I will consider, today, the 15th June, 2019, as one of the most well spent day in London. I decided to go back to the British Museum not as a tourist but as a Historian. I made up my mind that I was going to spend the whole day only with Indian artefacts and not be tempted with Japan, Egyptian, Korean, Chinese and many others. Hence, it was such a peaceful day, I could make my notes, spend enough time in front of a piece and be in no rush that I had to cover more and time is running out and at the end of the day felt it was a very productive day. In this room one can see collections right from Indus valley civilization and some going to paleolithic age too, the Cholas, Chalukya, Mughals, Tipu, Portuguese till the coming of British. Many of these I had only seen as pictures in books but now I had the real image in front of me and it filled me with a lot of emotion as to how many of my country people and students will not even be able to see the original piece of beauty and have to be satisfied with only a xeroxed copy. While making the East Indian Railway lines, the British had come across beautiful railings, statues, in 1845,which were dated 100 to 200A.D. and they had shipped nearly 145 slabs to London in 1859. However, Colin MacKenzie had, seen these ruins in 1797. These were displayed in the British Museum in, 1889and during the first World War kept in the basement in 1940 and again displayed in 1950. Here is a collection of Indias best artifacts right from 200B.C to the European period. In fact this is the greatest collection of religious sculptures outside the subcontinent,be it Shiva Parvathy, Natraja, Buddha or even the Yakshis. Again, I found the miniatures of great interest. Since, I could take detailed notes I thought it best to display these and write about them so that who ever is interested and my students can really see these pieces.
