Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c16.s1.t4: National Museum of India
Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c16.s1.t4
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National Museum of India
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National Museum of India is a museum of arts and archaeology founded by the Indian Government in the capital city of New Delhi on August 15, 1949. It is one of the three national museums in India and reputed for its rich and valuable collections. It receives 7.4 million visitors every year and has about 2,00,000 works of arts, both of Indian and foreign origin covering more than 5,000 years. The roots of National Museum begin with an exhibition of Indian art and artefacts in London in 1947 and 1948, and later, it incorporated art and archaeological works of different historical periods and places. Its building fans out with an atrium inside and it houses 26 permanent galleries. On the first floor there are: 1. Harappan Gallery that has artefacts from Indus Valley Civilisation; 2. Maurya, Shunga and Satvahana Arts Gallery that has terracotta and sculpture of the Maurya and Shunga Dynasties; 3. Buddhist Artefacts Gallery that contains sculptures from the Kushan, Gupta and Pala Dynasties; 4. Hindu Artefacts Gallery that has Hindu sculptures from the Medieval Age; and, 5. Bronze Gallery that has bronze statues of the Chola Dynasty. On the second floor, there are: 1. Manuscripts Gallery with important papers in the Mughal Dynasty; 2. Miniature Paintings Gallery which can be divided into Mughal miniature paintings and Rajasthan miniature paintings; 3. Paintings Gallery that has copies of murals of Ajanta Caves and Ellora Caves; and, 4. Central Asian Gallery that has a part of works collected by Sir Aurel Stein from Central Asia and murals from Xinjiang and Dunhuang of China (large works of art are separately collected under Central Asian Archaeology). On third floor are: 1. Textile Gallery; 2. Coins Gallery that has more than 40,000 ancient coins; 3. Weaving and Dyeing Gallery; 4. Arms and Armour Gallery; and, 5. Wood Carving Gallery; 6. Musical Instruments Gallery. Its exhibitions show the outline of cultural development of India and even the entire South Asia. Besides galleries, there are collection rooms, research labs, libraries, lecture rooms and shops.
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National Museum of India, New Delhi
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The interiors of the National Museum of India
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Central Asian Gallery stands out in quality as well as quantity. Many of its collections are from Turpan of Xinjiang and Dunhuang of Gansu. It is a miracle that some silk drawings of Tang Dynasty (7^th to 10^th centuries CE), after more than a thousand years of wind and rain, are still well-preserved. Some paintings are illegible, some damaged and some still intact. There are three drawings of Fuxi and Nuwa with a human head and snake body and paintings and statues of Buddha. Some might not have been painted by professionals but they still have an important cultural and historical value. These Chinese works of art were collected by Sir Aurel Stein, during his three expeditions to Central Asia.
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In his expeditions in 1900-1901, 1906-1908 and 1913-1916, Sir Aurel Stein was sponsored by the British Museum and British Indian government, respectively. He went to China with a passport issued by British India and was accompanied by several Sikhs from Punjab. He discovered many historical documents and objects, even including Neolithic stoneware and funerary objects and textiles from 8^th century CE. He found 'Caves of the Thousand Buddhas' near Dunhuang which have a great store of paintings, temple banners and documents which were sealed up in 11^th century. Franches Wood, the curator of Chinese Collections of the British Library, included a note in his introduction to *A Catalogue of Dunhuang Texts Kept by the British Library* (Fang Guangchang, Religion Press, June 2000), to explain the origin of Chinese collections at the National Museum of India. It reads: “In his three expedition to Central Asia, Sir Aurel Stein was sponsored by the British Museum, where, for some time, part of materials he had collected were kept. In 1973, the British Library was established on the basis of British Museum’s Department of Manuscripts and Department of Printed Texts. Sir Aurel Stein’s materials were divided and assigned, along with
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An image of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva painted on Dunhuang tough silk, preserved in the National Museum of India
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manuscripts and documents to Department of Oriental Collections of British Library. In 1982, the Library of Department of Indian Affairs under British Foreign Office was incorporated into the British Library. Sir Aurel Stein was also sponsored by the British Indian government which, therefore, received some paintings from Dunhuang and other historical sites as well as a great number of Tibetan, Kharosthi and Sanskrit documents”.
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According to a prior agreement between British Indian government, British Museum and Department of Indian Affairs, Stein's murals, silk drawings, embroideries, wood engravings, potteries, wood carvings, coins and the like shall be equally divided between Indian Central Asian Archaeological Museum and British Museum. The division was finished in 1918. More than a thousand of Chinese works of art were sent to New Delhi, with most of them discovered in Xinjiang and some in Dunhuang. There are more than 200 original Dunhuang murals while only 20 of them are on display. However, these Chinese collections have not received due attention from academic circles in China. So far, Jin Ronghua from Taiwan is the only Chinese scholar who has ever seen and studied these objects. From 1982, he has visited New Delhi several times to study these collections. He finds, *A Catalogue of Paintings Recovered from Tunhuang by Sir Aurel Stein*, compiled by British Arthur Wailey in 1931, does not record all of them. “In New Delhi, some drawings of Buddhism are recorded but could not be found while some are not recorded at all”. No one in mainland China has systematically studied these treasures kept in India.
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(Left) *God of Wealth, Jubiluo, now preserved in the National Museum of India (Right) The stone image of Yakśa (Yaocha)*
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After decades of diligent work, Chhaya Bhattacharya-Haesner, an independent scholar and an expert on Chinese collections at the National Museum of India, has finished a book on its Dunhuang and Turpan collections and plan to publish it in Germany in 2014. She indicates, those displayed just account for one-tenth of the total collections and most of them are objects rather than books and manuscripts, and the arrangement is already finished. They could help find out ancient culture, tradition and religious belief in relevant regions.
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At the Harappan Gallery, among relics of the Indus Valley Civilisation, there are many red potteries that are painted with various patterns. Fish is a popular pattern, and similar to the basin unearthed at Banpo Village, China. In pre-historic time, it was unlikely that there was any cultural exchange between China and India, but this object at least indicates, peoples living along the Indus River and the Yellow River all took fish a favorite food, and as Zhao Guohua alleged, all had a kind of worship for fish. It also holds some religious articles from Tibet, China.
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National Museum of India has exchange and cooperation with more than 160 countries, including China, and its articles were displayed at Beijing World Art Museum for a considerable period of time.
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*(Liu Jian)*