TIRUPATI: With the Department of Archaeology and Museums planning to establish a new museum in Tirupati, the Andhra Pradesh government has written to its Tamil Nadu counterpart, requesting it to handover 12 Telugu inscriptions (stone and copper), sculptures, and antiquities belonging to the State, which are kept at the Government Museum in Chennai’s Egmore.
On January 23, in a letter to Tamil Nadu government principal secretary (Tourism and Culture), Special Chief Secretary (Youth Advancement, Tourism and Culture) requested for the handover of rare Telugu inscriptions and sculptures to AP so they can be installed at the proposed museum.
The artifacts include Bhattiprolu Relic Caskets, Buddhist Sculptural Panels of Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda, Addanki inscription of Pandaranga, Telugu Chola inscriptions from Erragudipadu, copper plate grant of Chodabaliya Deva of Telugu Choda Dynasty, Balakrishna sculpture, Pallava copper plate grants (2), Salankanya copper plate grants (2), Vishnukundin’s copper plate grants (4), Eastern Chalukya’s copper plate grants (24) and Vijayanagara copper plate grants (27).
As per the archeology department’s plan, the museum will be developed at par with international standard.
It has been learnt that more than 20 thematic galleries, including pre and protohistoric gallery, Buddha and Jain gallery, early historic gallery, mid-centuries prospective gallery, Bronze gallery, Arms and Weapons gallery, Epigraphy gallery, Numismatic gallery, Painting gallery, Textile gallery, Science gallery, Modern gallery, Modern artifacts gallery, will be set up using advanced technologies like augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR),digital interactive display technologies and projection mapping.
Tirupati MP Maddila Gurumoorthy, who has been coordinating with the TN government, said the AP government has initiated efforts to first bring back the inscriptions and sculptures from Chennai.“Once they are returned, the archaeology department will zero in on the place for developing the museum,” he explained.
According to sources in the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the Egmore museum shed has more than 200 rare Telugu inscriptions and sculptures which were shifted during the Madras Presidency prior to the formation of a separate Telugu State and even before India’s independence.