Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c6.12

c6.12

Up to 1917 the collection in the Museum of the Varendra Research Society of Rajshahi consisted entirely of sculptures collected in Bengal proper and mainly in Northern Bengal. This collection has been catalogued by Prof. Radha Govinda Basak, M.A., Honorary Secretary, Varendra Research Society and Prof. Dinesh Chandra Bhattacharya, M.A., Honorary Librarian of the same Society.³ Other collections of specimens of this particular school are not so important. In India we have the Museum of the Baṅgīya Sāhitya Parishad, which contains a number of fine sculptures. No systematic effort has been made by this Society for the collection of specimens and their museum consists entirely of specimens presented by individual members. A small list of its contents was published by me in 1912.⁴ Since then a larger catalogue has been published by one of the Honorary Curators, the late Mr. Monmohan Gangoly, B.E.⁵ The Museum at Patna, which has been recently started contains a number of specimens discovered in the province of Bihar and Orissa, but no catalogue or list of the contents of this museum has been published as yet. Outside Bihar and Bihar proper, the provincial Museum at Lucknow contains some specimens of this school. The images collected by Major Kittoe, which were for a long time kept in the Queen's College at Benares, were transferred to this Museum in 1904. Outside India, the only museums, which are known to possess specimens of this school, are the British Museum in London and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The late Dr. V. A. Smith had collected all published references to specimens of this particular class of sculpture in his book on "the History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon".¹ The earlier volumes of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal also contain a number of woodcuts illustrating certain specimens of this school, many of which were at the same time added to the Museum of this Society, which was transferred to the Indian Museum in 1876-77. A number of fine illustrations of specimens of this school of sculpture have appeared in M. A. Foucher's admirable work on Indian Buddhist Iconography.²