Michael Meister researches to preserve history

When it comes to South Asia Studies, professor Michael Meister is a bit of a Renaissance man.

In a talk Wednesday about his current research at the Penn Museum, he explained that his research has taken him to the Salt Range Hindu-Shahi temple sites in Pakistan where he carried out excavations in collaboration with the Pakistan Heritage Society and to the Himalayas where he surveyed mountain temples.

Much of his current research, however, is occurring at Penn. As with past projects, the goal of his current research is to preserve India’s and war-torn Pakistan’s histories and to restore religious monuments.

Meister first became interested in South Asian culture when he went to India on a Fulbright Fellowship as a student tutor. He said he was “fascinated by the architecture in India.” So much so, in fact, that he stayed a second year and pursued masters and doctoral degrees in the history of fine art at Harvard University.

His most recent scholarly endeavors, however, have brought him to Pakistan. For the past 15 years, Meister has researched Pakistani art and architecture, starting with a project he did on temples around the Indus River in southern Pakistan.

His current research was inspired by University of Peshawar professor Abdur Rehman, who’d proposed that one of the gumbats — an important Buddhist temple at the time — in Swat, Pakistan was built in the eighth or ninth century.

Meister and Luca Oliviari, co-director of an Italian mission in Swat, found that the gumbat was actually from the second or third century — about 500 years older than Rehman suggested. “It was an important monument at an important time,” Meister said.

The monument is still intact today. But one element about the gumbat that interests Meister is that there’s a second, identical gumbat in another valley. Interestingly, this second gumbat wasn’t a Bu a Hindu temple.

Meister is fascinated with the multiplicity of the different religious groups in the region. He hopes his research will restore plurality to the story and shed some light on inter-relations between the different religious groups.

A symposium at Drexel last spring was the impetus for Meister and Oliviari’s future work together. Meister decided to set up an email correspondence with Oliviari. They discussed the three monuments Meister wanted to work on and exchanged drawings and photos. In all, Oliviari sent him 70 photos and monographs with rock paintings from Subaltern culture, and Meister used Photoshop to reconstruct what the monuments would have looked like centuries ago.

The correspondence turned into a full-fledged partnership.

“I’m open, he’s open. I’m delighted, he’s delighted. It was fun,” said Meister, describing the partnership.

Oliviari asked Meister to co-author an article, supplying critique on past scholarship and commentary on the architecture. Meister also edited the piece. To find the age of the Buddhist gumbat, they examined and carbon-dated a piece of wood they found underneath the dome. The results of another lab test will be coming later this year.

The two plan on presenting their findings at the European Association of South Asian Archaeologists this summer. In the meantime, Meister received a fellowship to do research in Pakistan. Although the fellowship has temporarily been postponed, he looks forward to studying these structures in person.

Meister’s research has been lauded by his peers.

His colleague, professor Deven Patel, wrote in an email that “his expertise ranges from technique to historical analysis to critical theory.” He’s been described as “[intellectually] curious,” an “established authority on all aspects of South Asia’s art and architectural traditions.”

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