The major cities and historical sites – those which visitors are most likely to want to see – have been selected, and the important museums in these places are described. The four cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and Chennai are dealt with first, as these are usual entry points in India for the foreign visitor. Then, in alphabetical order, other Indian cities with important or interesting museums are introduced.

Most museums in India have an incredibly large collection of objects, ranging from paintings, sculptures, manuscripts and textiles to metal ware, glass, armory and jewelery. Apart from the variety in forms, the objects are each representative of a distinct phase or historical period, from among an accumulation of more than 5,000 years of Indian history. For this reason, one or two aspects or galleries of a particular museum have been singled out for description in greater detail. For instance, for the Indian Museum at Calcutta, a fuller account has been given of early Buddhist sculpture, with only brief mention being made of the treasures of medieval Hindu sculpture that one can also see in this museum. This is because the museum has a particularly rare collection of early Buddhist art, and comparable works are able to be found in very few other places.

For each gallery or section of a museum, mention has been made of only one or two especially interesting objects because this web site is not intended as a catalogue but merely as an introduction or orientation to Indian museums generally. It is also possible that the objects those are mentioned in the text, or are illustrated in the web site, may not be found in the museum during your visit. This may be because some objects have been sent for exhibition elsewhere, or have been lent to other museums in exchange for exhibits from their vast reserve collections. So the descriptive section of this web site on the objects themselves is kept general in approach. It was also felt that readers would not want to be burdened with an excess of indigestible details.

Some museums – like the Utensils Museum or the Calico Museum, both in Ahmedabad – have been mentioned for their unique collections an and specialized focus of interest. In other cases, a museum has been selected for the historical value of its site, and particular attention has been given to describing the period and place concerned, because these evoke the history of the times in a dramatic way. This is the case with the Fort St George Museum in Chennai and the Tipu sultan Museum in Srirangapatnam, Karnataka, for instance. In general, different aspects of the various museums have been described both to avoid monotony and to give you a taste of as many sides of India’s cultural history as possible.

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