India, May 17 -- In the late 18th century, Henry Creighton, a Scotsman assigned to an indigo factory in Malda, Bengal, stumbled upon the ruins of the lost city of Gaur.

They had been taken over by the jungle, which sheltered "a variety of wild creatures, bears, buffaloes, deer, wild hogs, snakes, monkies, peacocks, and the common domestic fowl, rendered wild for want of an owner," he would later write, in his book, The Ruins of Gour (1817).

With little else by way of entertainment in Malda, he began to keenly explore these ruins. He recreated some in paintings and sketches, and created a topographical map of the lost city. It was "not less than fifteen miles in length (extending along the old bank of the Ganges) and from two to three in...