Alexander Cunningham - Military Life

Military Life

He saw action at the Battle of Punniar and was with the Army of Sutlej in 1845-46. He later became the Chief of Commission of Ladakh-Tibet boundary with Richard Strachey, then a captain in the British Army and Dr. Thomson in 1847. The Commission was set up to delimit the northern boundaries of the Empire after the First Anglo-Sikh War concluded with the Treaty of Amritsar, which ceded Kashmir as war indemnity expenses to the British. He was also a member of a previous commission to chart the border of Ladakh under R.A. Vans Agnew. His early works are from his visits to the temples in Kashmir and his travels in Ladakh during his tenure with the Commission. He was also present at the battles of Chilianwala and Gujrat in 1848. In 1851, he explored the Buddhist monuments of Central India along with Lt. Maisey, and wrote an account of these. He was appointed as the Chief Engineer of Burma in 1856 for two years, and later for three years from 1858 he served in the same post in the North-western Provinces.

The Archaeological Survey of India was set up following a correspondence between Cunningham and Charles John Canning, then the viceroy of India. Cunningham was appointed the first director of the project, which operated from 1861 to 1865. He published the first two volumes of the Archaeological Survey of India during his tenure here. In 1865 the Archaeological Survey was halted and he left India in February 1866 to join the Delhi and London Bank at London as its Director till 1870. In the year 1867, Cunningham was knighted. Upon the resumption of the Archaeological Survey in 1870, he returned to India to take up the position of Director-general of the ASI on 1 January 1871 maintaining his post until 1885. He was the author of 11 volumes of the ASI, while the rest were written under his supervision. He retired on 30 September 1885 and returned to London, and continued to write books on the Buddhist excavations and on ancient coins. He also published numerous papers in the Journal of the Asiatic Society and the Numismatic Chronicle.