# The Amaravati Collection > Sculptors of the Amaravati school, Andhra - c. 200 BCE to c. 250 CE, with later pieces of about the 7th to 8th centuries > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/amaravati-school/amaravati-marbles-british-museum/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-10-08 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Sculptors of the Amaravati school, Andhra - **Date:** c. 200 BCE to c. 250 CE, with later pieces of about the 7th to 8th centuries - **Medium:** Carved limestone known as Palnad marble; it is not marble, and the Palnad quarry source is not decisively proven - **Dimensions:** Over 120 pieces. A typical drum slab is about 124 x 86 x 12.5 cm. About 70 objects are displayed. - **Object type:** Sculpture - **Period:** Indian, Satavahana and later - **Current location:** The British Museum, London, Room 33a, the Asahi Shimbun Gallery of Amaravati Sculpture, adjoining the Sir Joseph Hotung Gallery - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary Over 120 carved limestone panels, railings, pillars and inscriptions from the great Buddhist monument at Amaravati in Andhra Pradesh, held by the British Museum since 1880 and displayed in a humidity-controlled room paid for by a Japanese newspaper. They were dug out by Sir Walter Elliot of the Madras Civil Service in 1845, left on open ground in Madras, shipped to London at the end of the 1850s, and moved between four unsuitable buildings before a museum would take them.They are called the Amaravati Marbles and they are not marble. They are also called the Elliot Marbles, a nineteenth-century coinage made in deliberate imitation of the Elgin Marbles, and the man the name honours is not the first person to have taken the monument apart: that was a local landholder, thirty years earlier, whose workmen fed the stone into local house-building.Indian calls for their return are live and unresolved, and the retention rests on British statute, not on any argument about the objects. The best collection of Amaravati sculpture anywhere is in Chennai, not in London. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 200 BCE-c. 250 CE** The Amaravati Mahacetiya, Dharanikota, Andhra `[documented]` (origin) Carved in phases for the great Buddhist monument, with the exterior wholly renewed in a late campaign beginning around 50 BCE. Earlier slabs were turned, recarved on their backs and remounted. Later pieces of about the 7th to 8th centuries are also in the group. - **c. 13th century-1797** Unrecorded; the monument buried and forgotten `[unknown]` (gap) Amaravati remained active to about the thirteenth century, and a fourteenth-century Sri Lankan inscription records repairs. After that the site was neglected, buried under rubble and grass, and forgotten. Nothing is recorded of the sculptures for roughly five centuries. - **c. 1797-1816** Vasireddy Venkatadri Nayudu, zamindar `[documented]` (quarrying and destructive excavation) Colin Mackenzie first saw the site in 1797. By his return in 1816, indiscriminate excavations by the local zamindar had destroyed much of what remained, and stone and brick had been reused to build local houses. Mackenzie excavated further, recorded what he saw and drew the plan, labelling the monument deepaladimma, the hill of lights. - **1845-1858** Sir Walter Elliot, Madras Civil Service, and the Madras museum `[documented]` (excavation and removal to Madras) Excavated near the west gate of the railing in 1845 and the sculptures removed to Madras, where they were placed on the greens in front of the college and later shifted to a less exposed position in front of the museum. Elliot's excavation notes and sketches were largely lost getting back to England. In 1853 the curator Dr Edward Balfour reported that they were deteriorating; drawings by P. Murugasa Moodaliar (1855), photographs by Dr A. J. Scott and a further series by Linnaeus Tripe (1858) were made to inform the decision in London. - **1858-1880** The East India Company and its successors; the India Museum `[disputed]` (shipment to London and successive storage) Shipped on the orders of the Court of Directors; the sailing is given as 1858 in one account and 1859 in another, which is why this link is graded disputed. Stored at Beale's Wharf, Southwark, then Fife House, Whitehall, where the Indian collections opened to the public in July 1861 and where the pieces sustained weather damage. After the Fife House lease expired in 1869 the sculpture went to the India Office Stores in Lambeth. The India Museum was dissolved in 1880. - **1880-present** The British Museum, London `[documented]` (transfer on the dissolution of the India Museum) Transferred in 1880 in the break-up of the India Museum, following Birdwood's dispersal plan of 1879 - an internal reorganisation of British imperial institutions, not a purchase or a gift. Displayed on the main stairwell, removed for safekeeping in the Second World War, returned in the 1950s, moved to an air-conditioned basement in 1959, and given Room 33a, the Asahi Shimbun Gallery, in 1992. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - No public sale is recorded for the Amaravati sculptures and none is claimed here: every step in the record is an excavation or a transfer between government bodies, not a purchase. Sir Walter Elliot excavated the pieces at the Amaravati stupa in 1845 under East India Company authority and moved them to Fort St George, Madras; in 1858 the Court of Directors of the East India Company ordered a group of them shipped on to the India Museum in London, and when that museum was abolished in 1879 its holdings were divided in 1880 between the British Museum and the South Kensington Museum. The British Museum's own accession record for the group (museum number 1880,0709.51 and the surrounding series) states only 'Transferred from: India Museum,' dated 1880, with the acquisition note naming the Museum's abolition and the partition of its contents as the sole cause; no purchase, donation sum or price appears anywhere in the sources consulted. ## Open questions - Did the sculptures sail for London in 1858 or 1859? The two standard accounts differ, and both are cited in the same reference literature. - Where exactly at the site did each piece come from? Elliot's notes and sketches of the 1845 excavation were largely lost on the way to England, so the findspots of most of the London pieces are unrecoverable. - What was lost or broken between the 1855 drawings and the Madras photographs on one side and the present state on the other? The comparison has not been published in the sources consulted, and the material to make it exists in the British Library. - How many British Museum drum slabs carry earlier carving on their reverse faces, and has that earlier carving been systematically recorded? The recarving-and-turning practice is documented; a face-by-face census is not. - Has the Indian government ever made a formal state-level request for the Amaravati collection, as opposed to the documented appeals by historians and campaigners? Nothing in the sources consulted records one. A December 2025 Artnet report on the British Museum's new loan-to-former-colonies scheme names the Amaravati Marbles, alongside the Koh-i-Noor, among the objects India has requested back, but cites no specific state document and the question stays open. - Is the true source of the stone the Palnad quarry? The trade name says so and the attribution is described as not decisively proven. - What happened to the pieces of Elliot's Madras group that were neither shipped to London nor retained by the Madras museum? The 120 in London are described as nearly all from his group, and the accounting of the whole removal is not published here. - Did the Amaravati monument have torana gateways? The British Museum's own group is described as including gateway elements, while the comparison with Sanchi states that toranas do not seem to have been a feature at Amaravati. The two reference accounts contradict each other and this record does not arbitrate. - Which of Burgess's railing figures is right? A diameter of 192 feet gives a circumference near 603 feet, not the 803 feet he records as the total run. ## Sources - [1] Wikipedia, 'Amaravati Marbles', read as raw article text on 4 August 2026: the 120 pieces and the Palnad limestone that is not marble, the Elliot Marbles coinage in emulation of the Elgin Marbles, the mistaken belief in early Christian evidence, Mackenzie and Elliot, Balfour's 1853 report, the 1855 drawings by P. Murugasa Moodaliar and the Scott and Tripe photographs, the shipment of 1858, Beale's Wharf, Fife House, the India Office Stores at Lambeth, Forbes Watson, Birdwood, the 1880 transfer, the stairwell, the 1959 basement, the 1992 Asahi Shimbun Gallery in Room 33a, and the catalogue sequence from Fergusson 1868 to Shimada's World Corpus. TERTIARY: to be replaced with Barrett 1954, the 1992 British Museum catalogue and Shimada 2013. - [2] Wikipedia, 'Amaravati Stupa', read as raw article text on 4 August 2026: the naming of the site and the mahacetiya and deepaladimma forms, the building phases and Shimada's chronology, the turning and recarving of drum slabs, Burgess's 1887 observation about slabs used as fill and his railing measurements, Mackenzie's visits of 1797 and 1816 and the destruction by the zamindar Vasireddy Venkatadri Nayudu, Elliot's 1845 excavation and the loss of his notes, Sewell's excavations under Burgess in the 1880s, Xuanzang's visit of 640 CE, the fourteenth-century Sri Lankan inscription, and the Dalai Lama's Kalachakra initiation of 2006. TERTIARY. - [3] Deccan Chronicle, 'Amaravati relics at British Museum; PM urged to get them back', 21 October 2021. Reports the historian Dr Jasti Veeranjineyulu writing to the Indian Prime Minister after a visit to the British Museum, referring to objects taken from Amaravati during British rule and shown in gallery 33a. No governmental response is recorded in the report. - [4] Francesca Zepeda, 'The Stupa Amaravati of India: Where British Common Law Controls the Repatriation of Cultural Property', 20 Loyola University Chicago International Law Review 93 (2024). Cited from the publisher's landing page and abstract, which states the article's examination of the museum's founding statutes and domestic British law restricting return, the UNESCO and UNIDROIT frameworks binding the United Kingdom, and the museum's standing after recent theft allegations. The full text returned HTTP 403 and was not read. - [5] Wikimedia Commons file records for the photographs used, each carrying its LicenseShortName, author and description. Licences read per file on 4 August 2026: CC0 for the four British Museum photographs by 14GTR, CC BY 2.0 for the Chennai comparison by Richard Mortel, CC BY-SA 4.0 for the site photograph by Wilsonraj1976. - [6] Artnet News (Jo Lawson-Tancred), 'British Museum Launches Long-Term Loan Program to Former Colonies', 18 December 2025. Reports the museum's new up-to-three-year loan scheme launched under director Nicholas Cullinan, the first transfer being about 80 Greek and Egyptian antiquities to the CSMVS museum, Mumbai. Names the Amaravati Marbles, alongside the Koh-i-Noor diamond, as objects India has requested returned; states the British Museum Act 1963 still bars permanent return outside exceptional circumstances. Does not cite a specific formal Indian state document, so does not resolve the open question below. - [7] British Museum, "India: Amaravati", Room 33a, The Asahi Shimbun Gallery - gallery page, read 2026-10-08 (open daily; states the Amaravati sculptures are on display). --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.