Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c16.s1.t4.8

v2.c16.s1.t4.8

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.