an eye injury by claiming "if the Vedas are the ultimate then I will be spared from Death". Modern Mimamsa scholars and followers of Vedanta believe that this was because he imposed a condition on the infallibility of the Vedas thus encouraging the Hindu belief that one should not even doubt the infallibility of the Vedas.

The Madhaviya Sankara Digvijayam, a 14th-century hagiographic work on the life of Sankara, claims that Sankara challenged Bhatta to a debate on his deathbed. Kumarila Bhatta could not debate Sankara as he was punishing himself to have disrespected his Buddhist teacher by defeating him in a debate using the Vedas by self-immolation at the banks of Ganga at Prayagraj and instead directed him to argue with his student Mandana Misra in Mahiṣmati.

-- Kumarila Bhatta, by Wikipedia

Sayana [d. 1387] wrote in the introduction to his Rgveda commentary that "the text of the Veda is to be learned by the method of learning it from the lips of the teacher and not from a manuscript."3

3 Rig-Veda Samhita, ed. F.Max Muller, 2nd ed. London 1890 (repr. Varanasi 1966), p. 14 line 15 adhyayana-vidhis ca likhita-pathadi vyavrtydhyayana-samskrtatvam svadhyayasya gamayati.

Sayana (also called Sayanacarya; died 1387) was a Sanskrit Mimamsa scholar from the Vijayanagara Empire of South India, near modern day Bellary. An influential commentator on the Vedas, he flourished under King Bukka Raya I and his successor Harihara II. More than a hundred works are attributed to him, among which are commentaries on nearly all parts of the Vedas. He also wrote on a number of subjects like medicine, morality, music and grammar...

He was the pupil of Vishnu Sarvajna and of Shankarananda. Both Madhavacharya and Sayanacharya were said to have studied under Vidyatirtha of Sringeri, and held offices in the Vijayanagara Empire. Sayanacharya was a minister, and subsequently prime minister in Bukka Raya's court, and wrote much of his commentary, with his brother and other Brahmins during his ministership...

His major work is his commentary on the Vedas, Vedartha Prakasha, literally "the meaning of the Vedas made manifest," written at the request of King Bukka of the Vijayanagara empire "to invest the young kingdom with the prestige it needed." He was probably aided by other scholars, using the interpretations of several authors. The core portion of the commentary was likely written by Sayanacharya himself, but it also includes contributions of his brother Madhavacharya, and additions by his students and later authors who wrote under Sayanacharya's name. "Sayana" (or also Sayanamadhava) by convention refers to the collective authorship of the commentary as a whole without separating such layers.

Galewicz states that Sayana, a Mimamsa scholar, "thinks of the Veda as something to be trained and mastered to be put into practical ritual use," noticing that "it is not the meaning of the mantras that is most essential [...] but rather the perfect mastering of their sound form." According to Galewicz, Sayana saw the purpose (artha) of the Veda as the "artha of carrying out sacrifice," giving precedence to the Yajurveda. For Sayana, whether the mantras had meaning depended on the context of their practical usage. This conception of the Veda, as a repertoire to be mastered and performed, takes precedence over the internal meaning or "autonomous message of the hymns."...

According to Dalal, "his work influenced all later scholars, including many European commentators and translators." Sayana's commentary preserved traditional Indian understandings and explanations of the Rigveda, though it also contains mistakes and contradictions. While some 19th century Indologists were quite dismissive of Sayana's commentary, others were more appreciative. His commentary was used as a reference-guide by Ralph T. H. Griffith (1826-1906), John Muir (1810-1882), Horace Hayman Wilson (1786-1860) and other 19th century European Indologists. According to Wilson, Sayana's interpretation was sometimes questionable, but had "a knowledge of his text far beyond the pretension of any European scholar," reflecting the possession "of all the interpretations which had been perpetuated by traditional teaching from the earliest times." Macdonnell (1854-1930) was critical of Sayana's commentary, noting that many difficult words weren't properly understood by Sayana. While Rudolf Roth (1821-1895) aimed at reading the Vedas as "lyrics" without the "theological" background of the interpretations of Yaska and Sayana, Max Müller (1823-1900) published a translation of the Rigvedic Samhitas together with Sayana's commentary....

Modern scholarship is ambivalent. According to Jan Gonda, the translations of the Rigveda published by Griffith and Wilson were "defective," suffering from their reliance on Sayana. Ram Gopal notes that Sayana's commentary contains irreconcilable contradictions and "half-baked" tentative interpretations which are not further investigated, but also states that Sayana's commentary is the "most exhaustive and comprehensive" of all available commentaries, embodying "the gist of a substantial portion of the Vedic interpretations of his predecessors." Swami Dayananda, the founder of Arya Samaj, did not give much significance to his vedic commentaries.

-- Sayana, by Wikipedia

Several reasons are given for this restriction, among them the fear that the sacred knowledge could fall into the hands of members of the lower castes, or that the student may not be fit for the sacred and supposedly powerful knowledge; the need to recite the Vedic mantras4

4 AsGS III 2,2 informs us of the correct way to recite the Veda for oneself: outside the village, on a clean spot, facing east, "looking at the point where heaven and earth touch each other, or shutting his eyes, in whatever way he may deem himself apt" (dyava-prthivyoh sandhim iksamanah sammilya va yatha va yuktam atmanam manyeta).

with correct accents and intonations, if disaster is to be avoided, reinforced the need for oral instruction.5

5 A.S. Altekar, Education in Ancient India, 6th ed., Benares 1965, p.46.

The original and most powerful—if unspoken—reason probably is the belief that the instruction in Vedic lore had always been conducted in this way, a holdover from the time when script was completely unknown in India. Some later authors6

6 D.D. Kosambi. Ancient India, New York 1966, p. 78: from the fourteenth century on. But the practice must be older, or else the condemnation in Mbh XIII 24.70 (see p. 8 fn. 1; how old this stanza is would be hard to tell) makes little sense. A manuscript of a minor Vedic text, the Naksatra-kalpa (found also in the Atharvaveda-parisista), discovered in Central Asia was dated by its editor A.F. Hoernle (JAS Bengal 62 [1893], pp.11-40) in the fifth century A.D.; H. Falk, Die Schrift im alien Indien, Tubingen 1993, p. 284. Al Biruni reported in the early eleventh century that "recently" Vasukra from Kashmir had written down and explained the Veda: Alberuni's India, vol. I p. 126. L. Renou, Classical India, vol. 3: Vedic India, p. 2 refers to an eleventh century manuscript.

permit the writing down of Vedic texts, but only as a teaching aid, for reviewing previous oral instruction.
 
The antiquity of writing in India is a controversial topic. A script has been discovered in the excavations of the Indus Valley Civilization that flourished in the Indus valley and adjacent areas in the third millennium B.C. The number of different signs suggest a syllabic script, but all attempts at decipherment have been unsuccessful so far. Attempts by some Indian scholars to connect this undeciphered script with the Indian scripts in vogue from the third century B.C. onward are total failures.7

7 B.B. Lai, in Vivekananda Memorial Volume. India's Contribution to the World Thought and Culture, edd. Lokesh Chandra et al., Madras 1970, pp. 189-202; Kamil V. Zvelebil, Dravidian Linguistics: An Introduction, Pondicherry 1990, pp. 84-98; Gregory L. Possehl, Indus Age. The Writing System, Philadelphia 1996, reviews all recent attempts of decipherment.

Aberrations are also attempts to conclude from Rgvedic expressions like aksara8

8 J. van Buitenen, JAOS 79 (1959), pp. 176-187 argues that the meaning "syllable" is the primary meaning of the word, the others secondary, possibly by etymological reanalysis.

"immovable, imperishable, syllable, and (very much later) syllabic letter" that script was known to the authors of the Rgvedic hymns.9

9 Radha Kumud Mookerji, Ancient Indian Education, 3rd ed. Delhi 1960, pp. 227f.

 
For a century the prevailing view, among Western scholars at least, was based on the studies of Albrecht Weber and Georg Buhler, who noticed the strong similarity of several letters of Asokan [Ashokan] Brahmi with letters in Phoenician and old Aramaic inscriptions, notably on the stone of Mesa dated in the eighth century B.C.10

10 Albrecht Weber. ZDMG 31 (1877), pp. 598-612 and Georg Buhler, On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet, 2nd ed. Strassburg 1898, pp. 55f. and Plate 1.

Buhler assumed therefore that the Brahmi script was borrowed from the old Aramaic script sometime in the eighth century (or at least based on it), probably for commercial purposes; it was only emperor Asoka [Ashoka] who used it for his monumental stone inscriptions and thus left us the earliest proof of Indian writing.11

The most important single error made by almost everyone in Buddhist studies is methodological and theoretical in nature. In all scholarly fields, it is absolutely imperative that theories be based on the data, but in Buddhist studies, as in other fields like it, even dated, "provenanced" archaeological and historical source material that controverts the traditional view of Early Buddhism has been rejected because it does not agree with that traditional view, and even worse, because it does not agree with the traditional view of the entire world of early India, including beliefs about Brahmanism and other sects that are thought to have existed at that time, again based not on hard data but on the same late traditional accounts. Some of these beliefs remain largely or completely unchallenged, notably:

• the belief that Sramanas existed before the Buddha, so he became a Sramana like many other Sramanas

• the belief that there were Sramanas besides Early Buddhists, including Jains and Ajivikas, whose sects were as old or older than Buddhism, and the Buddha even knew some of their founders personally

• that, despite the name Sramana, and despite the work of Marshall, Bareau, and Schopen, the Early Buddhists were "monks" and lived in "monasteries" with a monastic rule, the Vinaya

• that, despite the scholarship of Bronkhorst, the Upanishads and other Brahmanist texts are very ancient, so old that they precede Buddhism, so the Buddha was influenced by their ideas

• that the dated Greek eyewitness reports on religious-philosophical practitioners in late fourth century BC India do not tally with the traditional Indian accounts written a half millennium or more later, so the Greek reports must be wrong and must be ignored

• perhaps most grievously, the belief that all stone inscriptions in the early Brahmi script of the Mauryan period were erected by "Asoka", the traditional grandson of the Mauryan Dynasty's historical[???] founder, Candragupta, and whatever any of those inscriptions say is therefore evidence about what went on during (or before) the time he is thought to have lived

• we "know" what problematic terms (such as Sanskrit duhkha -- Pali dukkha) mean, despite the fact that their meaning is actually contested by scholars, the modern and traditional dictionaries do not agree on their etymologies or what they "really" mean, and the texts do not agree either2 [Some of these problems are discussed in Chapter Three. See Appendix C for further details.]

These and other stubborn unexamined beliefs have adversely affected the work of even the most insightful scholars of Buddhism. Yet no contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous hard evidence of any kind affirms such beliefs. Moreover, it is bad enough that such ideas have caused so much damage for so long within Indology, but the resulting misinformation has inflicted damage in other fields as well, including ancient Greek and Chinese philosophy, where the traditional construct has been used as the basis, once again, for rejecting the hard data, forcing scholars in those fields to attempt to explain away what seems to be obvious Indian Buddhist influence. This then helps maintain the traditional fiction of three totally unrelated peoples and traditions as "cultural islands" that had absolutely no contact of any kind with each other until much later times, as used to be unquestioned belief as recently as Karl Jaspers's famous book on the Axial Age, and continues, by and large, among those who follow in his footsteps....

-- Lumbini On Trial: The Untold Story. Lumbini Is An Astonishing Fraud Begun in 1896, by T. A. Phelps

This brings up the problem of the Buddha's birthplace. Not only are his dates only very generally definable, his specific homeland is unknown as well. Despite widespread popular belief in the story that he came from Lumbini in what is now Nepal, all of the evidence is very late and highly suspect from beginning to end. Bareau has carefully analyzed the Lumbini birth story and shown it to be a late fabrication....

[Bareau (1987) (Andre Bareau, 1987. Lumbini et al naissance du futur Buddha. Bulletin de l'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient 76: 69-81. (Google translate: Lumbini et al birth of the future Buddha. Bulletin of the French School of the Far East 76: 69-81.)). The lone piece of evidence impelling scholars to accept the Lumbini story has been the Lumbini Inscription, which most scholars believe was erected by Asoka. However, the inscription itself actually reveals that it is not by Asoka, and all indications are that it is a late forgery, possibly even a modern one. See Appendix C.]...

Together it is clear that the pillars were erected first, uninscribed, and that the inscriptions were added later.

The so-called Seventh Pillar Edict on the Delhi-Topra pillar actually mentions the existence of blank pillars. The existence of uninscribed pillars has inexplicably been taken by Hultzsch, and evidently by subsequent scholars, to mean that the Buddhist Inscriptions -- which are overtly Normative Buddhist -- are earlier than the Major Inscriptions. The elaborate theory of Norman (2012) claims, among other things, that the Pillar Edicts were inscribed while horizontal, before erection; he does not mention the uninscribed pillars, nor the fact that such uninscribed pillars are actually mentioned explicitly in the "Seventh Pillar Edict" as still existing when that inscription was added to the Delhi-Topra column, nor that some still exist today. He also claims that the texts of all of the inscriptions were written out on perishable material in the capital, Pataliputra and sent out to the provinces with "cover letters" that were supposedly "not meant to be published",

[This is an ad hoc proposal based on speculation; the differences are surely there in many cases because the texts were recast by the inscribers, while some of them are clear forgeries.]

despite the fact that Megasthenes visited Pataliputra in 305-304 BC and remarked that the Indians in that country did not know writing, and despite the fact that no "Asokan Inscription" has ever been found there; the written texts were then translated into local dialects, or for the Pillar Edicts, copied verbatim....

As for the minor monuments henceforth referred to as the "Buddhist Inscriptions", including the Minor Rock Edicts and Minor Pillar Edicts, a casual inspection of the inscriptional evidence and the scholarship on them might indicate that they were inscribed by Chandragupta's grandson Asoka, since the author of the First Minor Rock Edict is explicitly named "Devanampriya Asoka" in two copies of the text.

Unfortunately, we do not have rich, reliable historical sources for the Mauryas. We have only extremely tenuous information about them -- most of it about "Asoka" -- from very late Buddhist "histories", which are in large part fantasy-filled hagiographies having nothing to do with actual human events in the real world. Moreover, as Max Deeg has argued, not only did the inscriptions remain in public view for centuries, but their script and language remained legible to any literate person through the Kushan period (at least to ca. AD 250). This strongly suggests that the inscriptions influenced the legendary "histories" of Buddhism that began to develop at about that time.

That would explain why the story of Devanampriya Priyadarsi's conquest of Kalinga, his subsequent remorse, and his turning to the Dharma is all repeated in the Buddhist "histories", though they attribute the events to "Asoka", who is said to be the grandson of Chandragupta....

Despite the deep learning and care many scholars have taken with the texts, some very striking irregularities in some of the inscriptions appear not to have been noticed. Hultzsch, author of the classic monumental edition of the inscriptions, rightly notes that the Seventh Pillar Edict on the Delhi-Topra column is "unique" because unlike all the other Pillar Edicts, which (like the Major Rock Edicts) exist in synoptic copies, it is only found in a single exemplar. Salomon correctly remarks that it is "the longest of all the Asokan edicts. For the most part, it summarizes and restates the contents of the other pillar edicts, and to some extent those of the major rock edicts as well."...

Yet even a cursory inspection of the Lumbini and Nigali: Sagar Pillar Inscriptions -- both of which were discovered by Fuhrer, who was purportedly working on them when he was exposed -- shows that the Lumbini Inscription repeats exactly much of the phraseology of the Nigali: Sagar Pillar's text, but unlike the genuine "synoptic" Major Inscriptions, the phrases are not identical or closely parallel. That fact, plus the idea that an already divinized Buddha having been many times "reborn" could go back as far as the third century BC, or that anyone in the vicinity of Lumbini could have been given a Sanskrit epithet in the same period, centuries before Sanskrit is first attested in Indian inscriptions, ought to have at least aroused suspicion. Instead, scholars insist on the authenticity of all of the inscriptions, and also insist that they must all be ascribed to the ruler known from traditional -- very late, fantasy-filled, pious, hagiographical -- "histories", as well as from the Maski and Nittur Inscriptions, as "Asoka".

[The name Devanampriya Asoka occurs only in the late Buddhist Inscriptions known as the Minor Rock Edicts, specifically the Maski Inscription and the recently discovered Nittur Inscription. According to Sircar (1975), the Gujarra Inscription should be included with them, but it is extremely problematic, and seems to be a crude forgery, as discussed below. The rubbing of the Maski Inscription provided by Hultzsch (1925: 174) is very poor. Hultzsch reads Asok[a]sa 'of Asoka' without comment or explanation of the bracketed "[a]", but in the rubbing the part that includes his Asok[a] is actually written very clearly [[x] [d]eva-na[m]piyasa Asokesa, with the name in an eastern dialect form.]

...

the Maski and Nittur Inscriptions confirm that the texts of the Major Inscriptions (which explicitly and repeatedly say they are by Devanampriya Priyadarsi) on the one hand, and the Buddhist Inscriptions on the other, must have been promulgated by different rulers, and Devanampriya Asoka is of course responsible only for the Buddhist Inscriptions. It is time for Indologists to seriously consider the recent scholarship which suggests that some of the inscriptions are spurious.

[See now Phelps (2010). Some have objected that the Lumbini pillar itself -- the stone and its preparation -- is unquestionably identical to the physical pillars used in the acknowledged Major Inscriptions. This is certainly the case. However, it is well known that there are a number of blank (uninscribed) pillars identical to pillars used in the Major Inscriptions, and the scholars who first saw the inscription on the Lumbini pillar remarked that it was remarkably clear, as if it had just been inscribed (Phelps 2010). Cf. the suspicious remarks of Schopen about the Lumbini Inscription (2004: 76-77). The inscription is also stunningly short. Even if the pillar was not recently inscribed by Fuhrer, the text itself reveals that it belongs not to the authentic Major Inscriptions of Devanampriya Priyadarsi, but to a much later period, no doubt exactly the period in which the legends about the Buddha's supposed birth in Lumbini were being created, as shown by Bareau (1987), who thus unknowingly -- but brilliantly -- demonstrates the lateness of the Lumbini Inscription. If he had even suspected that the Lumbini Inscription is spurious, his article would have made its case even more effectively than it does, and without the necessity of trying to explain what is patently an impossible historical background, as he actually shows very clearly. However, this topic requires much further specialized study.]

...

The only solution to this problem is to study the inscriptions without contaminating the data with material deriving from supposed Buddhist "historical" works such as those cited by Hultzsch....

If we were to believe Hultzsch and many other scholars, the Dipavamsa, a late Buddhist hagiographical "history", is a reliable historical work that can be trusted, so the author of the Major Inscriptions, who describes his remorse over his bloody war with the Kalingas, must be identified with Asoka. That would mean that the other set, the Later Inscriptions, which are sharply distinct in every respect, must be unidentified as to their author or authors, although unlike the Major Inscriptions they share the feature that they explicitly mention, and in most cases openly promote, Normative Buddhism. Moreover, one of the "Minor Rock Edicts" -- preserved in two apparently genuine inscriptional copies -- is clearly, explicitly said to be by Devanampriya Asoka 'His Majesty Asoka'. Accordingly, "Asoka" is the author of at least some of the later Buddhist Inscriptions, while other Buddhist inscriptions (most notably the Lumbini and Calcutta-Bairat Inscriptions) were evidently composed and erected even later. But in any case, the positive identification of Asoka as the author of the Maski and Nittur "Minor Rock Edict" inscriptions, which are radically different from any of the highly distinctive Major Inscriptions, makes it absolutely certain that "Devanampriya Asoka" cannot after all be the author of the Major Inscriptions, which explicitly and repeatedly say they are by Devanampriya Priyadarsi 'His Majesty Priyadarsi'. Considering the fact that we have absolutely no reliable historical information on "Asoka", and the fact noted by Deeg that the Major Inscriptions stood in open view for centuries after their erection and must have influenced the later writers of the Buddhist "histories" in question, it is most likely that "Asoka" was not in fact a Mauryan ruler. We do not really know when or where he ruled, if he existed at all; we do not actually know that Dasaratha was the grandson of a Mauryan ruler named Asoka; and so on....

Who, then, really was Devanampriya Asoka? The evidence suggests at least two possibilities. One is that he was imagined by the Kushan period Normative Buddhists on the basis of their understanding of the monumental Major Inscriptions erected by the Mauryas -- evidently by Amitrochates ~ Bindusara. "Asoka" was then projected back to the glorious Mauryan period as an ideal for good Kushan rulers to follow... At any rate, the inscriptions of this Devanampriya Asoka, the apparent author of some of the Late Inscriptions, simply do not have anything in common with the Major Inscriptions of the Mauryas decreed by Devanampriya Priyadarsi....

According to the traditional analysis, the single most important putative "Asoka" inscription for the history of Buddhism is the unique "Third Minor Rock Edict" found at Bairat, now known as the Calcutta-Bairat Inscription, in which "the king of Magadha, Piyadasa" addresses the "Samgha" (community of Buddhist monks) directly, and gives the names of a number of Buddhist sutras, saying, "I desire, Sirs, that many groups of monks and (many) nuns may repeatedly listen to these expositions of the Dharma, and may reflect (on them)." The problems with the inscription are many. It begins with the otherwise unattested phrase "The Magadha King Piyadasa", not Devanampriya Priyadarsi (or a Prakrit version of that name). The omission of the title Devanampriya is nothing short of shocking. Moreover, it is the only inscription to even mention Magadha. It is also undated, unlike the genuine Major Inscriptions, all of which are dated. In the text, the authorial voice declares "reverence and faith in the Buddha, the Dharma, (and) the Samgha".

This is the only occasion in all of the Mauryan inscriptions where the Triratna 'Three Jewels', the "refuge" formula well known from later devotional Buddhism, is mentioned. Most astonishingly, throughout the text the author repeatedly addresses the Buddhist monks humbly as bhamte, translated by Hultzsch as "reverend sirs". The text also contains a higher percentage of words that are found solely within it (i.e., not also found in some other inscription) than does any other inscription. From beginning to end, the Calcutta-Bairat Inscription is simply incompatible with the undoubtedly genuine Major Inscriptions. It is also evidently incompatible with the other Buddhist inscriptions possibly attributable to a later ruler named Devanampriya Asoka.

However, because the inscription is also the only putative Asokan inscription that mentions Buddhist texts, and even names seven of them explicitly, scholars are loath to remove it from the corpus. It therefore calls for a little more comment.

First, even if the Calcutta-Bairat Inscription really is "old", it is certainly much younger than the genuine inscriptions of Devanampriya Priyadarsi. If it dates to approximately the same epoch as the recently discovered Gandhari documents -- the Saka-Kushan period, from about the late first century BC to the mid-third century AD -- the same period when the Pali Canon, according to tradition, was collected, it should then not be surprising to find that the names of the texts mentioned in the inscription seem to accord with the contents of the latter collections of Normative Buddhist works, even though few, if any, of the texts (of which only the titles are given) can be identified with any certainty.

The climate of Theravada countries is not conducive to the survival of manuscripts. Apart from brief quotations in inscriptions and a two-page fragment from the eighth or ninth century found in Nepal, the oldest known manuscripts are from late in the fifteenth century, and there is not very much from before the eighteenth.

-- Tripitaka, by New world Encyclopedia

Second, as noted above, specialists have pointed out that the script and Prakrit language of the Mauryan inscriptions continued to be used practically unchanged down through the Kushan period, and though the style of the script changed somewhat in the following period, it was still legible for any literate person at least as late as the beginning of the Gupta period (fourth century AD),

[At that time the script underwent substantial changes that soon made older forms of it unreadable.]

so the inscriptions undoubtedly influenced the developing legends about the great Buddhist king, Asoka.

Thus at least some of the events described in the Major Inscriptions, such as Devanampriya Priyadarsi's conquest of Kalinga, subsequent remorse, and turning to the Dharma, were perfect candidates for ascription to Asoka in the legends. In the absence of any historical source of any kind on Asoka dating to a period close to the events -- none of the datable Major Inscriptions mention Asoka -- it is impossible to rule out this possibility. The late Buddhist inscriptions, such as the Calcutta-Bairat Inscription, may well have been written under the same influence.

Third, because the Calcutta-Bairat Inscription only mentions the titles of texts that have been identified -- rather uncertainly in most cases -- with the titles of texts in the Pali Canon, the actual texts referred to may have been quite different, or even totally different, from the presently attested ones. Because the earliest, or highest, possible date for the Pali Canon is in fact the Saka-Kushan period, the Calcutta-Bairat Inscription and the texts it names cannot be much earlier....

Among the texts considered to be identified are the Vinaya-samukasa and the Muni-gatha.

The Vinaya-samukasa has been identified with the Vinaya-samukase 'Innate Principles of the Vinaya', a short text in the Mahavagga of the Pali Canon....

Although the Buddha's own speech in this text is structured as a tetralemma, which was fashionable in the fourth and third centuries BC, it must also be noted that the tetralemma is a dominant feature of the earliest Madhyamika texts, those by Nagarjuna, who is traditionally dated to approximately the second century AD. But the problems with the inscription are much deeper than this. The Vinaya per se cannot be dated back to the time of the Buddha (as the text intends), nor to the time of Asoka; it cannot be dated even to the Saka-Kushan period. All fully attested Vinaya texts are actually dated, either explicitly or implicitly, to the Gupta period, specifically to the fifth century AD: "In most cases, we can place the vinayas we have securely in time: the Sarvastivada-vinaya that we know was translated into Chinese at the beginning of the fifth century (404-405 C.E.). So were the Vinayas of the Dharmaguptakas (408), the Mahisasakas (423-424), and the Mahasamghikas (416). The Mulasarvastivada-vinaya was translated into both Chinese and Tibetan still later, and the actual contents of the Pali Vinaya are only knowable from Buddhaghosa's fifth century commentaries."

As Schopen has shown in many magisterial works, the Vinayas are layered texts, so they undoubtedly contain material earlier than the fifth century, but even the earliest layers of the Vinaya texts cannot be earlier than Normative Buddhism, which is datable to the Saka-Kushan period. It thus would require rather more than the usual amount of credulity to project the ancestors of the cited texts back another half millennium or more to the time of the Buddha...

As for other well-known but evidently spurious "Asokan" inscriptions, note that the "Minor Pillar Inscription" at Lumbini not only mentions "Buddha" (as does, otherwise uniquely, the Calcutta-Bairat Inscription), it explicitly calls him Sakyamuni 'the Sage of the Scythians (Sakas)', who it says was born in Lumbini.

The use of the Sanskrit form of his epithet, Sakyamuni, rather than the Prakrit form, Sakamuni, is astounding and otherwise unattested until the late Gandhari documents; that fact alone rules out ascription to such an early period. But it is doubly astounding because this Sanskritism occurs in a text otherwise written completely in Mauryan Prakrit and Brahmi script. What is a Sanskrit form doing there? Sanskrit is not attested in any inscriptions or manuscripts until the Common Era or at most a few decades before it.

Significantly, the inscription also notes that the village of Lumbini is exempted from tax and has to pay less in kind as well, yet not one of the other Mauryan inscriptions includes such "benefice" information.

It is incredible that an avowedly Buddhist Inscription bestows imperial largesse on a village (though the village of Lumbini has been shown not to have existed yet in Mauryan times) rather than on a Buddhist institution.

Perhaps most telling of all, the inscription is uniquely written in ordinary third person (not royal third person) and is in the past tense. That means the text is narrated by some unknown person and does not even pretend to have been proclaimed by its putative sponsor Devanampriya Priyadarsi, the king who authored the synoptic Major Inscriptions (nor of course by Devanampriya Asoka, who may have authored the synoptic Buddhist Inscriptions). It says that it records events that supposedly happened at some time in the past, but those events have been shown to be fictitious.

The inscription is strikingly unlike the unquestionably authentic Major Inscriptions in general, and based on its contents is much later in date than it evidently pretends to be. It is a spurious inscription.

Finally, the Delhi-Topra pillar includes a good version of the six synoptic Pillar Edicts, which are genuine Major Inscriptions, but it is followed by what is known as the "Seventh Pillar Edict". This is a section that occurs only on this particular monument -- not on any of the six other synoptic Pillar Edict monuments. It is "the longest of all the Asokan edicts. For the most part, it summarizes and restates the contents of the other pillar edicts, and to some extent those of the major rock edicts as well."

In fact, as Salomon suggests, it is a hodgepodge of the authentic inscriptions. It seems not to have been observed that such a melange could not have been compiled without someone going from stone to stone to collect passages from different inscriptions, and this presumably must have involved transmission in writing, unlike with the Major Rock Edict inscriptions, which were clearly dictated orally to scribes from each region of India, who then wrote down the texts in their own local dialects -- and in some cases, their own local script or language; knowledge of writing would seem to be required for that, but not actual written texts.

For the Delhi-Topra pillar addition, someone made copies of the texts and produced the unique "Seventh Pillar Edict".

[The bilingual Aramaic and Prakrit (both in Aramaic script) fragment from Kandahar known as Kandahar II or Kandahar III, which is written in an extremely odd fashion (Falk 2006: 246), has been identified as representing a portion of the "Seventh Pillar Edict" (Norman 2012: 43), but strong doubts remain about the reading of the text (Falk 2006: 246). It is also by no means exactly like the "Seventh Pillar Edict", not to speak of the peculiar presentation of text and translation. In fact, it looks like a student exercise. It is very similar to the content of the Taxila Inscription and the two Laghman Inscriptions, both of which are also highly problematic, q.v. Falk's (2006: 253) conclusion: "There is no clear evidence for an Asokan influence on this text [the Taxila Inscription]. Like the two Laghman 'edicts' this text as well could be of a rather profane nature, mentioning Asoka as king just in passing." However, Falk (2006: 241) also says of Kandahar II/III that "Asoka must have ordered to bring his words to the public unchanged regarding their sound and content. Presenting this text in two languages using one script for both is a remarkable thought, aimed at avoiding flaws in the translation." This is an unlikely speculation. Finally, the "Seventh Pillar Edict" shares some of the peculiarities of the other minor inscriptions from Afghanistan. (I.e., they are to be distinguished from the genuine fragments of a Greek translation of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Rock Edicts, found at Kandahar, q.v. Halkias 2014.) C. f. Ito (1996), a study of the Greek and Aramaic bilingual inscription from Kandahar. These texts all await detailed, serious study.]

Why would anyone go to so much trouble? The answer is to be found in the salient new information found in the text itself. It mentions a category of mahamatra officers unmentioned anywhere else, saying that they are in charge of the different sects: it names the Samgha 'Buddhists' and the Brahmanas 'Brahmanists', but also (uniquely) the Ajivikas and Nirgranthas (Jains), and "various other sects" who are unnamed.

Most incredibly, the Buddhists are called the "Samgha" in this section alone, but it is a Normative Buddhist term; the Early Buddhist term is Sramana, attested in the genuine Major Inscriptions. Throughout the rest of the "Seventh Pillar Edict" Buddhists are called Sramanas, as expected in texts copied from genuine Mauryan inscriptions....

Yet it is not only the contents of the text that are a problem. It has been accepted as an authentic Mauryan inscription, but no one has even noted that there is anything formally different about it from the other six edicts on the same pillar. At least a few words must therefore be said about this problem.

The "Seventh Pillar Edict" is palaeographically distinct from the text it has been appended to. It is obvious at first glance. The physical differences between the text of the "Seventh Pillar Edict", as compared even to the immediately preceding text of the Sixth Pillar Edict on the East Face, virtually leap out at one. The style of the script, the size and spacing of the letters, the poor control over consistency of style from one letter to the next, and the many hastily written, even scribbled, letters are all remarkable. These characteristics seem not to have been mentioned by the many scholars who have worked on the Mauryan inscriptions.

The text begins as an addition to the synoptic Sixth Pillar Edict, which occupies only part of the East Face "panel". After filling out the available space for text on the East Face, the new text incredibly continues around the pillar, that is, ignoring the four different "faces" already established by the earlier, genuine edicts. This circum-pillar format is unique among all the genuine Mauryan pillar inscriptions.

Another remarkable difference with respect to the genuine Major Inscriptions on pillars is that the latter are concerned almost exclusively with Devanampriya Priyadarsi's Dharma, but do not mention either the Sramanas ''Buddhists' or the Brahmanas 'Brahmanists' by name. This is strikingly unlike the Major Inscriptions on rocks, which mention them repeatedly in many of the edicts. In other words, though the Pillar Edicts are all dated later than the Rock Edicts, for some reason (perhaps their brevity), Devanampriya Priyadarsi does not mention the Sramanas or the Brahmanas in them. The "Seventh Pillar Edict" is thus unique in that it does mention the Buddhists (Sramanas) and Brahmanists (Brahmanas) by name, but the reoccurrence of the names in what claims to be the last of Devanampriya Priyadarsi's edicts suggests that the text is not just spurious, it is probably a deliberate forgery. This conclusion is further supported by the above-noted unique passage in the inscription in which the Buddhists are referred to as the "Samgha". This term occurs in the later Buddhist Inscriptions too; but it is problematic because it is otherwise unknown before well into the Saka-Kushan period.

[This is one of the many reasons for dating all of the Buddhist Inscriptions to the Saka-Kushan period at the earliest.]

The one really significant thing the text does is to add the claim that Devanampriya Priyadarsi supported not only the Buddhists and the Brahmanists but also the Ajivikas and Jains. However, all of the Jain holy texts are uncontestedly very late (long after the Mauryan period). The very mention of the sect in the same breath as the others is alone sufficient to cast severe doubt on the text's authenticity.

The "Seventh Pillar Edict" claims that it was inscribed when Devanampriya Priyadarsi had been enthroned for twenty-seven years; that is, only one year after the preceding text (the sixth of the synoptic Pillar Edicts), which says it was inscribed when Devanampriya Priyadarsi had been enthroned for twenty-six years. The "Seventh Pillar Edict" text consists of passages taken from many of the Major Inscriptions, both Rock and Pillar Edicts, in which the points mentioned are typically dated to one or another year after the ruler's coronation, but in the "Seventh Pillar Edict" the events are effectively dated to the same year. Most puzzling of all, why would the king add such an evidently important edict to only a single one of the otherwise completely synoptic pillar inscriptions?

Perhaps even more damning is the fact that in the text itself the very same passages are often repeated verbatim, sometimes (as near the beginning) immediately after they have just been stated, like mechanical dittoisms. Repetition is a known feature of Indian literary texts, but the way it occurs in the "Seventh Pillar Edict" is not attested in the authentic Major Inscriptions. Moreover, as Olivelle has noted, the text repeats the standard opening formula or "introductory refrain" many times; that is, "King Priyadarsin, Beloved of the Gods, says" is repeated verbatim nine times, with an additional shorter tenth repetition. "In all of the other edicts this refrain occurs only once and at the beginning. Such repetitions of the refrain which state that these are the words of the king are found in Persian inscriptions. However, this is quite unusual for Asoka."

In fact, this arrangement betrays the actual author's misunderstanding of the division of the authentic Major Inscriptions into "Edicts", and his or her consequent false imitation of them using repetitions of the Edict -- initial formula throughout the text in an attempt to duplicate the appearance of the authentic full, multi-"Edict" inscriptions on rocks and pillars.

In short, based on its arrangement, palaeography, style, and contents, the "Seventh Pillar Edict" cannot be accepted as a genuine inscription of Devanampriya Priyadarsi. The text was added to the pillar much later than it claims and is an obvious forgery from a later historical period. These factors require that the "Seventh Pillar Edict" be removed from the corpus of authentic inscriptions of Devanampriya Priyadarsi.

The Calcutta-Bairat Inscription, the Lumbini Inscription, and the "Seventh Pillar Edict" of the Delhi-Topra pillar thus do not belong with either the authentic Major Inscriptions of Devanampriya Priyadarsi or the possibly authentic inscriptions of Devanampriya Asoka.

[The next task is for scholars to study the spurious inscriptions to see when exactly each was inscribed, and in some cases why, so as to be able to attribute the information in them to approximately correct historical periods.]

-- Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter With Early Buddhism in Central Asia, by Christopher I. Beckwith

11 There is also a coin from Eran containing four letters and often dated at 350 B.C.; but the date is not at all certain.

The fatal flaw12

12 Another flaw is the fact that there is a credible likeness only between a few of the Aramaic and Brahmi letters, and that Buhler resorts for the remainder to rather fanciful distortions. But most of those who cannot accept that the Vedic tradition was oral continue to rely on his theories -- or on the even more fanciful derivation of the Brahmi script from the script of the Indus Valley Civilization.

of this theory is the exact phonemic character of the Brahmi script which assigns one and only one letter to each phoneme of the Sanskrit language (or Middle Indic, in the case of Asoka [Ashoka]). This would be a dramatic improvement over the Aramaic script that leaves vowels usually unmarked and has no devices to mark the Indian aspirate stops, whereas the Brahmi script matches the phonemic analysis which had been perfected in the Vedic schools in their effort to preserve the exact pronunciation of the Vedic hymns -- but these Vedic schools had no use for a script! Why would then, as the theory goes, Indian merchants modify the Aramaic script so as to conform to the phonetic theory of the Veda reciters?
 
In a daring approach, J. Bronkhorst13

13 J. Bronkhorst, IIJ24 (1982), pp. 181-189.

has recently argued that the padapatha of the Rgveda (a form of recitation in which each stanza is broken up into its individual words) was perhaps a clumsy attempt (in the eighth or seventh century B.C.) to write the Rgveda text down. But he has to assume that Indians soon afterwards changed their mind about such use of writing, while they added several more distorted forms of recitation: e.g., the kramapatha14

14 G.V. Devasthali, ABORI 58/59, Diamond Jubilee Volume (1978), pp. 573-582.

that "steps" as it were haltingly through a stanza -- all mnemotechnic devices to insure the integrity of the original text. It appears also that the Brahmi script was created for a language that had lost the old vocalic r and l sounds, since the post-Asokan [Ashokan] letters for these sounds are derivatives of the letter a with attached hooks; the same may be true for the letters for ai and au that are derived from the letters for e and o with additional strokes.15

15 Richard Salomon, Indian Epigraphy, New York 1998, p. 30.

If the Brahmi alphabet had been created for writing Vedic texts (for whom these additional letters are needed), we would have to assume a break in tradition, causing the loss of the original letters for r, l, ai, and au and a later reinventing of these letters.16

16 The incidence of these vowels in initial position is not high, and thus the first attestations in Sanskrit inscriptions and manuscripts are rather late: G. Buhler, Indische Palaeographie, Strassburg 1896, Tafeln 4-6 and On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet, Strassburg 1898, pp. 34f.; R. Salomon, Indian Epigraphy, pp. 30, 34.

Sanskrit is not attested in any inscriptions or manuscripts until the Common Era or at most a few decades before it.66 [66 Bronkhorst (2011: 46, 50), who cites Salomon (1998:86) on the existence of four inscriptions ascribed by some, including Salomon, to the first century BC; otherwise the earliest inscriptions in Sanskrit are from Mathura in the first and second centuries AD (Salomon 1998: 87).]

-- Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter With Early Buddhism in Central Asia, by Christopher I. Beckwith

 

[admin]

Part 2 of 3

Some recent publications,17

17 Gerard Fussman, Annuaire du College de France 1988-89: Resume des cours et travaux, pp.507-514; Oskar von Hinuber, Der Beginn der Schrift und fruhe Schriftlichkeit in Indien, AAWL, Mainz 1989 nr.1 1; Harry Falk, Die Schrift im alien Indien; R. Salomon, JAOS 115 (1995), pp. 271-279 and Indian Epigraphy.] on the other hand, stress that Megasthenes, Seleucus' envoy to the court of Candragupta in Pataliputra [LC: rather, Sandrocottus in Palibothra]

around 300 B.C. claims that writing was unknown in India and that, e.g., all legal business was dealt with on the basis of oral evidence and orally preserved rules. Megasthenes was an educated Greek who should have been able to recognize Indian writing if he saw it. According to this view, the Brahmi script was an Indian invention, probably commissioned by King Asoka [Ashoka],18

18 S.R. Goyal, in The Origin of Brahmi Script (edd. S.P. Gupta and K.S. Ramachandran), Delhi 1979, pp. 1-53. Similarly, the Persian cuneiform script is now widely considered an invention made at the behest of Cyrus or, more probably, Darius: M. Mayrhofer, BSOAS 42 (1979), pp. 290-296 and KZ 102 (1989), pp. 174-186.

and carried out by brahmin scholars brought up in the tradition of Vedic phonetics who applied their knowledge to creating a script for a Middle Indic idiom. Of course the idea of writing was known through long established contacts with the empire of the Achaemenids and later the Greek successors of Alexander the Great. A word for script was probably already known to Panini (sixth century B.C.?), but it was borrowed from Iranian (lipi/libi from Iranian dipi, in turn derived from Sumerian dup).19

19 Panini III 2 21 teaches the formation of the words lipikara/libikara "scribe (?)" which could be an Iranian rather than an Indian formation originally; von Hinuber, ibid., p. 58 considers the possibility that lipi could refer to something like painting rather than writing. AitA V 3,3 prohibits the study of the mahavrata after several polluting activities, including ullikhya and avalikhya which A.B. Keith, The Aitareya Aranyaka, Oxford 1909 repr. 1969, pp. 301f. translated as "had...written, or obliterated writing." The date of that text is not certain, nor is the reference to writing.

The Kharosti script, closely linked to the later Aramaic script, was widely used in the provinces of the Indian Northwest, presumably under the influence of the Achaemenid overlords who used Aramaic as the administrative lingua franca for their empire. Oddly enough, no Aramaic inscriptions or any other written documents have been found so far from the whole easternmost part of their empire -- except after the demise of the empire. The first Kharosti inscriptions we have are those of Asoka [Ashoka], and the tradition of this script continued in the extreme Northwest into the fourth century A.D.
 
Buhler's theory must assume that the more adequate Brahmi script (which differentiated between short and long vowels) was superseded in the Northwest by the less adequate Kharosti script (which did not differentiate between short and long vowels) under the influence of the Iranian overlords and their Aramaic writing20

20 But that has not happened in other provinces of the Persian empire where Egyptian hieroglyphics, Babylonian cuneiform script, and Greek alphabetic scripts were in use -- and continued to be used. We must also consider that the scribes in the service of the empire were probably ethnic Arameans who protected their art and privilege as long as the empire lasted; Falk, Die Schrift, pp. 103f. assumes therefore that locals with a superficial knowledge of the Aramaic system developed the Kharosti after the empire collapsed (doubted by R. Salomon, JAOS 115 [1995], p. 276).

-- and that this imposed script remained in use long after their departure. It is more likely that the Kharosti script was the earlier attempt to write an Indian dialect and was in time replaced by the superior Brahmi developed in Magadha. The Brahmi script is a phonemically correct representation of Prakrit21

21 That includes the letter for /n/ which is an oddity in a description of Sanskrit, because it is a predictable allophone of /n/.

that abandoned the graphic reliance of the vowel onset (aleph) in its notation of initial vowels, a major improvement on the Kharosti alphabet.22

22 H. Scharfe, forthcoming in JAOS.

This analysis precludes, however, any attempt, such as Buhler's, to directly derive the Brahmi from a much older North Semitic alphabet.

The best evidence today is that no script was used or even known in India before 300 B.C., except in the extreme Northwest that was under Persian domination. That is in complete accord with the Indian tradition which at every occasion stresses the orality of the cultural and literary heritage. Whereas the biblical tradition has statements like this: "as it is written in the book of prophecies of Isaiah,"23

23 Gospel of St. Luke 3:4 with reference to Isaiah 40:3-5; also Matthew 19:4f. "Have you read 'that in the beginning the Creator made them male and female' and he added, That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife and the two become one flesh'" referring to Genesis 1:27 and 2:24.

Indian texts stress that "Thus it is heard in the Svetasvatara-upanisad:..."24

24 Sarva-darsana-sangraha ed. Vasudev Shastri Abhyankar, 3rd ed., Poona 1978, chapter XIV p. 327: tatha ca Svetasvataropanisadi sruyate:...

There were no books; the common Indian word for "book" (pusta[ka]) is found not before the early centuries A.D. and is probably a loanword from Persian (post),25

25 H. Falk, Schrift, pp. 305f.

and grantha denoted originally only "knot, nexus, text" acquiring the meaning "manuscript" much later.
 
The older Indian literature (including some texts as late as the early centuries A.D.) belongs to one of two classes: sruti "hearing" and smrti "remembering." It behooves us to pay attention to this distinction made by the Indians themselves early on. This use of sruti is first found in AitB VII 9, and ManavaSS 182.4, that of smrti in LatySS VI 1.6,13 and TaitAr I 2,1 in a late period of canon formation in the eastern Ganges valley.26

26 M. Witzel, in: Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts, ed. M. Witzel, Cambridge / Mass., 1997, pp. 328f.

 
It is condescending and dangerous to deny Indians their own vision and immediately apply our own schemes, something that historians are fond of doing: note the now debunked "village community" of Sir Henry Maine27

27 Louis Dumont, Contributions to Indian Sociology 9 (1966), pp. 82-89.

or Burton Stein's "segmental state." It is preferable to move in two stages: first describe the Indian point of view (be it of the state, ayurveda, or textual traditions), then view the material and the Indian concept from our viewpoint or from a more comprehensive, universalistic position.
 
Sruti, the more authoritative (and, on the whole, older and more carefully preserved)28

28 "Vedic schools did not regard as unalterable the texts of formulas which were foreign to their own samhita": J. Gonda, The Ritual Sutras, Wiesbaden 1977, p. 565 with references to V.M. Apte, NIA 3 (1940/41), p. 49 and P.K. Narayana Pillai, Non-rgvedic Mantras in the Marriage Ceremonies, Trivandrum 1958, pp. 44, 202.

class consists of the Vedic hymns29

29 It is a curious feature of A. Lord's definition of "oral poetry" that the tightly structured Vedic hymns are excluded because there are no improvised variations by the performers: Albert Lord, The Singer of Tales, Cambridge/Mass. 2nd ed. 1964, p. 280: "could not be oral in any except the most literal sense."

and mantras as well as the theological and philosophical speculations of the Brahmanas and Upanisads which are considered timeless revealed truths, something ordinary men can never hope to perceive themselves but can "hear" through the endless chain of oral tradition.30

30 VasDhS VI 43 speaks of the paramparya-gato vedah "The Veda that has come down in a chain of tradition." The Greek historian Thucydides writes in his History of the Peloponnesian War I 4 [x] "Minos, the oldest of those we know from tradition (lit. hearing)."

The original revelation of sruti, though, is often said to be by "seeing,"31

31 I would disagree, therefore, with M. Witzel, Inside the Texts, p. 329 "heard by Rsis (sruti)." In Buddhism, sravaka "hearer" may, at least according to some sources, have denoted those followers (monks and lay people alike) who had heard Buddha's message in person: Peter Masefield, Divine Revelation in Pali Buddhism, Colombo/ London 1986, esp. pp. 142f.

but there was also a subtle distinction: in RV VIII 59, 6 the seer "saw" through tapas the origins (tapasdbhyapasyam), in TS V 3, 5, 4 the seers "saw" the meters with tapas (tani tapasdpasyari)32

32 AitB VI 34; VII 17; SB I 5,3,3; XIII 2,2,14 (Brhaduktha "saw" not the verses but their application as apri-verses): Hermann Oldenberg, Vorwissenschaftliche Wissenschaft -- Die Weltanschauung der Brahmana-Texte, Gottingen 1919. pp. 222f.

 -- but the claim that they "saw" the hymns came only later.33

33 Nirukta II 11 stotran dadarsa; VII 3 evam...rsinam mantra-drstayo bhavanti. Panini IV 2 7 drstam sama teaches the formation of names for melodies named after the men who "saw" them.

The contrast in the Sunahsepa story is striking: after Sunahsepa praised several gods with hymns,34

34 These hymns are found in the Rgveda and were presumably composed by Sunahsepa on the spot (AB VII 16).

he "saw" an abbreviated pressing ritual35

35 AitB VII 17.

that took care of the changed situation when the sacrificial animal, i.e., Sunahsepa himself, was no longer available. The Vedic rsis (whom we call "seers"), in the standard doctrine championed by the Mimamsa, "saw" the eternally existing Vedic hymns and ritual procedures36

36 Mahabharata XVIII 5,33 claims that Vyasa "saw" the epic with his divine eye (divyena caksusa), apparently a later development that claimed the Mahabharata as the fifth Veda -- just as later also the Bharatiya Natyasastra claimed to be the fifth Veda: Natyasastra ed. Manomohan Ghosh, Calcutta 1967, I 15ff. These developments are necessarily later than the recognition of the Atharvaveda as the fourth Veda.

-- not with their physical eyes it seems but with a special vision. This view which has become the established dogma of orthodox Hinduism37

37 This assertion—that the Veda is apauruseya "not based on humans"—may have been a response to Buddhist arguments that no work involving human agency can give us the assurance of absolute truth: K.N. Jayatilleke, Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge, London 1963, pp. 191f. and Francis Clooney, Thinking Ritually, Wien 1990, p. 215.

is at variance with the statements of the Vedic poets themselves who say in their hymns that they skillfully created these new songs just as a carpenter builds a chariot,38

38 RV V 2,11 tam te stomam...ratham na dhirah...ataksam.

with the help of divine inspiration.39

39 dhi RV I 129, 2; IX 100,3 and often; cf. R.N. Dandekar, Der vedische Mensch, Heidelberg 1938, pp. 65f. and Jan Gonda, The Vision of the Vedic Poets, The Hague 1963.

It was perhaps this divinely inspired creativity that elevated the rsi, the brahman (or in the Skandinavian tradition a gifted skald) to such height that he was considered inviolate.40

40 Cf. the Vedic stories of Sunahsepa (AitB VII 13-18 and SSS XV 17-20) and Nrmedha (JB 1171) and the Islandic Egils saga Skallagrimssonar, ed. F. Jonsson, 2nd ed., Halle 1924, ch.59-61 and App. A.; H. Scharfe, The State in Indian Tradition, pp. 106f.

The contrast to sruti is not a book but the equally oral tradition of smrti; Monier-Williams is wrong to refer to smrti as "what is only remembered and handed down in writing";41

41 A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Oxford 1899, p. 1101 under sruti.

there is indeed no prohibition of writing smrti-texts down and manuscripts of them abound, but they are no less products of an oral tradition.
 
Smrti comprises the epics and various manuals of correct behavior (grhya-sutra-s and dharma-sutra-s), also many later legal texts and the Puranas, attributed to revered but nevertheless human authors; they are often said to be based on sruti,42

42 This is implied in Mimamsa-sutra I 3, 3 and made explicit in Sabara-bhasya ed. K. V. Abhyankar, Pune 1970, p. 77. ApDhS I 4 8 srutir hi ballyasy anumanikad acarat "For heard revelation is stronger than an inferential custom" and 112,10 brahmanokta vidhayas; tesam utsannah pathah proyogad anumlyante "The precepts were taught in the Brahmanas; the lost recitations are inferred from usage" show a similar attitude, though the word smrti is not used.

but lack the rigidity and textual faithfulness of that tradition. The reciter of a revealed Vedic text that he had "heard" had no right to make even the slightest changes, but those who recite old "remembrances" were more free to follow their individual style. In the classical Mimamsa doctrine the sruti is "heard" and thus directly perceived during instruction (pratyaksa),43

43 Learned brahmins who have memorized the Veda and pass their knowledge on to students are therefore called sruti-pratyaksa-hetavah "causes for the direct perception of sruti" in Manu XII 109 and VasDhS VI 43. Cf. S. Pollock, in: S. Lienhard and I. Piovano (edd.), Lex et Litterae (Fs.O.Botto), Torino 1997, pp. 395-417.

whereas the smrti is based on men's remembrance or inference of doctrines "heard," but not preserved in their exact wording. Both are part of the oral tradition, both are ultimately based on revelation, and there was later a tendency to downplay their distinction,44

44 For Kumarila smrti was no less authoritative than sruti: S.Pollock, ibid., pp.413f.; but the secular sciences are man-made according to Kumarila, Tantravarttika pp. 111 f. and 122. Pollock, JAOS (1985), pp. 501 f., refers also to Tantravarttika vol. I p. 167 top and pp. 79.8f.; 81.18f. and Rajasekhara, Kavyamimamsa p. 33, 1.12 for the non-Vedic nature of the secular sciences.

even though human agency in the case of smrti had increased the possibilities of corruption.45

45 Cf. Vakyapadiya ed. W. Rau, Wiesbaden 1977, I 172f.

anadim avyavacchinnam srutim ahur akartrkam /
sistair nibadhyamana tu na vyavacchidyete smrtih / 172/
avibhagad vivrttanam abhikhya svapnavac chrutau /
bhava-tattvam tu vijnaya lingebhyo vihita smrtih / 173/

"Revelation is said to be beginningless, uninterrupted and authorless; Remembrance is composed by the learned and is not interrupted. In those who are evolved out of the non-differentiation there is a perception of Revelation as in a dream; Remembrance, on the other hand, is composed after understanding the nature of things and following indications."

The pairing of sruti and smrti appears only in a late stratum of Vedic texts, and S. Pollock46

46 S. Pollock, in Lex et Litterae, p. 408.

believes that it may have been created by the Mimamsa. But smrti does appear in TA I 2,1,47

47 TA I 2, 1 smrtih pratyaksam aitihyam anumanas catustayam "The quartet remembrance, perception, legend, inference" is picked up in I 2, 3 tasyah [mariceh] pakavisesena smrtam kala-visesanam "With the maturing of this [ray] the specifics of time are remembered" and I 3, 2 [vasanto] praisakrt prathamas smrtah "Spring, doing the summons, is remembered as the first [season]." In these passages the derivation from revelation is at best dubious. Another early occurrence is in LatSS VI 1.6, 13.

and smaryate48

48 TA I 12,1 [Rudrah] smaryate na ca drsyate "[Rudra] is remembered but not seen." Rudra is explicitly mentioned in the Vedic hymns preserved even today! In ApDhS II 2,24 brahmana acaryah smaryate "A brahmin is remembered (i.e., prescribed) as the [proper] teacher."

in TA I 12,1. It is not evident that the term "remembrance" should originally have been limited to lost but remembered sruti texts; it may as well refer to remembered realities.49

49 A. Wezler, in Raum-zeitliche Vermittlung der Transzendenz, edd. G. Oberhammer and M.Schmucker, Wien 1999, p. 79.

The Mimamsa concept may have been just a theological scheme to buttress the social rules and restriction of the dharma texts by giving them the full backing of Vedic authority when the traditional order was challenged by heterodox beliefs. But there can be no doubt that it had a lasting impact on how Indians perceived their traditions, even if not everybody shared their rigid attitude: Bhartrhari, e.g., did not restrict smrti to a remembrance of sruti, as we saw.
 

Mīmāṁsā is a Sanskrit word that means "reflection" or "critical investigation" and thus refers to a tradition of contemplation which reflected on the meanings of certain Vedic texts... This particular school is known for its philosophical theories on the nature of dharma, based on hermeneutics of the Vedas, especially the Brāḥmanas and Saṃhitas. The Mīmāṃsā school was foundational and influential for the vedāntic schools...
 
Mīmāṁsā has several sub-schools, each defined by its epistemology. The Prābhākara sub-school, which takes its name from the seventh-century philosopher Prabhākara, described the five epistemically reliable means to gaining knowledge: pratyakṣa or perception; anumāna or inference; upamāṇa, by comparison and analogy; arthāpatti, the use of postulation and derivation from circumstances; and śabda, the word or testimony of past or present reliable experts. The Bhāṭṭa sub-school, from philosopher Kumārila Bhaṭṭa, added a sixth means to its canon; anupalabdhi meant non-perception, or proof by the absence of cognition ...
 
[T]he school showed little interest in systematic examination of the existence of Gods. Rather, it held that the soul is an eternal, omnipresent, inherently active spiritual essence, and focused on the epistemology and metaphysics of dharma. For the Mīmāṃsā school, dharma meant rituals and social duties, not devas, or gods, because gods existed only in name. The Mīmāṃsakas also held that Vedas are "eternal, author-less, [and] infallible", that Vedic vidhi, or injunctions and mantras in rituals are prescriptive kārya or actions, and the rituals are of primary importance and merit....
 
[T]heir deep analysis of language and linguistics influenced other schools of Hinduism...Mīmāṃsakas considered the purpose and power of language was to clearly prescribe the proper, correct and right. In contrast, Vedāntins extended the scope and value of language as a tool to also describe, develop and derive. Mīmāṁsakās considered orderly, law driven, procedural life as central purpose and noblest necessity of dharma and society, and divine (theistic) sustenance means to that end.
 
The Mīmāṁsā school is a form of philosophical realism....
 
The word comes from the desiderative stem of √man (Macdonell, A. A, 1883, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary), from Proto-Indo-European *men- (“to think”). Donald Davis translates Mīmāṃsā as the "desire to think", and in colloquial historical context as "how to think and interpret things". ...
 
Ancient Mīmānsā's central concern was epistemology (pramana), that is what are the reliable means to knowledge. It debated not only "how does man ever learn or know, whatever he knows", but also whether the nature of all knowledge is inherently circular, whether those such as foundationalists who critique the validity of any "justified beliefs" and knowledge system make flawed presumptions of the very premises they critique, and how to correctly interpret and avoid incorrectly interpreting dharma texts such as the Vedas. It asked questions such as "what is devata (god)?", "are rituals dedicated to devatas efficacious?", "what makes anything efficacious?", and "can it be proved that the Vedas, or any canonical text in any system of thought, fallible or infallible (svatah pramanya, intrinsically valid)?, if so, how?" and others. To Mīmānsā scholars, the nature of non-empirical knowledge and human means to it are such that one can never demonstrate certainty, one can only falsify knowledge claims, in some cases. ...
 
The central text of the Mīmānsā school is Jamini's Mīmānsā Sutras [Jaimini was an ancient Indian scholar who founded the Mīmāṃsā school of Hindu philosophy. He was a disciple of sage Veda Vyasa.], along with the historically influential commentaries on this sutra by Sabara and by Kumarila Bhatta. Together, these texts develop and apply the rules of language analysis (such as the rules of contradiction), asserting that one must not only examine injunctive propositions in any scripture, but also examine the alternate related or reverse propositions for better understanding. They suggested that to reach correct and valid knowledge it is not only sufficient to demand proof of a proposition, it is important to give proof of a proposition's negative as well as declare and prove one's own preferred propositions. Further, they asserted that whenever perception is not the means of direct proof and knowledge, one cannot prove such non-empirical propositions to be "true or not true", rather one can only prove a non-empirical proposition is "false, not false, or uncertain".
 
For example, Mīmānsākas welcome not only the demand for proof of an injunctive proposition such as "agnihotra ritual leads one to heaven", but suggest that one must examine and prove alternate propositions such as "ritual does not lead one to heaven", "something else leads one to heaven", "there is heaven", "there is no heaven" and so on. Mīmānsā literature states that if satisfactory, verifiable proof for all of such propositions cannot be found by its proponents and its opponents, then the proposition needs to be accepted as a part of a "belief system". Beliefs, such as those in the scriptures (Vedas), must be accepted to be true unless its opponents can demonstrate the proof of validity of their own texts or teacher(s) these opponents presume to be prima facie justified, and until these opponents can demonstrate that the scriptures they challenge are false. If they do not try to do so, it is hypocrisy; if they try to do so, it can only lead to infinite regress, according to Mīmānsākas. Any historic scripture with widespread social acceptance, according to Mīmānsāka, is an activity of communication (vyavaharapravrtti) and is accepted as authoritative because it is socially validated practice, unless perceptually verifiable evidence emerges that proves parts or all of it as false or harmful.
 
Mīmānsākas were predominantly concerned with the central motivation of human beings, the highest good, and actions that make this possible. They stated that human beings seek niratisaya priti (unending ecstatic pleasure, joy, happiness) in this life and the next. They argued that this highest good is the result of one's own ethical actions (dharma), that such actions are what the Vedic sentences contain and communicate, and therefore it important to properly interpret and understand Vedic sentences, words and meaning. Mīmānsā scholarship was centrally concerned with the philosophy of language, how human beings learn and communicate with each other and across generations with language in order to act in a manner that enables them to achieve that which motivates them. The Mīmānsā school focussed on dharma, deriving ethics and activity from the karma-kanda (rituals) part of the Vedas, with the argument that ethics for this life and efficacious action for svarga (heaven) cannot be derived from sense-perception, and can only be derived from experience, reflection and understanding of past teachings.
  
-- Mīmāṃsā, by Wikipedia

Many tales "remembered" refer to observed historical or semi-historical events that serve to entertain and educate the audience.50

50 Whatever position we may take on the origin of the pair sruti/smrti, there can be no doubt that there was a tradition of epic story telling that was sociologically and artistically different from the brahmanic Vedic tradition.

 
Even the great epic, the Mahabharata, is frequently called a dharma-sastra, "an instruction in righteousness or functional identity." On a first, most obvious level, it presents itself as the story of family rivalry between princely cousins (with hints at mythological and cosmic levels in the background),51

51 V.S. Sukthankar, On the Meaning of the Mahabharata, Bombay 1957.

 
and attempts have been made to strip away, as later insertions, all episodes and didactic passages that do not move the basic action forward. These efforts remind the philologist of earlier attempts to purge Homer's Iliad of such seemingly unattractive and lengthy interpolations as the catalogue of ships in the second book that lists in almost 300 hexameters all contingents of the Greek expeditionary force, their hometowns, number of ships and soldiers. Only in the 1920s scholars began to realize that this list (which may date back to the Mycenean state of pre-Homeric time!)52

52 Eric Havelock, Preface to Plato, Cambridge/Mass., 1963, p.132.

 
would have held great interest to contemporary Greek listeners and that oral poetry follows different rules from literate poetry and even has different goals.53

53 Ibid., pp.176-179.

Plato claimed that Homer had been the main educator of Greece (with Archilochos not far behind in second place), when he denounced in his Republic the harmful role of poetry. Many scholars were baffled by Plato's seemingly unfair critique of poetry, until Eric Havelock pointed out that the critique was not aimed so much at poetry itself as at the educational function of oral epic poetry. 54

54 Ibid., pp.3f., 12-15.

 
Homer's epics were not just the stories of dramatic adventures but compendia of traditional lore in a general and simplified fashion: they taught about sailing -- but not enough to make a difficult passage; about metalworking -- but not sufficiently detailed for making a good sword; those advanced skills were taught to apprentices of their respective trades in practical training. There is a strong emphasis on social ethics. "The paradigm of what is accepted practice ... is continually offered; more ... when his characters depart" [i.e., from accepted practice].55

55 Ibid., p. 87.

The heroic deeds and the glory of Achilleus, the cunning and perseverence of Odysseus, the despised actions of Thersites depicted in these epics shaped the ideals of early Greek (male) society. Plato's aim was to replace the poets with experts, oral wisdom with the literate expertise of an academy. It is exactly this goal of Plato's that points out the basic function of the oral epic as a repository of society's culture, values, customs and general know-how. Oral society had no other means of record keeping. Havelock offers three similes to explain the role of the oral epic: it can be likened to a stream (i.e., the narrative) that carries various deposits along, or to a house whose walls are made up of a great variety of bricks, or lastly and most appropriately, to a walk through a furnished house where the narrator (or the action) takes the listener to various rooms and furniture items that are described on the way. At an extreme, the narration would be a mere frame designed to present the educational contents. The poet's inspiration comes from the Muses, daughters of Mnemosyne "memory, remembering, recall"; he forms his stanzas based on what he has seen and remembers, akin to the Indian epic which is smrti "remembrance." The ancient hymns and the rituals of the old secret societies (e.g., the Eleusinian Mysteries) about whom we know little would correspond to the Indian sruti. A comparison of Vedic, Avestan, Homeric and Old Germanic poetry shows that their ancestors had religious as well as heroic poetry,56

56 Rudiger Schmitt, Dichtung und Dichtersprache in indogermanischer Zeit, Wiesbaden 1967; Calvert Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon, New York 1995.

 
but we have no indication if they formed at that time distinct categories.

The Mahabharata, and to a lesser extent the Ramayana, are likewise compendia of society's culture57

57 Nilakantha on Mahabharata I 1, 1. Cf. Bimal Krishna Matilal (ed.), Moral Dilemmas in the Mahabharata, Delhi 1989.

 
besides being great poems, both dharma-sastra (Mbh I 56.21) and kavya (Ram I 2.34),58

58 Though both terms are applied occasionally to both epics, the former is more commonly referred to as a dharma-sastra "instruction in righteousness," the latter as the adi-kavya "first poem."

 
a source of education as well as entertainment. "What is in it is [found] elsewhere, what is not in it is not [to be found] anywhere."59

59 Mbh I 56,33 yad ihasti tad anyatra, yan nehasti na kutracit.

 
Sylvain Levi60

60 S. Levi, in Commemorative Essays ... Sir Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, Poona 1917, pp. 99-106 = Memorial Sylvain Levi, Paris 1937, pp. 293-298 (un Vinaya, le code de la discipline ksatriya a l'usage des Bhagavatas).

has actually compared the Mahabharata to the Vinaya of the Mula-Sarvastivadins and called it "a code of Ksatriya discipline as practiced by the Bhagavatas." His suggestion and Winternitz' protest61

61 Geschichte der indischen Litteratur, vol. III p.627; engl. trans. History of Indian Literature by V. Srinivasa Sarma, vol. I p. 441.

 
in favor of an heroic tale overgrown with didactic interpolations really replays the Homeric question on Indian soil. In oral literature, narratives "store, organize and communicate much of what they know."62

62 Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy, London 1982 repr.1988, pp. 140f.

 
The size of the epics, in India as well as in Greece (where the various aristeiai, i.e. the duels of famous heroes, were presented in isolation), made a total presentation difficult, and often the episodes that had been amalgamated into one large epic, were again taken out and presented in piecemeal fashion. Indians were weaned on the stories of Yudhisthira, Arjuna, and Krsna, Rama and Ravana and on the innumerable ethical and legal dilemmas that are part of the story line itself or are brought up along with it. It was largely an education by example, as is typical for an archaic and aristocratic society. Endowments are recorded in North-Indian inscriptions for their popular recital,63

63 R.G. Bhandarkar, Summary of Inscriptions of North India. Appendix to El 19-23, repr. New Delhi 1983, nos. 623; 1639.

 
as well as in South India.64

64 E. Hultzsch, SII 1 (1890), pp. 150-155; ARE 1922 (no. 546 of 1922); ARE 1910 (no. 467 of 1909).

Formal similarities with the mini-epics contained in the Jataka-collection and perhaps even the formulized, sometimes rhythmic, prose of the Buddhist and Jaina canons suggest an old epic and narrative tradition that ran parallel to the Vedic tradition.65

65 O. von Hinuber, Untersuchungen zur Mundlichkeit fruher mittelindischer Texte der Buddhisten, AAWL, Mainz 1994 nr. 5, pp. 24, 31-33.

 
Writing was known in India shortly after 300 B.C. (a few centuries earlier in the extreme Northwest where the Achaemenid rulers of Persia held sway), but literacy was not widespread for some centuries.66

66 O. von Hinuber, Der Beginn der Schrift undfruhe Schriftlichkeit in Indien, AAWL 1989 no. 11, and Harry Falk, Die Schrift im alten Indien, Tubingen 1993.

 
The dogmatic portions of the Buddhist canon show the style of orality; there are formulaic expressions in prose (reminding us of the epic style!) -- some of them are later replaced in written Pali and Sanskrit Buddhist texts. 67

67 Oskar von Hinuber, Mundlichkeit, pp. 34-40.

Short dogmatic treatises are also found in other than Buddhist traditions.68

68 P. Hacker, Prahlada, AAWL, Mainz 1959 nr. 9, p. 126 and H. Scharfe, Investigations in Kautalya's [Chanakya's] Manual of Political Science, Wiesbaden 1993, p. 63 (with further references!); Hinuber, Mundlichkeit, pp. 34, 37 fn.70, 38f. with reference to K. Bhattacharya in: Buddhist Studies in Honor of Walpola Rahula, London 1980, pp. 10-15 and M.L. Gethin, The Buddhist Path to Awakening, Leiden 1992, pp. 30, 47, 59 (on short dogmatic pieces in oral tradition).

 
Comparable are also the manuals of the six classical philosophical systems in their short aphoristic form. It is only a few centuries later (fifth century A.D.?), that elaborate prose commentaries in literary style were composed in these schools. It is generally true that "literacy ... consumes its own oral antecedents and, unless it is carefully monitored, even destroys their memory."69

69 Ong, Orality, p. 15. He echoes Plato who claimed that writing not only destroys memory but, in the absence of personal instruction and dialogue, leads to shallow knowledge rather than wisdom; he called writing "an elixir not of memory, but of reminding": Phaedrus 275 and Seventh Letter 344.

 
Thus the priestly hymns of ancient Greece are all but lost; but in India, the established texts of the oral traditions survived: foremost, the Vedic hymns and ritual chants, also many of the Vedic prose works; the twin epics, various purana-s and the sutra-texts of Panini and the six main philosophical systems as also the Buddhist and Jain canons.70

70 The Buddhist canon consists of three sections called pitaka "baskets" -- not as static storage receptacles of palm-leaf manuscripts (A.L. Basham; The Wonder that was India, New York 1959, pp. 266f.), but as "means of handing on" (as an Indian laborer would carry soil in a basket from one place to another): V. Trenckner, Pali Miscellanies, pp.67-69 and T.W. Rhys Davis, The Questions of Milinda (SBE vol. XXXV), p. 28 (on Milindapanha I 35). The first inscriptional evidence is found in an inscription from the third regnal year of Kaniska [2nd century A.D.] in the Sarnath Museum (trepitakasya): B.N. Misra, Nalanda, Delhi 1998, vol. I p. 269 fn. 166.

Some of the preserved texts were protected by the existence of important commentaries that had gained importance in their own right.

Still there were great losses -- not so much in the transition from orality to literacy as may have happened elsewhere, but within the oral tradition. Often basic instructional texts were merely updated by insertions or by reworking, but others were simply replaced by newer ones, leading to total disappearance of the older texts; oral tradition has no pity for outdated material, since it would be a waste of effort and memory for students to memorize obsolete instructions. Panini's grammar made all previous grammatical analyses of Sanskrit obsolete, and not much more than some names remain of his predecessors. The oldest summaries of the Samkhya philosophy disappeared with the exception of a few fragments preserved in the Mahabharata, making Isvarakrsna's [350 C.E.] Samkhya-karika the oldest preserved major text of that school, though it clearly represents a late phase in its development. Older compendia of ayurvedic medicine either disappeared or were preserved in severely revised versions attributed to Caraka, Bhela, and Susruta. Similarly the origins of the Vaisesika and Nyaya systems of philosophy are obscured by the loss of the works predating our Vaisesika- and Nyaya-sutra-s. This loss contrasts with the at least partial preservation of the works of pre-Socratic philosophers in Greece as quotations in the written works of their successors, which allows us to trace the development of Greek thought up to Plato and Aristotle. In India, perfected systems seem to appear ex nihilo, which led in time to the assumption of supernatural revelation. Panini was alleged to have been an ignorant cowherd, before Siva revealed the grammar to him,71

71 On the development of this legend see now Madhav Deshpande, JAOS 117 ( 1997), pp. 444-465. A similar development occurred in Buddhist philosophy: Asanga (fourth century A.D.) had accepted and developed the thought of his teacher Maitreyanatha -- but after the memory of the latter had faded, Asanga's insights were attributed to revelations he received miraculously from the future Buddha Maitreya in the Tusita heaven: E. Frauwallner, Die Philosophie des Buddhismus, Berlin 1956, p. 327.

and the Indian system of medicine called ayurveda is credited to divine revelation72

72 Caraka, Sutra-sthana 30, 27 so 'yam ayurvedah sasvato nirdisyate anaditvat, svabhava-samsiddha-[laksana]tvat, bhava-svabhava-nityatvat "This science of life is declared to be eternal, because it has no beginning, because it deals with [characteristics] that are established from nature, [and] because the nature of matter is permanent." ayurveda is often seen as related to the Atharvaveda which contains much of what we know of Vedic medicine; cf. Kenneth Zysk, Religious Healing in the Veda, TAPS75 part 7, Philadelphia 1985.

 
that trickled down to sages and finally ordinary mortals. This development is particularly strange in the case of ayurveda which had its beginning in the innumerable observations of ordinary people about the medicinal value of certain herbs and procedures 73

73 These did not, in the beginning, form a coherent whole: G. Jan Meulenbeld, in Studies on Indian Medical History, ed. G. Jan Meulenbeld and Dominik Wujastyk, Groningen 1987, pp. 3f.

and ended up being canonized to such a degree that it was considered sacrilegious to even test the validity of the medications taught, since such tests implied a doubt in the truth of divine revelation.74

74 See below p. 62.

 
The logician Jayanta in his Nyayamanjari 226ff. "argues against the attempt to establish the authority of the medical tradition (ayurveda) in a purely empirical manner, i.e., based upon the 'concurrent testimony of sense-perception etc.' (pratyaksadisamvada) and to ascertain the causes and cures of diseases by means of 'positive and negative concomitance' (anvayavyatireka) alone."75

75 Wilhelm Halbfass, Tradition, p. 200 fn. 173.

Note on the other hand, how Caraka Su 1.120

osadhir nama-rapabhyam janate hy ajapa vane /
avipas caiva go-pas ca ye canye vana-vasinah //

The goat-herds, shepherds and cowherds in the forest and who else lives in the forest know the herbs by name and form and Susruta 36.76

76 Susruta Samhita ed. Jadavji Trikamji, repr. Benares 1998.

 
36.10

gopalas tapasa vyadha ye canye vana-carinah /
mulaharas ca tebhyo bhesaja-vyaktir isyate //

Cowherds, ascetics, hunters and who else roams in the forest, those living on root -- from these one wants the manifestation of herbs show the popular basis of herbology, with Susruta expectedly adding a religious dimension (which may have encouraged K. Zysk77

77 K. Zysk, Asceticism and Healing in Ancient India, New York 1991; cf. the critical remarks of A. Wezler, JEAS 4 (1995), pp.169-172.

 
to see ascetic medical knowledge as a major wellspring of ayurveda).

Walter Ong has devoted an interesting book to the problems of orality and literacy.78

78 W. Ong, Orality and Literacy, London 1982 repr. 1988.

In it he puts forth several theses that relate to the problems outlined above, and there is a good amount of conflict. Ong, also with reference to publications by J. Goody and I. Watt79

79 J. Goody and I.Watt, in Jack Goody (ed.), Literacy in Traditional Societies, Cambridge 1968, pp. 27-68; J. Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind, Cambridge 1977, p. 8f. ("not...an overall opposition"); cf. also J. Goody in B. Gentili and G. Paioni (edd.), Oralita, Roma 1985, pp. 7-17.

 
claims that many contrasts between "western" and other views are reducible to deeply interiorized literacy on the one hand and oral states of consciousness on the other, and that shifts from magic to science show the shift from orality to literacy. He writes: "In an oral culture, to think through something in non-formulaic, non-patterned, non-mnemonic terms, even if it were possible, would be a waste of time, for such thought, once worked through, could never be recovered with any effectiveness, as it could be with the aid of writing."80

80 Ong, Orality, p. 35.

The fact that theological and philosophical speculations are found in the Brahmanas and Upanisads in approximately the middle of the first millennium B.C., with Panini's grammar belonging to the same period ...

It is generally well known also that the Hindu science, after a however long history of elaboration, became fixed for all future time in the system of a single grammarian, named Panini (believed, though on grounds far from convincing, to have lived two or three centuries before the Christian era). Panini's work has been commented without end, corrected in minor points, condensed, re-cast in arrangement, but never rebelled against or superseded; and it is still the authoritative standard of good Sanskrit. Its form of presentation is of the strangest: a miracle of ingenuity, but of perverse and wasted ingenuity. The only object aimed at in it is brevity, at the sacrifice of everything else — of order, of clearness, of even intelligibility except by the aid of keys and commentaries and lists of words, which then are furnished in profusion. To determine a grammatical point out of it is something like constructing a passage of text out of an index verborum [An index of words.]: if you are sure that you have gathered up every word that belongs in the passage, and have put them all in the right order, you have got the right reading; but only then. If you have mastered Panini sufficiently to bring to bear upon the given point every rule that relates to it, and in due succession, you have settled the case; but that is no easy task. For example, it takes nine mutually limitative rules, from all parts of the text-book, to determine whether a certain aorist shall be ajgarisam or ajagarisam (the case is reported in the preface to Muller's grammar): there is lacking only a tenth rule, to tell us that the whole word is a false and never-used formation. Since there is nothing to show how far the application of a rule reaches, there are provided treatises of laws of interpretation to be applied to them; but there is a residual rule underlying and determining the whole: that both the grammar and the laws of interpretation must be so construed as to yield good and acceptable forms, and not otherwise — and this implies (if that were needed) a condemnation of the whole mode of presentation of the system as a failure.

-- The Study of Hindu Grammar and the Study of Sanskrit, by William Dwight Whitney

and the philosophies of Samkhya and Buddhism following soon after, led Ong to question the orality of the early Indian tradition. But his argumentation is based on an induction from extremely limited material. It is essentially the early Greek development from Homer's oral poetry, the pre-Socratic philosophers of Milet and other coastal cities of Asia Minor where writing was known but perhaps not yet fully internalized, to Plato and Aristotle living in a literate society. Philosophy is presumed to be not found in societies where writing was not known (as among the Incas and Aztecs) or perhaps not fully internalized (as among the people of the ancient Near East, the Mayas or archaic Chinese). Ong thus committed the same error as Karl Marx who based his theory of social development from Urgesellschaft, through slave holding society, feudalism to capitalism on his interpretation of classical and Western European history; subsequent attempts to apply this scheme to Indian and Chinese society have been extremely tortured. 81

81 Note that Goody and Watt are much more cautious in suggesting generalization from the developments in Greece -- especially in response to the critique by Kathleen Gough in J. Goody (ed.), Literacy, pp. 43, 55 and 69.

Ong's and Goody's denial of the orality of much of the Indian tradition contradicts evidence from a multitude of sources.

In Mahavagga II 17,3f. (PTS p. 116) the Buddha responds to the question what a community of monks is to do when none of them are competent to recite the patimokkha at their uposatha-ceremony at the evenings of the full and new moon. "These monks, O monks, are instantly to send one monk to the neighboring residence [of monks] (with the words): 'Go, friend, and come back when you have learned the patimokkha abridged or in full extent.'" In Mahavagga III 5, 9 (PTS pp. 140f.) the Buddha allowed monks to leave their monsoon residence on certain urgent business with lay followers (upasaka). "In case, O monks, an upasaka ... knows how to recite a celebrated suttanta. If he sends a messenger to the monks [saying]: 'Might their reverences come and learn this suttanta; otherwise this suttanta will fall into oblivion' ... then you ought to go." In Anguttara-nikaya (PTS) II p. 147 (section 160.5) the Buddha declares it a fault when knowledgeable monks fail to pass their command of the oral tradition on to other monks if this leads to a loss of suttanta-s.82

82 AN II 147 (PTS) puna ca param, bhikkhave, ye te bhikku bahussuta agatagama dhammapara vinayadhara matikadhara, te na sakkaccam suttantam param vacenti. tesam accayena chinnamulako suttanto hoti appatisarano.

 
The Chinese pilgrim Fa-hsien, early in the fifth century A.D., had come to India in search of vinaya-texts: "Formerly, when Fa-hsien was at Ch'ang-an, he was distressed by the imperfect state of the Buddhist 'Disciplines'; and accordingly, in the second year of the period Hungshih, ... he entered into an agreement with Hui-ching, Tao-cheng, Hui-ying, Hui-wei and others to go together to India and try to obtain these 'Rules.'"83

83 The Travels of Fa-hsien (399-414 A.D.), or Record of the Buddhist Kingdoms, trans. H.A. Giles, Cambridge 1923, p.1; cf. also the translation by Li Yung-hsi, Peking 1957.

 
But his task proved to be more difficult than he had imagined: "Fa-hsien' s object was to get copies of the Disciplines; but in the various countries of Northern India these were handed down orally from one Patriarch to another, there being no written volume which he could copy."84

84 Rhys Davids and H. Oldenberg, SBE XIII, pp. XXXIII f. point out that elaborate lists of domestic utensils in the vinaya-texts contain no references to manuscripts, ink, leaves or writing instruments.

 
In fact, it has been noted that Vinaya-texts, though a part of the Buddhist canon, are strikingly absent among the Sanskrit manuscripts found in Central Asia85

85 Lore Sander, in Corolla Iranica (Fs. D.N. MacKenzie), Frankfurt 1991, pp. 141 f.

 
and Afghanistan.86

86 R. Salomon, JAOS 117 (1997), p. 355.

"Therefore he extended his journey as far as Central India, and here in a monastery of the Greater Vehicle87

87 Mahayana may have embraced the script earlier than the Hinayana schools; there was even a cult of books: G. Schopen, IIJ 17 (1975), pp. 147-181; cf. also below p. 36.

he obtained a copy according to the text accepted at the first Great Assembly ... This is the text which was handed down [orally] at the Shrine of the Garden of Gold [near Sravasti]."88

88 The Travels, p. 64 with p. 32.

Fa-hsien found additional manuscripts in monasteries at the mouth of the Hoogly89

89 Ibid., pp. 65f.

 
and in Ceylon.90

90 Ibid., p. 76.

Two centuries later, I-tsing [635–713 CE] reported: "The scriptures they revere are the four Vedas, containing about 100,000 verses ... The Vedas have been handed down from mouth to mouth, not transcribed on paper or leaves. In every generation there exist some intelligent Brahmans who can recite the 100,000 verses ... In India there are two traditional ways by which one can attain to great intellectual power. Firstly, by repeatedly committing to memory, the intellect is developed; secondly, the alphabet fixes one's ideas.91

91 A better translation may be: "by the other [method] it is a matter of calming the nerves," following H.-Y. Hu-von Hinuber quoted by H. Falk, Die Schrift im alten Indien, p. 289.

By this way, after a practice often days or a month, a student feels his thoughts rise like a fountain, and can commit to memory whatever he has once heard. This is far from being a myth, for I myself have met such men."92

92 A Record of the Buddhist Religion ... by I-tsing trans. J. Takakusu, London 1896 (repr. New Delhi 1982), pp. 182f. The Greeks and Romans developed a mnemonic technique whereby one imagined a street or a large house and then placed symbols of notions or words in a fixed sequence throughout that place; such techniques were in vogue until the rise of printing: Herwig Blum, Die antike Mnemotechnik, Hildesheim 1969 und Friedheim L. Muller, Kritische Gedanken zur antiken Mnemotechnik und zum Auctor ad Herennium, Stuttgart 1996. Seelenmaschinen, ed. Jarg Jochen Berns und Wolfgang Neuber, Wien 2000, pays no attention to Indian memory technique and deals only with the European tradition. Frances Yates, The Art of Memory, Chicago 1966, traces the development of "artificial memory" from classical antiquity to the seventeenth century in Europe; see also below p. 241.

There are reports that a Buddhist monk recited large parts of the Buddhist canon from memory, e.g. Buddhaya- yasas from Kashmir the Vinaya of the Dharmagupta sect. To test him, the Chinese emperor Yao Hing of the T'sin dynasty in A.D. 410 gave the monk (who knew Chinese) three days to memorize two scrolls of medical and census texts with 50,000 Chinese characters, and the monk was able afterwards to recite the material flawlessly.93

93 P. Demieville, T'oung Pao 40 (1951 ), p. 245 fn. 1. The commentator Dhammapala (late fifth cent. A.D.) stated in the introductory remarks of his Paramatthadipani on the Petavatthu that the text was comprised of four recitation sections: bhanavarato catubhanavaramattam (PvA 2): P. Masefield, Divine Revelation, p. 54. Not all monks were that capable. If one could not remember where or to whom the Buddha had taught a certain lesson, he was to insert the name of one of the great cities or a place where the Buddha stayed many times; the king would be Prasenajit, the householder Anathapindada, etc.: G. Schopen, in Bauddhavidyasudhakarah (Studies in Honour of Heinz Bechert), Swisttal-Odendorf 1997, pp. 571-582 and Suryacandraya (Essays in Honour of Akira Yuyama), p. 174 fn. 59. It is worth noting, that no such "creativeness" was allowed where the content of the lesson is concerned: a monk uncertain of his memory should write the lesson down.

Modern scholars, both Indian and Western, have testified to the enormous amounts of Vedic texts carried in the heads of "our walking Rig-Veda MSS," as Shankar Pandit called these scholars.94

94 Letter to F. Max Muller, dated March 2, 1877 (F. Max Muller, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, New York 1879, p.152). Earlier, R.G. Bhandarkar, IA 3 ( 1874), p. 133 called such a vaidika "a living Vedic library." It is ironic that Friedrich Nietzsche, Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen; Zweites Stuck: Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie fur das Leben (Werke in drei Banden, Munchen 1954, vol. II pp. 232f.) derisively claims that "Wir Modernen" with our shallow knowledge acquired by expansive reading have become "wandernde Enzyclopaedien," obsessed by a historical sense and unable to act in the present!

The Rigveda hymns were composed and preserved by oral tradition. They were memorized and verbally transmitted with "unparalleled fidelity" across generations for many centuries. According to Barbara West, it was probably first written down about the 3rd-century BCE. The manuscripts were made from birch bark or palm leaves, which decompose and therefore were routinely copied over the generations to help preserve the text.

There are, for example, 30 manuscripts of Rigveda at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, collected in the 19th century by Georg Bühler, Franz Kielhorn and others, originating from different parts of India, including Kashmir, Gujarat, the then Rajaputana, Central Provinces etc. They were transferred to Deccan College, Pune, in the late 19th century. They are in the Sharada and Devanagari scripts, written on birch bark and paper. The oldest of the Pune collection is dated to 1464.

-- Rigveda, by Wikipedia