The Amaravati Collection, sometimes called the Amaravati Marbles, is a series of 120 sculptures and inscriptions in the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

from the

Amaravati Stupa Amarāvati Stupa is a ruined Buddhism, Buddhist Stupa, stūpa at the village of Amaravathi, Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh, India, probably built in phases between the third century BCE and about 250 CE. It was enlarged and new sculptures rep ...

in Amaravathi, Guntur in the

Indian state India is a federal union comprising 28 states and 8 union territories, for a total of 36 subnational entities. The states and union territories are further subdivided into 800 districts and smaller administrative divisions by the respe ...

Andhra Pradesh Andhra Pradesh (ISO 15919, ISO: , , AP) is a States and union territories of India, state on the East Coast of India, east coast of southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, seventh-largest state and th ...

. The Amaravati artefacts entered the museum's collection in the 1880s. The Amaravati sculptures were sometimes also called the Elliot Marbles on account of their association in with Sir Walter Elliot, who had them removed from the site to

Madras Chennai, also known as Madras ( its official name until 1996), is the capital and largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India. It is located on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal. According to the 2011 Indian ce ...

in the 1840s. There are also large collections of Amaravati sculpture in the Chennai Government Museum, which has the best collection, and at the site museum at Amaravati, and smaller ones in other museums in India and around the world.

Description

The Amaravati collection in the British Museum consists of over 120 different pieces made from a

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

called Palnad marble; although the material is certainly not marble and the source of the stone in the Palnad quarry not decisively proven. Most of the figurative sculptures are in

relief Relief is a sculpture, sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term ''wikt:relief, relief'' is from the Latin verb , to raise (). To create a sculpture in relief is to give ...

, with many of the most crowded scenes illustrating stories from the

Jataka tales The ''Jātaka'' (Sanskrit for "Birth-Related" or "Birth Stories") are a voluminous body of literature native to the Indian subcontinent which mainly concern the previous births of Gautama Buddha in both human and animal form. Jataka stories we ...

, a large body of literature with complex accounts of the previous lives of

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (),* * * was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was ...

. The largest collection, in the

Government Museum, Chennai The Government Museum, Chennai, or the Madras Museum, is a museum of human history and culture located in the Government Museum Complex in the neighbourhood of Egmore in Chennai, India. Started in 1851, it is the second oldest museum in India a ...

(formerly Madras) has a larger number of similar sculptures in

, which they have classified by four periods of activity starting in the second century BCE and stretching to the second century CE. Early interest in the stupa and its sculptures was to some extent because it was wrongly thought to contain early evidence of

Christianity in India Christianity is Religion in India, India's third-most followed religion with about 28 million adherents, making up 2.3 percent of the population as of the 2011 Census of India, 2011 census. Christianity is the largest religion in parts of Nor ...

. More recent scholarship, notably by Akira Shimada (who made a close study of both collections), has tended to adopt slightly later dates. The segments can be divided into a number of categories, including parts of the stupa's railings and gateways, and "drum-slabs" from the stone facing of the mound of the stupa itself. They include pillars, crossbars and copings, drum-slabs, pillar fragments, two guardian

lions The lion (''Panthera leo'') is a large cat of the genus ''Panthera'', native to Sub-Saharan Africa and India. It has a muscular, broad-chested body; a short, rounded head; round ears; and a dark, hairy tuft at the tip of its tail. It is se ...

and a number of miscellaneous pieces, some of which date from later periods. In total, they represent one of the most important collections of ancient Indian sculpture outside the sub-continent.

Early history and documentation in India

After the first explorations of the site by

Colin Mackenzie Colonel Colin Mackenzie (1754–8 May 1821) was a Scottish army officer in the British East India Company who later became the first Surveyor General of India. He was a collector of antiquities and an orientalist and an indologist. He sur ...

, Sir Walter Elliot of the Madras Civil Service undertook excavations at the Amaravati ''stūpa'' in 1845 and transported the excavated pieces to Madras, where they were placed on the greens in front of the College. After enquiries from the Court of Directors of the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...

, the stones were moved to a slightly less exposed site in front of the museum. In 1853, the curator of the museum, Dr

Edward Balfour Edward Green Balfour (6 September 1813 – 8 December 1889) was a Scottish surgeon, orientalist and pioneering environmentalist in India. He founded museums at Madras and Bangalore, a zoological garden in Madras and was instrumental in raising ...

of the Madras Medical Service, informed London that the condition of the sculptures was deteriorating due to their situation and in order for the company to make a decision as to whether the stones were of sufficient artistic importance to merit transportation to London, Balfour arranged for a series of drawings to be made of the pieces by the Indian artist P. Murugasa Moodaliar in 1855. The drawings are preserved in the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

. Although in general these drawings gave a good idea of the sculptures, Balfour was not entirely satisfied with their accuracy and therefore persuaded Dr A. J. Scott to take a series of photographs, which were also forwarded to London. In 1858,

Linnaeus Tripe Linnaeus Tripe (14 April 1822 – 2 March 1902) was a British pioneer of photography, best known for his photographs of India and Burma taken in the 1850s. Early life Linnaeus Tripe was born on 14 April 1822, in Plymouth Dock (now Devonport), ...

made a further series of photographs of the sculptures in Chennai. A set is preserved in the British Library as ''Photographs of the Elliot Marbles; and other subjects; in the Central Museum Madras'' (Madras, 1858–1859) under shelfmark Photo 958.Photos of the Elliot Marbles
Linnaeus Tripe,

, retrieved 19 December 2013. In the following year, namely 1858, some of the Amaravati sculptures were shipped to London on the orders of the Court of Directors of the East India Company.

Arrival in England

In England, the Amaravati sculptures were destined for the museum of the East India Company. Known as the

India Museum The India Museum was a London museum of India-related exhibits, established in 1801. It was closed in 1879 and its collection dispersed, part of it later forming a section in the South Kensington Museum. History The museum, of the East India Co ...

, this institution was established in 1801 to house the natural history specimens, books, samples of manufactures, manuscripts and other miscellaneous items stolen by the company and its officers in India. The Amaravati sculptures arrived just as the East India Company was being dissolved, so the sculptures were stored at Beale's Wharf in Southwark before being transferred to Fife House in Whitehall, a building once occupied by

James Duff, 2nd Earl Fife James Duff, 2nd Earl Fife (29 September 1729 – 1809) was a Scottish aristocrat and Member of Parliament. Heritage James Duff was second son of William Duff, 1st Earl Fife, and Jean Grant (daughter of Sir James Grant of Pluscardine, Baron ...

(d. 1809). The Indian collections in Fife House were opened to the public in July 1861. Conditions at Fife House were less than ideal and the Amaravati pieces sustained some damage there due to weather conditions. This drew the attention of James Fergusson (1808–1886), who had published a book on Amaravati in 1868 and appears to have expressed his concerns to

Augustus Wollaston Franks Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks (20 March 182621 May 1897) was a British antiquarian and museum administrator. Franks was described by Marjorie Caygill, historian of the British Museum, as "arguably the most important collector in the history ...

at the British Museum.

Transfer to the British Museum in 1880

Although several proposals were put forward in the 1860s to transfer some of the India Museum collections to the British Museum, moves supported by

Antonio Panizzi Sir Antonio Genesio Maria Panizzi (16 September 1797 – 8 April 1879), better known as Anthony Panizzi, was a naturalised British citizen of Italian birth, and an Italian patriot. He was a librarian, becoming the Principal Librarian (i.e. hea ...

, administrative complexities prevented a speedy decision. In addition,

John Forbes Watson John Forbes Watson (1827–1892) was a Scottish physician and writer on India. Life Born in Scotland, Watson was the son of an Aberdeenshire farmer, George Watson and his wife Jean McHardy. He was educated at the University of Aberdeen, where he ...

(1827–1892), in charge of the India Museum from 1858, was determined to preserve the organization and lobbied energetically for a new building and the creation of an 'Imperial Museum for India and the Colonies'. After several failed proposals, the lease on Fife House expired in 1869 and the India Museum briefly rejoined the library in the newly created

India Office The India Office was a British government department in London established in 1858 to oversee the administration of the Provinces of India, through the British viceroy and other officials. The administered territories comprised most of the mo ...

. There was so little room that the Amaravati sculpture was sent to the India Office Stores in

Lambeth Lambeth () is a district in South London, England, which today also gives its name to the (much larger) London Borough of Lambeth. Lambeth itself was an ancient parish in the county of Surrey. It is situated 1 mile (1.6 km) south of Charin ...

. Some of the India Museum collections were slowly moved to the South Kensington Museum (forerunner of the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

), where a three-year lease had been taken on some of the galleries there. This move coincided with the appointment of Dr

George Birdwood Sir George Christopher Molesworth Birdwood (8 December 1832 – 28 June 1917) was an Anglo-Indian official, naturalist, and writer. He served as the first Sheriff of Bombay from 1846 to 1858. Life The son of General Christopher Birdwood, he wa ...

as the curator at South Kensington. After debates in and out of the House of Commons, Sir Louis Mallet (1823–1890) asked Birdwood to prepare plans for the dispersal of the India Museum in 1879. The India Museum was then dissolved and the transfer of collections effected in 1880.

Display of the Amaravati collection in the British Museum

After the sculptures in London were deposited in the British Museum in 1880, for a long time they were arranged on the museum's main

stairwell A stairwell or stair room is a room in a building where a stair is located, and is used to connect walkways between floors so that one can move in height. Collectively, a set of stairs and a stairwell is referred to as a staircase or stairway. ...

until they were removed for safekeeping during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. They re-emerged in the 1950s, but the atmospheric conditions in London at the time caused the sculptures to deteriorate. They were moved to an air-conditioned basement in 1959 where they remained for over thirty years until a special gallery could be constructed, which now displays some 70 objects. In 1992, the British Museum's Sir

Joseph Hotung Sir Joseph Edward Hotung (25 May 1930 – 16 December 2021) was a British/Hong Kong businessman, art collector, and philanthropist. Biography Hotung was born in 1930 in Shanghai to Edward Hotung, a founder of the Chinese Gold and Silver Exchang ...

Gallery (Room 33) was opened to feature antiquities from east Asia and south Asia. Adjacent to this gallery (Room 33a), the Amaravati collection is displayed in a special room with controlled humidity and air conditioning. The gallery includes a reconstructed section of the stupa railing and a selection of "drum slabs" that once decorated the exterior of the stupa proper. The gallery was sponsored by the Japanese publishing concern

Asahi Shimbun is a Japanese daily newspaper founded in 1879. It is one of the oldest newspapers in Japan and Asia, and is considered a newspaper of record for Japan. The ''Asahi Shimbun'' is one of the five largest newspapers in Japan along with the ''Yom ...

after whom the space is named.

Catalogues and research

The first detailed study of the Amaravati sculpture was published by James Fergusson in 1868. Just under a century later, the first catalogue of the collection was prepared by Douglas E. Barrett, one time Keeper of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum, and published by the museum in 1954. This was followed by ''Amaravati: Buddhist Sculpture from the Great Stūpa'', published in 1992 to coincide with the opening of the

Gallery of Amaravati sculpture. The early printed catalogues have been absorbed and surpassed by the British Museum's collections online database. As the British Museum database emerged, work on the iconography of the early Buddhist art at Amaravati and Ajanta was being advanced by Prof. Dr Monkia Zin. Meanwhile, the study of the site's history has been led by Dr Jennifer Howes, who has written articles on the subject and been involved in the online publication of Colin Mackenzie's Album. A wider study of the site and its history was published by Akira Shimada in 2013. This monograph provides a detailed re-evaluation of the site itself, the documents in the British Museum and British Library, and the history of early Buddhist art. Shimada's chronology has superseded earlier attempts to date the phases of Amaravati sculpture and places the stupa in its wider cultural and physical landscape. In 2014, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation supported a conference at the British Museum entitled ''Amaravati: The Art of an Early Buddhist Monument in Context'' at the British Museum. Collaborative research into the Amaravati sculptures is ongoing through th
World Corpus of Amaravati Sculpture
, a project directed by Prof. Akira Shimada in collaboration with the Archaeological Survey of India. The aims of the project are to "facilitate access to the site’s sculpture and documentation, to encourage the interdisciplinary and international discussion of Amaravati and to promote new research and publication on Amaravati and Buddhist archaeology."