Archaeological Gazetteer of Kaimur District

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I am grateful to Shri Nitish Kumar, the honourable Chief Minister of Bihar, who has evinced a keen interest in the archaeological heritage of Bihar, and has personally backed up the present project of documentating the antiquarian remains in Bihar.

During the course of exploring the sites and remains at the grassroots, I visited numerous villages, and was amazed to see how curious and helpful the villagers were in guiding me to the antiquarian spots. I must express my deep gratitude to them. I have been encouraged by numerous professionals- from universities, ASI, Archaeology Directorates and so on- for persevering with this project. Their words of encouragement helped me to stay focused on the project.

I would specially like to thank Shri Ajit Kumar Prasad, a senior archaeologist and formerly with the Directorate of Archaeology, Govt. of Bihar, for examining the potsherds collected from each site, and offering his written comments on them. Dr. Arvind Mahajan of the Directorate of Museums provided useful comments on the documented sculptures on the basis of the photographs shown to them. I would like to thank him.

Special thanks are due to our dedicated team of Research Investigators who carried on with the long and arduous exercise with great sincerity. Their names figure in each volume of the gazetteer at the inner cover page.

The Kashi Prasad Jayaswal Research Institute (KPJRI), under my direction, undertook the exploration and documentation of the antiquarian remains in Bihar in June 2007. The methodology adopted for this work is briefly as follows. The field-work was done by Research Investigators who extensively explored the villages, supposed to have some remnants from the past, filled up a comprehensive printed data-sheet for each antiquarian find-spot. They recorded the measurements and details of monuments and sculptures, collected potsherds and antiquities, and photographed the archaeological features. These data-sheets were later checked and corrected by experts, and the potsherds and antiquities were studied, and assigned a rough chronological bracket. Some of the explored sites were revisited, while some data- sheets were rejected. Till date, more than 5500 antiquarian find- spots have been documented in the process, covering 377 blocks of the 33 districts of Bihar, out of the total of 38 districts. The exercise is still in progress. The explored find-spots include mounds along with potsherds, monuments, scatterings of historical sculptures and other antiquities. I am using the word find-spot, and not site, because several explored villages have sculptures of historical periods without any evidence to show that they belonged originally to these locations. From their provenances, sculptures are known to have been shifted to several other places.