A 500-year old bronze statue of Tirumankai Alvar is finally returning to India after long kept in the Ashmolean Museumat, University of Oxford in the United Kingdom for many years.
The statue originally came from a temple in Tamil Nadu. It dates back to the 16th century and stands about 57 to 60 centimetres tall. The Ashmolean Museum bought the statue in 1967 through an auction held by Sotheby’s. At the time, the museum said it brought the statue in good faith and didn’t know about it’s earlier history.
Tirumankai Alvar is an important religious figure in South India. He was one of the 12 Vaishnava saints and is known for his deeply devotion to Lord Vishnu. He also was a poet who wrote many devotional songs that became part of the famous Tamil work called the Divya Prabandham. Before becoming a saint, he was believed to be a military commander named Kaliyan.
There are questions about the statue’s origin came up in 2019 when a French scholar found an old photograph of the same statue taken in a temple in 1957. The picture was discovered in the archives of research institutes in Pondicherry. After this was discovered, the Ashmolean Museum began investigating the statue’s history.
On 3rd March 2026, the museum handled the statue to the Indian High Commission to London so it could be sent back to India. Xa Sturgis, the museum’s director, has said the institution is happy that the object is returning to it’s rightful place and thanked scholars and authorities who assist to confirm it’s history.
The return of the statue is seen as an important step in bringing cultural items back to their original home. In recent years, several museums around the world have returned historical artefacts to India. For example, the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow returned a total of 7 stolen artefacts to the country in 2022. The 500-year old statue of Tirumankai Alvar will soon return in Tamil Nadu, where it originally belonged centuries ago.
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