Krishna; Sculpture, copper alloy, India, 1750-1850

The finial of an unidentified object. Krishna is in his usual pose to play a (missing) flute. He dances on a seven-headed naga and wears a seven-pointed crown. His pointed topknot or headdress may indicate a North East Indian provenance although the donor lived and made his collection of Indian artefacts in South India. Dark brass colour.

Transferred from the India Museum in London to the South Kensington Museum ( now the V&A) in 1879. The India Museum Slip Book entry, number 279, states that it was 'presented by Col. MacKenzie ?'. Colonel Colin Mackenzie was a British antiquarian who completed a major survey of the Mysore kingdom in southern India and became the first Surveyor General of India in 1815. Born in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, Mackenzie travelled to India in 1783 as an Infantry cadet in the 78th Seaforth Highlanders but in 1786 transferred to become an Engineer in the Madras Army. He spent the remainder of his life in Asia, much of it in southern India, where he carried out a survey of the Nizam of Hyderabad's Dominions (1792-8) and the Mysore Survey (1799-1810), although he also worked in other parts of India and in Java (1811-13). Further information can be found in Howes, J., Illustrating India: the Early Colonial Investigations of Colin Mackenzie (1784-1821), Oxford University Press, 2010 and other publications. Mackenzie's serious research into antiquities began after his return from an expedition to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1796 and was made possible by his association with Kavelli (or Cavelly) Venkata Boria, a Brahmin whose talents as a translator of Indian languages were of great importance to Mackenzie and some of whose family members continued to work with Mackenzie after Boria's death in 1803. The handwritten question mark in the Slip Book, which could be a later addition, creates an uncertainty about this object's provenance and probable place of manufacture so that David Bennie's suggestion that the piece possibly came from North Eastern India may be a more likely attribution than one from Southern India.

or Orissa

577(IS)