Srinagar, Aug. 29 -- A photograph taken in a Tamil temple in 1957 eventually helped bring a bronze saint home.

The image showed Thirumangai Alvar in worship at Shri Soundarrajaperumal Kovil in Tamil Nadu.

Decades later, the same bronze was sitting in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, having passed through a British collector and a Sotheby's auction.

On March 3, 2026, the museum formally handed it to Indian authorities at the High Commission of India in London. In August, the bronze reached Tamil Nadu and returned to its temple in a public reception and procession.

The story is striking because the object survived the disappearance that severed it from its first home.

Its path back was reconstructed through archival photography, provena...