#discoverersofindianhistory Charles Masson (real name James Lewis b.1800 d.1853) was a British East India Company

#discoverersofindianhistory Charles Masson (real name James Lewis b.1800 d.1853) was a British East India Company army deserter, who accidentally became the first European to explorer of the Stupa and other ruins at Harappa (and thus discovered the site of Indus Valley Civilisation) in 1829 near Sahiwal in Punjab, now in Pakistan.

Masson alias James Lewis joined the Bengal Artillery wing of the East India Company Army in India and once served in the Battle of Bharatpur. In 1827, while stationed at Agra, he and one of his fellow soldier deserted and traveled incognito through parts of the Punjab that were under British control at that time. At Ahmadpur, they were rescued by self proclaimed Raja of Ghor, Josiah Harlan and commissioned as them mounted orderlies in his expedition to overthrow the regime in Kabul, Afghanistan. Not long afterward, near Dera Ghazi Khan, Masson once again deserted Josiah Harlan.

Between 1833 and 1838, Masson excavated over 50 Buddhist sites around Kabul and Jalalabad in south-eastern Afghanistan, amassing a large collection of small objects and many coins, principally from the site at Bagram (the ancient Alexandria on the Caucasus), north of Kabul. Masson also wrote a book on his travels and explorations, entitled "Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan and The Panjab” whilst visiting, the North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan, as an serving agent of the East India Company.

In the 1930s, the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan (Délégation archéologique française en Afghanistan, DAFA) found unexpected evidence of an earlier European visitor scribbled "If any fool this high samootch explore, Know Charles Masson has been here before” in one of the caves above the 55 meter tall Buddha at Bamiyan. 

Between 1827, till his return to England in 1842, it is estimated that Masson collected (stole) around 47,000 ancient coins from his archeological explorations. He also built up an extraordinary collection of artefacts largely (although not exclusively) from the modern states of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Numbering about 9,000 objects, they are now held in the British Museum at London.