The Sultanganj Buddha goes to Birmingham
Sultanganj, Bhagalpur district, Bihar
Railway works at Sultanganj uncover a copper Buddha over two metres tall; by 1864 it is in Birmingham, where it stays. Bihar is asking for its return.
Edward Brickell Harris, a railway engineer, was digging out a monastery site near the East Indian Railway's yard at Sultanganj when the figure came up on 6 December 1862, according to the British Library's record. It is copper, 2.3 metres tall and over 500 kilograms, and the museum dates it to about 500 to 700 CE. Harris published the find in London in 1864, and Samuel Thornton of Birmingham paid to bring it to Britain and offered it to the town's planned art museum.
The Buddha stands in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, far from the monastery site on the Ganga that gave it context. It left India in the same years the Archaeological Survey was starting work.
Return has been sought twice in recent years. The Archaeological Survey of India's Director General raised it in 2010, and Birmingham said it had received no official request. In July 2026 Bihar's Chief Minister, Samrat Choudhary, wrote to the Union Culture Minister asking for the statue's return, according to ETV Bharat.
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