Place · Asiatic Society museum · India
Indian Museum, Kolkata
Also known as Imperial Museum of Calcutta, Indian Museum, Oriental Museum of the Asiatic Society, Indian Museum, Calcutta
The Indian Museum in central Kolkata is described as the oldest and, by size of collection, the largest museum in Asia. It grew out of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, founded by Sir William Jones in 1784: in 1814 the Danish botanist Nathaniel Wallich offered his collection and his services as curator, and the present building on Chowringhee, designed by W. L. Granville, was completed in 1875. Its galleries hold the railings and gateways of the Bharhut stupa, Gandhara sculpture and meteorites.
- Date
- 1814–None
- Function
- Learning & scholarship
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 22.558, 88.351
Worth knowing
Wallich had been captured at the siege of Serampore before he proposed the museum, and the Bharhut panels it holds are unusual in being inscribed in Brahmi.
Connections (4)
- Site withinKolkata
The Indian Museum stands on Chowringhee Road, now Jawaharlal Nehru Road, in central Kolkata, in the Chowringhee and Park Street area where the government offered the Asiatic Society accommodation in 1808. Kolkata's Wikipedia entry lists it among the city's institutions of national importance with the Asiatic Society and the National Library, dating it to 1814 as the nation's oldest museum. Its building, completed in 1875, was meant to house both the Society's collections and the Geological Survey's.
- Historical linkSir William Jones
The Indian Museum originated in the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which Sir William Jones created in Calcutta in 1784. Members of the Society first proposed a museum in 1796 for the man-made and natural objects they were gathering; in 1808 the government offered them accommodation in the Chowringhee and Park Street area, and in 1814 the Society's council accepted Nathaniel Wallich's offer to form a museum from his own collection and the Society's, with Wallich as honorary curator.
- Monument relocationBharhut
The Indian Museum holds the complete railings and gateways of the Buddhist stupa from Bharhut, near Satna in Madhya Pradesh, while only the bare stupa remains at the site. The Bharhut panels are unusual in being inscribed in the Brahmi script, and in Kolkata they sit among the museum's ancient and medieval Indian collections, alongside relics of the Buddha and a copy of the lion capital of Ashoka's Sarnath pillar, so that Bharhut's sculpture is now seen in the city rather than at the stupa.
- AnalogueGovernment Museum, Chennai
The Government Museum at Egmore, started in 1851, is described as the second oldest museum in India after the Indian Museum in Kolkata, founded in 1814. Both grew out of the learned societies of the Company's presidency capitals: the Asiatic Society of Bengal, whose collection Nathaniel Wallich turned into the Calcutta museum, and the Madras Literary Society, whose gift of 1,100 geological specimens began the Madras collection. The Madras museum moved to the Pantheon in 1854; the Calcutta museum's building on Chowringhee was completed in 1875.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Indian Museum" and "Kolkata".
Open Indian Museum, Kolkata in the repository →