The museum acquired the statue of the saint Tirumankai Alvarin 1967. According to the Sotheby’s catalogue, the bronze was sold by the private collector, Dr J R Belmont (1886–1981). There is no information on how left the temple of Shri Soundarrajaperumal Kovil in Tamil Nadu and the bronze entered his collection.
In November 2019, an independent French scholar alerted the Museum to research indicating that a photograph of the bronze, taken in 1957 in the temple of Shri Soundarrajaperumal Kovil, Tamil Nadu, had been identified in the archives of the Institut Français de Pondichéry and the École française d’Extrême-Orient (IFP-EFEO).
Courtesy Ashmolian Museum
The scholar identified the bronze as one of a number of objects in collections in Europe and the United States recorded in the IFP-EFEO archive.
“The process of getting an artefact returned to where it comes from, in this case a deity at the Soundararaja Perumal temple in Tamil Nadu, we had to be able to prove provenance without really getting into how it got out of India,” said Vikram Doraiswami, Indian High Commissioner to the UK.
Although no formal claim had been made, the Ashmolean wrote to the Indian High Commission on 16 December 2019, requesting further information, including any police records, and indicating the Museum’s willingness to discuss the possible return of the object to India.
Following the University of Oxford’s Procedures for the Return of Cultural Objects, the Ashmolean’s Board of Visitors supported the claim.
The University Council approved the claim on 11 March 2024 and referred the case to the Charity Commission for England and Wales, which approved the transfer in December 2024.
The Museum has since worked with the High Commission to arrange the return of the bronze to India.
The hand-over ceremony also included four other iconic artefacts stolen and smuggled out of the country.
