page_title: British Museum
section_title: Department of Asia
hierarchical_section_title: British Museum / Departments / Department of Asia
caption_attribution_description: English: General view of Room 95, British Museum.
context_page_description: The British Museum, in the Bloomsbury area of London, United Kingdom, is a public institution dedicated to human history, art and culture. Its permanent collection of some eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence, having been widely sourced during the era of the British Empire. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. It was the first public national museum in the world.
  The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the Irish physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. It first opened to the public in 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building. Its expansion over the following 250 years was largely a result of expanding British colonisation and has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, the first being the Natural History Museum in 1881.
  In 1973, the British Library Act 1972 detached the library department from the British Museum, but it continued to host the now separated British Library in the same Reading Room and building as the museum until 1997.
context_section_description: The scope of the Department of Asia is extremely broad; its collections of over 75,000 objects cover the material culture of the whole Asian continent (from East, South, Central and South-East Asia) and from the Neolithic up to the present day. Until recently, this department concentrated on collecting Oriental antiquities from urban or semi-urban societies across the Asian continent. Many of those objects were collected by colonial officers and explorers in former parts of the British Empire, especially the Indian subcontinent. Examples include the collections made by individuals such as Charles Stuart, James Prinsep, Charles Masson, Sir Alexander Cunningham, Sir Harold Deane and Sir John Marshall. A large number of Chinese antiquities were purchased from the Anglo-Greek banker George Eumorfopoulos in the 1930s. In the second half of the twentieth century, the museum greatly benefited from the bequest of the philanthropist PT Brooke Sewell, which allowed the department to purchase many objects and fill in gaps in the collection.
  In 2004, the ethnographic collections from Asia were transferred to the department. These reflect the diverse environment of the largest continent in the world and range from India to China, the Middle East to Japan. Much of the ethnographic material comes from objects originally owned by tribal cultures and hunter-gatherers, many of whose way of life has disappeared in the last century. Particularly valuable collections are from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (much assembled by the British naval officer Maurice Portman), Sri Lanka (especially through the colonial administrator Hugh Nevill), Northern Thailand, south-west China, the Ainu of Hokaidu in Japan (chief among them the collection of the Scottish zoologist John Anderson), Siberia and the islands of South-East Asia, especially Borneo. The latter benefited from the purchase in 1905 of the Sarawak collection put together by Dr Charles Hose, as well as from other colonial officers such as Edward A Jeffreys. In addition, a unique and valuable group of objects from Java, including shadow puppets and a gamelan musical set, was assembled by Sir Stamford Raffles.
  The principal gallery devoted to Asian art in the museum is Gallery 33 with its comprehensive display of Chinese, Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asian objects. An adjacent gallery showcases the Amaravati sculptures and monuments. Other galleries on the upper floors are devoted to its Japanese, Korean, painting and calligraphy, and Chinese ceramics collections.
  Key highlights of the collections include:
  The most comprehensive collection of sculpture from the Indian subcontinent in the world, including the celebrated Buddhist limestone reliefs from Amaravati excavated by Sir Walter Elliot
  An outstanding collection of Chinese antiquities, paintings, and porcelain, lacquer, bronze, jade, and other applied arts
  The most comprehensive collection of Japanese pre-20th century art in the Western world, many of which originally belonged to the surgeon William Anderson and diplomat Ernest Mason Satow
  East Asia
  A large collection of Chinese ritual bronzes, (from c. 1500 BC onwards)
  Huixian Bronze Hu, an identical pair of bronze vessels from the Eastern Zhou period, China, (5th century BC)
  Japanese antiquities from the Kofun period excavated by the pioneering archaeologist William Gowland, (3rd–6th centuries AD)
  The famous Admonitions Scroll by Chinese artist Gu Kaizhi, (344–406 AD)
  The colossal Amitābha Buddha from Hancui, China, (585 AD)
  A set of ceramic Tang dynasty tomb figures of Liu Tingxun, (c. 728 AD)
  Seated Luohan from Yixian, one from a set of eight surviving statues, China, (907–1125 AD)
  A fine assemblage of Buddhist paintings from Dunhuang, western China, collected by the British-Hungarian explorer Aurel Stein, (5th–11th centuries AD)
  Pericival David collection of Chinese ceramics, (10th–18th centuries AD)
  Ivory stand in the form of a seated lion, Chos-'khor-yan-rtse monastery in Tibet, (13th century AD)
  Pair of ceramic Kakiemon elephants from Japan, (17th century AD)
  Japanese prints 
caption: Room 95 –  The Sir Percival David collection of Chinese ceramics
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