ANCIENT INDIAN HISTORY CULTURE AND ARCHAEOLOGY

The Department of Ancient Indian History culture and Archaeology is a direct descendent of Indological studies that were initiated at Santiniketan, with the blessing of Rabindranath, and undertaken by pundits Kshitimohan Sen and Vidhusekhara Sastri in the early 1900s, to be precise 1907 onwards, even when the idea of Visva-Bharati have not had its germination in the mind of the Poet. The Visva-Bharati of Rabindranath was confined in as a central university in 1951.As many of the dreams of the Poet were lost in the quagmire of central university, the school of Ideology was also lost, leaving its fragments as Departments of Ancient Indian History and Culture, Modern Indian History, Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Islamic Studies, Sanskrit, Pali and Prakit, Chinese Language and Culture and Indo-Tibetan Studies.
The Department of Ancient Indian History and Culture, which was thus named in 1951, has been re-christened in 1977, with the introduction of Archaeology as a component of course structure, as the nomenclature now stands. The Department offers graduate courses in semester system in the threeyears six semesters Honours Level at B.A. and the two years Four Semester Course in M.A. in Ancient Indian History Culture and Archaeology. It also offers a one year Causal Course in Ancient Indian History Culture and Archaeology to the foreign students desirous of knowing basics of Indian civilization ethos. In addition to the said course, the Department undertakes M.Phil. two years course and Applied and Field research oriented Ph.D. Level programmes in Ancient Indian History Culture and Archaeology. The Department of Ancient History Culture and Archaeology has opened a new Museum and Archaeological Lab in the New Building (Ground Floor), VidyaBhavana in 2019. The Museum contains mostly ceramic collections from archaeological sites like Hatikra, Balupur and Kotasur. The Archaeological Lab has recently acquired a human skeleton model (170 cm) and 41 pieces of replica tools (3D) of Lower, Middle, Upper Palaeolithic and Neolithic Culture for teaching purpose of the students.