Collections of individuals and the emergence of ethnography

A number of assemblages of different kinds – mostly ethnographical – are treated as discrete collections within the 1880 catalogue,¹ though for the most part the kind of material they contain differs little in nature from items listed elsewhere beyond having been collected in a single place or province – in several instances by expeditions penetrating beyond the frontiers of India – and with a perspective that encompassed specific societies of producers or users rather than single objects or classes of material. In some cases the items concerned were only ever on loan to the museum (and were later returned