|
The museum in Lucknow, once
situated in the historic Choti Chattar Manzil and the Lai Baradari,
erstwhile coronation hall of the nawabs ofAvadh, moved in 1963 to
its new premises, a modern three storeyed structure situated
incongruously in the the Prince of Wales Zoological Gardens.
The initial collection centred around the arts of Avadh and objects
related to the customs, habits and mythology of India. Gradually, it
expanded to include excavated antiquities from Piparahawa,
Kapilavastu, where the Buddha grew up. Today, this has evolved into
a multipurpose museum with sculpture, bronzes, paintings, natural
history and anthropological specimens, coins, textiles and
decorative arts. From the vast number of displayed objects, some
hundred are rare and of great value. These include an inscribed wine
jar bearing the name of Aurangzeb Alamgir (17th century), a jade
chamakali with the name Jahangir and the date 1036 AD, a 16th
century painting of a scene from the Kalpasutra depicting an
elephant rider and a Jain mum, a 16th century copy of the Harivansha
in Persian with nine illustrations, rare silver and gold coins, a
prehistoric anthropomorphic figure and a fossilised plant. However,
what thrill visitors most are the Egyptian mummy and wooden
sarcophagus (1000 BC).
Rare stone sculpture includes the earliest image ofBalarama and a
panchmukhi shivalinga(both 2nd century BC), and a statue ofSaraswati,
again reputed to be the earliest depiction (2nd century AD). The
coin collection dates from 6th century BC onwards. Two recent
acquisitions areJahangir's silver zodiac coins made at the Ahmedabad
mint. Lai Baradari, the Kaisarbagh unit i museum, remains the
archaeology and displays excavated antiquities from Uttar Pradesh. |
