Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c6.9

c6.9

These conclusions were reached after a detailed examination of such specimens as are available in the museums and other public institutions of this country and those that have been carried away and are now preserved in the museums of Europe. The principal collections of specimens of this school are in the Imperial Museum at Calcutta, better known as the Indian Museum, and the museum of the Varendra Research Society at Rajshahi in Bengal. The collection of sculptures in the Indian Museum consists of stray specimens from different parts of Bengal and Bihar, as well as the magnificent collection of the Bihar Museum, started by the late Mr. A. M. Broadley, I.C.S., which was transferred to Calcutta from Bihar in the Patna District in 1898. Many of these sculptures have since been given away as duplicates to several other institutions by the authorities of the Indian Museum and in this way the museum of the Varendra Research Society has received many important and unique specimens discovered in Bihar. The Calcutta collection was classified and arranged by the late Dr. Theodor Bloch, Ph.D., in 1896 when he was appointed First Assistant to the Superintendent of the Indian Museum. Dr. John Anderson, the first Superintendent of the Indian Museum, had catalogued the archæological collection of the Indian Museum, as it existed in 1882, in two volumes.¹ Later additions, specially the magnificent collection of Bihar were catalogued by Prof. Nilmoni Chakravarti, M.A., of the Presidency College in 1907 and revised by Bloch in 1909.²