Madhya Pradesh: Preserving building history ‘brick by brick’

Bhopal: It is a museum where building history, literally, is recorded “brick by brick”. Developed by retired archaeologist of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) Dr Narayan Vyas, the 200 sq ft  museum has a rich collection of earthen bricks dating back to the Mauryan era (2,300 years old) to as late as 1957. “My collection of bricks is in continuous cultural sequence recorded in central India since the Mauryan period in the 3rd century BC. The collection throws light on evolution of brick making technique over the centuries,” Dr Vyas, who started building his archive after he retired as ASI, Bhopal circle, superintending archaeologist in 2009, told this newspaper.

Bricks used during the Mauryan period (3rd century BC), Sung age (2nd century BC), Kushana era (early first century AD), Gupta dynasty (3rd century AD), medieval time (10th century AD), Islamic period (12rd century AD) and modern era (from 17th century AD), find place in his gallery.

Significant among the brick collection is an earthen block of the Mauryan period, which has a footprint of possibly a brick maker. “The footprint measures 22 cm in length and 10 cm in width. The brickmaker whose foot mark was found on the artefact must be around 5.6 feet as per scientific calculation based on the size of the footprint. The finding has busted another myth that human beings of the early periods were unusually tall,” he said.

The relic, retrieved by him from the ruins of an archaeological site located behind the famous Udaygiri cave and right on the banks of river Besa in Vidisha district in Madhya Pradesh in 1980s, has found a place in the Golden Book of World Records, Universal Record Forum, Incredible Book of World Records, and Wonder Book of Records. His “mini-museum” has an assortment of around 4,000 artefacts, including million year-old fossils of marine species, prehistoric tools, and potteries, philatelic and numismatic collections, besides the rare assemblage of 74 bricks.

“It is a unique and interesting collection, which will help historians and researchers study on contemporary technologies of house building in ancient periods,” archaeologist Atul Kumar Pradhan, who has been credited with discovering an ancient city buried at Tarighat in Durg district of Chhattisgarh, told this newspaper. Dr Vyas’s reserve of brick collection has been recovered from different ancient sites in the country. While he has stumbled upon the Mauryan era bricks in Vidisha in MP and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan, the earthen blocks belonging to Sung, Kushana, Gupta, medieval, and modern periods have been collected from Rewa in MP, Sirpur in eastern Chhattisgarh, Satna in MP, Raisen, and Bhopal in MP respectively.