Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c4.2

c4.2

The study of mediæval sculpture in the north-eastern provinces of India was begun for the first time by the late Dr. Theodor Bloch after his appointment as the First Assistant to the Superintendent of the Indian Museum in 1896. At that time the Archæological Section of the Indian Museum contained the sculptures catalogued by John Anderson in 1883. Two years afterwards the collection of the late Mr. A. M. Broadley, I.C.S., at Bihar, in the Patna District, was transferred to Calcutta. By a combination of these two collections the Indian Museum came to possess the largest number of sculptures of the mediæval period discovered in Bengal and Bihar. The collection was entirely re-arranged by Dr. Bloch between 1898 and 1900. The new arrangement was not chronological but according to the genus and species. Magadha sculptures were divided into two broad groups, Buddhist and Brahmanical. Each class was subdivided into species; such as Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Tārās or Viṣṇus, Sūryas, Śaktis, etc. Subsequently, on account of his appointment as the Archæological Surveyor, Bengal Circle, Dr. Bloch had to give up the idea of writing a catalogue of the Archæological Section of the Indian Museum. The want of a fresh catalogue was severely felt by me and by other scholars who came to study in the Indian Museum. In 1907 the late Dr. N. Annandale, the last Superintendent of the Indian Museum, revived the proposal for a new catalogue of the Archæological Section and during Dr. Bloch's absence on leave Mr. Nilmani Chakravarti, M.A., a pupil of Mahāmahopādhyāya Haraprasad Sastri, C.I.E., was appointed as a temporary assistant to catalogue the additions received in the Indian Museum after the publication of Anderson's catalogue. Mr. Chakravarti's catalogue was revised and edited by Dr. Bloch after his return from leave in 1908 and published in the latter's name after his death in 1910, as a supplement to Anderson's catalogue.