A museum in search of a forever home in Telangana Premium

Discover the rich history of India's ancient forest tribes through ethnographer Jayadheer Tirumala Rao's vast collection of artefacts.

Somewhere inside a forgotten room in Hyderabad, a crow with the hood of a cobra waits. Not a living creature, but a riveting brass totem with a story so rich, it can take hours to tell. Around it lie ghostly wind instruments made of hide and bone, leather bags that breathe music, and shadowy relics from India’s ancient forest tribes.

These are not just objects; they are echoes of long-lost worlds. And now, these artefacts, many of which once mimicked the wind, birds and rain, are in search of a home — a home in Hyderabad bordering the deep jungles and forest tract of central India, where these instruments were first born from ingenuity, ritual, and breath.

These have journeyed far to get here, collected over five decades by one man obsessed with memory and history: ethnographer Jayadheer Tirumala Rao.

His treasure trove lies scattered across six rooms tucked deep within the Telugu University campus in Nampally. Here, between sunlit corridors and dusty alcoves, Rao moves like a man among old friends. The wide courtyard is littered with weathered cartwheels, carved doors, door frames, totem poles and what looks like a sculptor’s madness — but each piece has its own story.

“This is a hanging inkpot made with brass,” the 75-year-old says, lifting a crouched, bull-shaped vessel with a hidden cap for dipping ink. “It was a gift from a student while I was teaching in Hanamkonda.” There are 200 known varieties of hanging inkpots among Adivasi communities, and Rao has managed to collect 40 of them.

It all began half a century ago in Warangal district of Telangana, when a young postgraduate student was nudged away from academia by his mentor, folklorist B.Ramaraju, and asked to take the tougher road — field work. Rao took off, hitchhiking, riding rickety buses and walking for miles through Telangana’s interior in the mid-1970s, when roads were few and forests many.

“I travelled by train, I travelled by bus. I mostly walked, as there were hardly any buses in 1975, to research and understand folk and Adivasi culture. I began collecting musical instruments that did not work,” he recalls, sitting among his archive. “Once, I started walking from Charla in Bhadrachalam in the morning and by 8 p.m., I realised I was lost. I walked all night and somehow ended up at the same point I had started from. That was scary.”