Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c15.s1.3

c15.s1.3

The discovery of the monument including the disposal of its sculptures is a thrilling chapter. Colonel Mackenzie first saw it in 1797 while on a tour of duty. Several years before him a local Raja had opened the Stūpa and removed a large number of marbles to build his shrine, town and palace. Many of the antiquities perished in the process but what remained *in situ* attracted the attention of Mackenzie who communicated an account of them to the Asiatic Society of Bengal. He returned to the spot in 1816 as Surveyor-General of Madras and employed all the means at his disposal during the two following years for a minute study of the monuments and the remaining sculptures. The results of his labours are careful plans of the buildings and maps of the surrounding country, together with eighty very carefully finished drawings of the sculptures, ‘which are unsurpassed’, in words of Fergusson, ‘for accuracy and beauty of finish by any drawings of their class that were ever executed in India.’ Three sets were prepared and of which one is still preserved in the Library of the Commonwealth Relations Office. At the same time Mackenzie sent some specimens to the three museums named above, where they have remained their principal ornaments to this day. But little notice was taken of them until Walter Elliot, Commissioner of Guntur, in 1840, excavated a portion of the monument which had not before been touched, and sent to Madras the marbles that were then found. They lay there under sun and rain for eighteen years until 1856 they were dispatched to London where also they were consined to a godown till accidentally Fergusson came to know about them and after proper treatment placed them in the British Museum where they are displayed on the main staircase.