School series 52

Salar Jung Museum: When One Man Collected the World

Some museums preserve the history of a kingdom.

Some preserve the history of a civilisation.

And then there is the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad—a museum that seems to have gathered pieces of the whole world under one roof.

But its story begins with one man.

Nawab Mir Yousuf Ali Khan, Salar Jung III.

He was not merely a collector. He was a man fascinated by beauty, craftsmanship and objects from distant lands. Over the years, his passion grew into an extraordinary collection of Indian, European, Middle Eastern and Far Eastern art.

Today the museum has more than 46,000 art objects, 8,000 manuscripts and 60,000 printed books, arranged in more than 38 galleries.

But statistics cannot convey what it feels like to walk through it.

The Clock That Still Performs

Perhaps we should begin with the clock.

Because a museum object becomes unforgettable when it does something.

The famous musical clock is a magnificent 19th-century English clock bought by Salar Jung III from Cook and Kelvey.

Every hour, a little timekeeper emerges from the upper part of the clock and strikes a gong the number of times corresponding to the hour.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four...

And so it continues.

The museum calls its clock collection one of its most visited sections, with sundials, bracket clocks, grandfather clocks, skeleton clocks, bird-cage clocks and many other European timepieces.

There is something wonderfully old-fashioned about it.

A machine designed not merely to tell you the time—

but to announce it.

And that brings back memories of the clocks that once stood in our homes: the patient ticking through the day, the quarter-hour chimes, and then the solemn gong marking the hour.

Perhaps that is why old clocks have such a hold on us.

They measured not only time.

They measured life.

is called Mephistopheles and Margaretta, the famous Double Statue. 

What makes it astonishing is that both figures are carved from one single block of sycamore wood.

From the front you see Mephistopheles, the sinister, confident figure from Goethe's Faust.

But behind him is a mirror.

And in the mirror you suddenly see Margaretta (Gretchen)—a completely different woman, modest, with lowered eyes and a prayer book.

So you appear to be looking at a man standing in front of a woman.

But there is no separate woman.

She is carved on the reverse side of the very same piece of wood. 

It is an extraordinary artistic trick—and also has a deeper meaning: evil and innocence, arrogance and humility, two opposing characters occupying two sides of the same reality.

The Salar Jung Museum itself calls it a double statue and identifies the figures as Mephistopheles and Margaretta from Goethe's Faust. 

And Then—Veiled Rebecca

If the clock is the museum's mechanical wonder, Veiled Rebecca is its artistic wonder.

A woman stands before us, apparently covered by a delicate transparent veil.

But the extraordinary fact is this:

the woman and the veil are carved from a single block of marble.

The sculpture was created in 1863 by the Italian sculptor G. B. Benzoni and was acquired by Salar Jung I during his visit to Rome in 1876.

Look closely and the impossible seems to happen.

The marble appears soft.

The veil appears almost transparent.

You can see the folds of the cloth and the form beneath it.

It is one of those works that makes us wonder not simply what the artist created, but how human hands could possibly create it.

A World in One Museum

Then the museum begins to unfold its astonishing variety.

Indian bronzes.

Miniature paintings.

Jade.

Ivory.

Bidriware.

Wood carvings.

Arms and armour.

Textiles.

Stone sculptures.

Persian carpets.

Arabic and Persian manuscripts.

Chinese porcelain.

Japanese lacquerware.

European paintings.

Furniture.

Glass.

Clocks.

The collections span India, Persia, the Middle East, China, Japan, Nepal, Myanmar and Europe.

It is almost as though Salar Jung looked at the world and said:

"There is beauty here. I want to bring it home."

Treasures with Stories

Some objects seem to carry stories far beyond their artistic value.

There are jade objects and daggers associated with Mughal royalty, including pieces traditionally connected with Jahangir, Noor Jahan and Shah Jahan.

There are manuscripts, including Persian works and the famous Shahnameh tradition.

There is also a rare manuscript of Lilavati, associated with the mathematical tradition of Bhaskaracharya.

And then there is the extraordinary collection of Bidriware, for which the museum says it probably possesses one of the world's largest collections.

So the museum is not merely about luxury.

It is about knowledge, craftsmanship, mathematics, literature, technology and imagination.

From a Palace to a National Museum

The collection originally belonged to the Salar Jung family and was housed at Dewan Deodi, their ancestral palace.

The museum was opened to the public by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on 16 December 1951.

In 1958, the family agreed to donate the collection to the Government of India.

Then came a significant moment.

In 1961, Parliament passed the Salar Jung Museum Act, declaring the museum and its library an Institution of National Importance.

The present museum building stands on the southern bank of the Musi River, close to Hyderabad's historic old city.

What Makes Salar Jung Special?

Perhaps it is the sheer contrast.

You can stand before an Indian bronze and then encounter a European clock.

A Persian manuscript can be followed by Japanese lacquer.

A Mughal jade object can stand in the same museum as an Italian marble masterpiece.

It is not one civilisation speaking.

It is civilisations speaking to one another.

And behind all of it stands one extraordinary collector who spent decades searching for things he believed were worth preserving.

That is perhaps the real story of Salar Jung Museum.

One man's passion became India's heritage.

And somewhere in the middle of this enormous collection, an old clock still waits patiently for the hour—

then opens its little door,

a tiny figure appears,

and the gong rings.

Just as it did long ago.

Because museums do something wonderful.

They don't merely preserve objects.

Sometimes, they preserve time itself.