An antiquated 'Antique Law' that forces Bangladeshi terracotta collectors into hiding

Growing up in Rajshahi, Md. Farhadur Rahman was enamoured with his elder brother's coin collection. It boasted many coins from different countries. It was Farhad's uncle who travelled to the Middle East and Europe and brought back coins and currency notes for the brothers. 

After several years of practising numismatics, one day, all of Farhad's albums of coins and notes got stolen. Disheartened, Farhad stopped collecting anything at all. 

In 2005, something changed in Farhad's mind. He started collecting coins again. At the time, he was regularly visiting historical and archaeological sites with his friends. He was a third-year medical student at Rajshahi Medical College Hospital when he started developing a keen interest in the ancient terracotta of Bengal. In 2019, he started collecting those as well.

Farhad visited the archaeological sites of the Paharpur Buddhist Bihar in Naogaon, the Maynamati Buddhist Bihar in Cumilla, the Wari-Bateshwar ruins in Narsingdi, Bagerhat, Joypurhat, Gazipur, etc. 

"There are more than 25 such historic archaeological sites in Bangladesh, which have still not been officially explored by the government. Even today, if you look for it, you would find terracotta plaques or broken pieces of utensils in some of these sites," Farhad recently told The Business Standard.  

Currently, Farhad has 35 terracotta plaques or bricks – most of which he found in areas adjacent to Mahasthangarh, Maynamoti, Paharpur and other places. Besides, he has ancient terracotta/clay pots (jug, mug, pots, dabber) and toys (dolls, animal-shaped dolls, balls or marble) that he collected mostly from the Barendra region of the country. 

Farhad collected a drinking pot from an area adjacent to Mahasthangarh. He was elated when he found it. The artefact looked similar to one that he found in one of the antique shops in Gulshan. The shopkeeper asked Tk5,000 for a similar pot. 

The terracotta plaques have floral motifs with vines and leaves. Also, there is one with the face of a lion, another plaque has Makara (an ancient mythological creature) sculpted. Farhad is quite careful with his prized possessions. He has a cupboard dedicated to his collections where he puts these old terracotta bubble-wrapped. 

"Being a doctor, collecting and taking care of these is a time-consuming job, and I have invested a lot of energy and money into this. I wouldn't want to lose them," Farhad explained.  

According to Vidual Jayaswal and Kalyan Krishna, authors of the book "An Ethno Archaeological View of Indian Terracottas," the terracotta plaques that are found in the upper and lower Gangetic region are mostly thin moulded plaques fired to a buff-red colour. 

They show a complex arrangement of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures and are often highly decorative. These have been categorised into female figures, Mithunas and Maithunas, Male Figures, 'Toy-Carts' and Rattles and animal figures. These are made of easily available clay and pressed out of moulds.

As per their chronology, the terracotta arts of ancient India can be divided into five categories. (1) Primitive and pre-211 Maurya up to about 400 BC, (2) Late Pre - Maurya and Maurya c. 400 - 200 BC, (3) Sunga,c. 200 BC - end of the era, (4) Kushana, 1 AD - AD 300, and (5) Gupta, AD 300 - 600.

Mahir Yasir, a young archaeology enthusiast of Chapainawabganj has been collecting antiques since he was in the fourth grade. "Although the terracotta we see in the archaeological sites is mostly from the ancient Buddhist periods, I am more into the terracotta from the Muslim reign. 

I have a small collection of terracotta plaques from the Choto Sona mosque, which is just 2 km from my home in Rohanpur," Mahir said.

Mahir has a team of 15-20 young people in Rohanpur who help him find the unusual old artefacts and also excavate in places where he thinks he might find ancient artefacts. Mahir has just finished his HSC final examination and now wants to study archaeology at the Jahangirnagar University.  

There are other collectors besides Mahir and Farhad, in the country, who have built up their collections over a period of time, with much labour and a hefty amount of money. But one thing that is common among all these collectors is fear. They all are scared that one day the government officials will come and take away all their possessions. 

According to Article 5 of the Antiquities Act 1968, if the director of archaeology of the government has knowledge of the discovery or existence of an antiquity of which there is no owner, steps may be taken to secure the custody and the protection of the antiquity. 

These terracotta artefacts are thousands of years old which, according to the Antiquities Act, makes them proper antiques as Article 2b states that ancient means belonging or relating to any period prior to the preceding 100 years. 

On the condition of anonymity, one collector informed us that he bought around 6-7 plaques for Tk2,000 to Tk8,000 from the DCC markets of Gulshan, which according to Article 21 of the Antiquity Act 1968 is a punishable offence.

The Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972, of India has provisions for licences for antique collectors, which allows a collector to hold his/her collections and for that, s/he needs to apply for a license from the government with a list of antiques s/he possesses.  

Photo: Noor-A-Alam

"This allows the government to at least have a record of artefacts that they have inside the country. As a result, if any of the things is missing or smuggled, the government at least has a clue to trace it. 

But here in Bangladesh, we do not have a proper list of the ancient antiques we have," Farhad explained.  

They are collectors, not researchers 

Farhad and Mahir are mostly terracotta collectors, not researchers. They do not know of the era or time those collections belong to, nor do they know of the material used to make them. 

"There is no lab here to carbon date in Bangladesh nor do we have the expertise to identify the era," Farhad said. 

The collectors focus on the motifs and colour of the terracotta and sometimes if it is a scripture, they find an expert to decipher it. Other than that, generally they do not spend much time studying these. 

They do not necessarily endeavour to look out answers about who the patrons of these prolific designs were. What era do they belong to? Who are the divinities in the motifs? Why were they selected for visual expression in a particular period alone? And how were they transformed, if they survived at all, in the subsequent tradition of the subcontinental imagery?

GKM Lutfar Rahim Lultu from Jashore is another terracotta collector who has more than 100 terracotta tiles, plaques, animal figures, toy carts and utensils that he has collected from Wari-Bateshwar, Mohasthagadh, Moynamoti for over a decade.  

"The motifs that I found in these are floral vines, gods and goddesses sculpted on them, Brahmi alphabets scripted on the plaques etc. There are a lot of tiny utensils that can be found in these places, which do not seem to have been used for cooking," both Farhad and Lultu said. 

They further added, "Generally, these small, almost toy-like cooking pots and jars are found buried in the earth in large volumes. They may have been used for some kind of offering or veneration of the gods."

Lultu found in his collections that there are mainly three colours that can be found in the terracotta - red which belongs to the Barendra and the Cumilla areas; white ceramic clay terracotta is a basic characteristic of Mymensingh and black-grey terracotta from the Khulna-Bagerhat region.   

Dipan Bhattacharya, a former Indian diplomat to Bangladesh, a writer and currently a university professor in Delhi, has terracotta plaques and other antiquities from the Indus civilisation, of the Kushana period.  

He has lived in Bangladesh for three years and being an antiquities and palaeontology enthusiast, he is quite famous among the antique collectors of Bangladesh. He is also a researcher who has written books on the ruins of Indus civilization and palaeontology.

"The colour of ancient terracotta may differ due to the types of soil, the burning technique and mixture, and the speed of the wheel on which it is crafted. For example, some were found having rice husk mixed into the clay, which gives the red tint," Dipan recently told The Business Standard. 

In a 2018 study titled "Effect of Waste Rice Husk Ash (RHA) on Structural, Thermal and Acoustic Properties of Fired Clay Bricks," published in the Journal of Building Engineering, the researchers also showed that rice husk ash (RHA) added clay brick displayed better structural, thermal and acoustic properties, compared with the conventional clay bricks. 

According to Dipan, "Bangladeshi terracotta collectors are more like guards of their prized possessions, they feel a certain pride in these. But after collecting, the later part involved studying them, deciphering the inner meanings which are painstakingly laborious but which one a true archaeology enthusiast must indulge in. Otherwise all you have is a heap of ancient remains".

"Also, they appear to want to collect everything. Anything ancient or old, they want to possess it. But I believe that doesn't help, because it is not possible for a person to know about everything. What one can do is focus on a particular period or material or area," Dipan opined.                                                                                                   

According to him, they don't want to talk about it openly as the Antiquity Act prevents them from acquiring ancient things. 

Is a new law in the offing?

"There are many people in the country who have a personal collection of antiques. It is not a crime to love antiques. But smuggling or illegal trading is," said Md Khairul Bashar Swapan, the assistant director of the Department of Archaeology under the Ministry of Cultural Affairs. 

But to encourage the collectors and prevent smuggling and illegal trading of antiquities, the department has drafted a revised Antiquity Act and sent it for approval by the Ministry of Law. They are still waiting for their comments. 

"In the proposed act, we have kept the provision of providing licences to the collectors because we believe any conservation, be it of the ancient antiquities or modern construction, community participation is a must," Swapon said. 

This way we will also be able to protect the antiques from being smuggled as well. According to this proposed act, any immovable antiquities that a person has as an heirloom or collected from a legitimate source needs to be presented with proper proof and documents to the archaeology department, upon which the department will provide a licence to the person.

Universally, a standard procedure is that collectors are the ones who volunteer to give museum authorities artefacts to be on public display. Additionally, museums and archaeology departments, which receive these artefacts from collectors, opt to give them their due credit - merely a recognition.  

Eventually, antiquities will be traded through auctions and museums. Because the true value of something can be discovered only when it has a market. There are no auction houses for antiques in Bangladesh yet, but in future, there will be. 

"That is why the changes need to be brought slowly. For example, to prevent smuggling or to detect the substances of any antiquities, we are looking for a vendor to buy an XRF (x-ray fluorescence) machine, which can detect the chemical substance of any material," Swapan concluded.