Abstract
The transfer of Indian statues to Europe developed from the last decades of the eighteenth century onward, as the East India Company came to control a growing number of territories and populations in the subcontinent. After analyzing how statues were collected in India and conveyed to Britain, this chapter focuses on these objects’ resonances in the course of their displacement and integration into private collections and museums. It examines images’ evolving functions and modes of display together with the career paths of colonial administrators, both as employees of the East India Company and aspirant scholars desirous of promoting their newly acquired expertise on Indian antiquities within metropolitan networks and institutions.
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Notes
- 1.
Edward Clive was the son of Robert Clive, a key figure in the establishment of British rule in India.
- 2.
This statue from the Pala period (eleventh century) is known as the first identifiable Indian piece of sculpture acquired by a museum in the West; it was donated to the Ashmolean Museum by Sir William Hedges, EIC’s governor in Bengal (Harle and Topsfield 1987, pp. ix and 39–40).
- 3.
From the very beginning, the Asiatic Society, founded in 1784, became the repository of many objects; its museum was officially created in 1814, one year before that of the Literary Society of Bombay. The initiative of an “Oriental Repository,” to be established at EIC’s London headquarters, dates back to 1798. For more details on the creation of these institutions and the growth of their collections: Etter (2012, pp. 193–210).
- 4.
For an overview, see, for example, Hoskins (2006).
- 5.
Davis underlines that there are two reasons that Indian religious images can be considered alive. Objects of worship are enlivened as divine persons through a ritual of establishment, maintained by liturgical activity. Furthermore, images’ identities evolve along with their successive displacements, which confer upon them renewed audiences and functions, and enrich their biographies. This approach can be applied to the study of objects that have been looted and collected during the colonial period (Davis 1997, pp. 143–185).
- 6.
Echoing the process of the commoditization of collections, the distinction between collections as wholes and objects as items of collections derives from the fact that collectors may decide, at given periods and for specific reasons, to part with selected objects of their collections, if not with all of them.
- 7.
National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh), MSS 11364, f. 58.
- 8.
This statue, reproduced in plate 28 of The Hindu Pantheon, is now held by the British Museum.
- 9.
British Library (BL), Oriental and India Office Collections (OIOC), IOR F/4/806 21 709. The gift made in 1812 is comprised of the manuscript account of Francklin’s visit to the ruins of Gour, copies of inscriptions, drawings of ornaments, and decorated stones from Gour (National Archives of India, New Delhi, Home, Public, Original Consultations, 17 April 1812, No. 45, p. 5).
- 10.
BL, OIOC, IOR F/4/699 18964, p. 7 (letter dated 27 October 1821).
- 11.
The third mode identified by Pearce—fetishism—is here set aside.
- 12.
This expression applies to works made by Indian artists for Europeans, the former altering their own style and topics to meet their patrons’ demands and tastes. See, for example, Archer (1992).
- 13.
Charles Townley and Richard Payne Knight connected the objects they acquired on this occasion to their thoughts on universal religion and cults, and on phallic cults and fertility in ancient times.
- 14.
BL, OIOC, Mss Eur D562/33, p. 35.
- 15.
See, for example, Erskine (1823).
- 16.
Letter from C. Mackenzie to C. Wilkins (Madras, 25 October 1808). BL, OIOC, Mss Eur Mack Gen 18A, p. 277.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
For an in-depth analysis of these relationships, see Raj (2006).
- 19.
In such a context, it was for instance easier to devote oneself to publishing activities. The functioning of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland is also interesting: created in 1823, this institution was mostly animated by former EIC employees.
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Etter, AJ. (2019). Collecting Statues in India and Transferring Them to Britain, or the Intertwined Lives of Indian Objects and Colonial Administrators (Late Eighteenth Century to Early Nineteenth Century). In: Gallien, C., Niayesh, L. (eds) Eastern Resonances in Early Modern England. New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22925-2_10
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