Many scholars from India and abroad have visited the Dakshin Dinajpur Museum in Balurghat and have photographed the stone sculptures preserved in the museum. The photographs have been published here and there in a scattered manner, but the museum itself has no comprehensive catalogue of the images and other objects housed in it. So, almost a decade ago, when I received an email from the District Magistrate of Dakshin Dinajpur requesting me to prepare a catalogue of the artefacts preserved in the Dakshin Dinajpur Museum, I was pleasantly surprised. Though I knew the task would be challenging, I happily accepted the offer. During my frequent visits to the museum in the past few years, I have studied the sculptures carefully alongside the photographs of the images captured by Sri Abhik Kumar Das, WBCS (Exe.) and taken down copious notes. The credit for most of the photographs of course goes to Sri Das.
After completing the cataloguing, I decided to write a book on the major stone images housed in the museum to make the general public, students and research scholars aware of the priceless collection of the Dakshin Dinajpur Museum. The present work is an outcome of that. To draw the interest and attention of students, research scholars and general visitors and make the book more useful and purposeful, it was decided that the catalogue would be bilingual, i.e., the description of the sculptures would be provided both in English and Bengali.
The sculptures found from different places of Dakshin Dinajpur bear some special features that are in general noticeable in other images found from the north Bengal region. I have categorized the sculptures discussed in the book into eight groups-Vaisnava, Saiva, Sakta, Saura, Ganapatya, Buddhist, Syncretistic and Miscellaneous.
Appendix-I offers a complete list of stone sculptures preserved in the museum. Appendix-II discusses some of the sculptures from the Asok Nandi Collection. A local antiquity collector, the late Asok Nandi collected many sculptures from the Bangarh area of Dakshin Dinajpur and kept them in a sculpture shed, adjacent to his residence. After his demise, his son Sri Archit Nandi donated 110 sculptures, including some fragmented ones, to the district museum. As these sculptures were donated after the preparation of the catalogue they could not be included in the complete list of sculptures in Appendix-1.
For the reading and translations of the inscriptions I had to take the help of many scholars. The sculptures have been discussed primarily from an iconographic point of view in the book. No attempt has been made to offer a stylistic analysis of the images. Hope this book makes everybody, particularly the younger generation, more aware of the rich cultural heritage of Bengal and motivates us to visit the various district museums of the state in person.
The book Select Stone Sculptures from Dakshin Dinajpur District Museum is a testimonial of insightful details of select stone sculptures preserved in the Dakshin Dinajpur District Museum. These artefacts, recovered from various locations across the district, reflect the rich sculptural tradition and diverse religious expressions of early medieval Bengal.
Such scholarly presentations with meticulous documentation and interpretations have greatly enhanced the academic value of the collection. The Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, under Information & Cultural Affairs Department, Government of West Bengal, recognize the significance of this meticulous work as endeavoured by Professor Sudipa Ray Bandyopadhyay, to publish this book befittingly. The volume stands out for its bilingual presentation offering detailed descriptions in both English and Bengali and for its high-quality visual documentation, including black-and-white photographs and close-up views.
This publication is a commendable contribution to the field of archaeology and heritage studies. It not only brings to light a lesser-known corpus of stone sculptures but also offers meaningful perspectives on the cultural and artistic landscape of the region. We fervently hope that this volume will be of enduring value to students, researchers, and scholars, as well as to discerning readers with an interest in the history and heritage of West Bengal.
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