The Colonial Birth and Location of the Assam Provincial Museum

By : Swagata Mukhopadhyay

Page No: 161-179

Abstract
In 1917-18, the Kamrup Anusandhan Samiti (KAS) reported the construction of its own house. Estampages of two crucial inscriptions, namely Harjjara’s Tezpur and Kanai Barasi rock edicts, were officially unveiled during the occasion and exhibited in the Samiti’s collection. This perhaps marks the beginning of the museum collection and display practices in the region. The vast store of cultural artefacts hereafter systematically retrieved by Assamese and Bengali scholars such as Padmanath Vidyavinode, Rakhaldas Banerjee, H.C. Goswami, Sarbeswar Kataki et al., would find its way to the central depository of colonial Assam, namely the Provincial Museum. This paper looks back on the inaugural assemblage of the museum based on the early directories, annual reports of the ASI, Home Department (Archaeology) and Education Department files, as well as the copious literature produced by the museum and the KAS. The said assemblage emphasises the opulent and ‘creative’, in the words of Birinchi Kumar Barua, early historic heritage of the dale (Barua 1951). Following studies by, inter alia, Bernard S. Cohn, Donald Preziosi, Tapati Guha-Thakurta and Timothy Mitchell on the emergence of later 18th and early 19th century museums in Europe and the subsequent travel of the practice to India, the empire’s largest and economically most significant colony, the article will delve into some ideological underpinnings of the making of Assam Provincial Museum.

Author
Swagata Mukhopadhyay : Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati.
 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32381/SEAR.2025.50.8