The Government Museum, Chennai holds a very significant collection of sculptures, in particular the sculptures from the Buddhist site of Amaravati. I took up the Fellowship in November 2000 in order to see the collection of Amaravati sculptures in the British Museum and to learn about display and conservation techniques. I learned from the British Museum how they had refurbished the Hotung and Asahi Shimbun galleries. The British Museum has conserved all the Amaravati sculptures and then mounted them on steel frames supported by treated rubber cushions.

I am grateful to the Trust for awarding me the Fellowship to study Kushan terracottas in the museums in the UK at the appropriate time when I was excavating sites such as Kanishkapura and Ambaran (Akhnur) in Jammu and Kashmir related to the Kushan period - particularly the latter which is famous for earlier yields of typical Akhnur Buddhist terracotta heads.

Research into the use of the Indian Museum in Calcutta as a focus of community and individual identity

This grant enabled me to do several things. It allowed me to cover many places on my fieldwork and to meet the costs of photography. A basic idea on inscriptions became my main thrust and focus. This led to studying one temple in detail, and I got the opportunity to examine different dimensions of its structure and organisation.