MUMBAI, Nov. 4 -- Sabyasachi Mukherjee, director general of Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), often finds himself at the museum's Buddhist gallery. "I come here when I am stressed. I find solace and strength looking at this statue," he says, pointing towards a beautiful terracotta Buddha from the 5th Century BC. This sculpture was deposited in the museum's collection, then called the Prince of Wales Museum, in 1911, even before its building was ready in 1914. The Buddha, along with 312 other priceless objects, sculptures, decorative terracotta tiles and reliefs, travelled to Mumbai all the way from the archaeological mound of Kahu-jo-daro, a Buddhist stupa in Sindh, Pakistan, which has since been flattened. At the museum, however, just about a dozen objects from this historically significant collection are on public display; the rest in its storage. A new book titled 'Kahu-jo-daro Buddhist Stupa' by Mukherjee and Aparna Bhogal, curator of archaeology at the museum, illustrates the entire collection along with photographs. It will be released on November 17. "It puts these objects in the public domain, which ensures accountability and security," says Mukherjee. "It will also help students, researchers and history enthusiasts get access to the collection, which could lead to more study on the site," he adds. The Kahu-jo-daro collection is historically significant as it provides proof of a thriving Buddhist civilisation in the Sindh region about 2,500 years ago, during the time when it was an important trade and cultural link between India, Central Asia, and the Middle East. The collection also shows the synthesis of the Gandhara (Greco-Buddhist) and Gupta art traditions, visible in Buddha's drapes and his defined body structure. Such books cataloguing the collection was quite common in the museum world in the 1970s and 80s, but went out of favour for some reason, says Mukherjee. "But over the years, I have realised that these accounts are extremely important, both, as records and for scholastic exchange," he adds. Hence, the CSMVS has decided to undertake similar projects - the next, a collection of Tanjore paintings. Mukherjee himself had to jump through hoops to piece together the Kahu-jo-daro story and the museum collection that was excavated in 1909, by Henry Cousens, the then superintendent of the western circle of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). While the collection sat in the museum for decades, no one really had any idea about the definitive architectural, physical and historical construction of the stupa, which was heavily plundered by railway contractors over the years. Several of these beautiful bricks were used to lay down the railway line in the region, and much other excavated material was lost for any significant study on the site. Neither Cousen nor Mukherjee ever found any written inscriptions, generally found at stupa sites. There are also records of missing materials, which made the research more challenging. One of the discovered caskets recovered from the site was once thought to be in a Karachi museum, but was never found there. Mukherjee had to solve this mystery of the stupa with limited clues and without ever visiting the site as he was denied permission. He got his first clue in 2007, when he saw a Buddha sculpture, similar to the one in CSMVS, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. On further inquiry, he learnt that the V&A Buddha too came from a stupa in Sindh. That became the starting point of Mukherjee's long-drawn study and research towards tracing the story of Kahu-jo-daro. He found and studied objects in museums across the country and abroad, combed through Cousen's meticulous accounts to mathematically and structurally analyse the terracotta objects and reveal its historical significance. He reverse-engineered the pieces in the CSMVS collection to visually build an accurate model of what the original, intact stupa actually looked like. These findings were revealed in his first book 'The Lost Stupa of Kahu-jo-daro' in 2022, which also offered new insights into the Hinayana Buddhist sects of the Indus Valley. "Somewhere in 2013-14, I learnt that the entire site was flattened, not sure how or why," he says. But fortunately, all was not lost as Mukherjee had managed to gather enough information to publish his findings. His second book opens doors to more research of the site, of the treasures we have lost and the stories that could enlighten the future....