Ritual Bronzes Across the Seas

Ritual Bronzes Across the Seas
Professor Himanshu Prabha Ray

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Many Buddhist bronze and gold objects are housed in museums across Asia, including the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore, the Madras Museum in Chennai, and the Nalanda Archaeological Museum in Bihar. Yet not all came from archaeological sites. A significant number were collected in the nineteenth and early twentieth century by Europeans – including Sir Stamford Raffles (1781–1826) – as part of their efforts to interpret the histories of Asian civilisations under colonial rule.

In this talk, Professor Ray considers these objects from multiple perspectives, tracing the historic maritime trade networks that enabled their production and circulation across Asia, as well as the collecting practices that ultimately brought them into contemporary museum collections.

About the speaker


Himanshu Prabha Ray is a Tagore National Fellow, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She was the recipient of the Anneliese Maier Research Award of the Humboldt Foundation (2014–2019) and was affiliated with the Distant Worlds Programme at Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich. She previously served as Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and First Chairperson of the National Monuments Authority, Ministry of Culture. She is also Series Editor of Routledge Archaeology and Religion in South Asia. Her recent publications include Recentring Southeast Asia: Politics, Religion and Maritime Connections (2025); Coastal Shrines and Transnational Maritime Networks across India and Southeast Asia (2021), and Archaeology and Buddhism in South Asia (2018).

About the Moderator


Priya Maholay-Jaradi is a senior lecturer in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore (NUS). She also serves as the Convenor for Art History, working in collaboration with NUS, the National Gallery Singapore, and the Singapore Art Museum. From 2005 to 2007, Jaradi was the assistant curator for South Asia at the Asian Civilisations Museum. She is the author of Fashioning a National Art: Baroda’s Royal Collection and Institutions (1875–1924) (2016) and the volume editor of Baroda: A Cosmopolitan Provenance in Transition (2015). Her current research focuses on how collections, curricula, and pedagogies contribute to revisionist art histories and historiographies of South and Southeast Asia, particularly in India and Singapore.

^{Image: Relic stupa with four pillars. Bronze. Collection of the Asian Civilisations Museum, 1999-01619}