Amaravati Marbles

The Amaravati Collection, sometimes called the Amaravati Marbles, is a series of 120 sculptures and inscriptions in the British Museum from the Amaravati Stupa in Amaravathi, Guntur in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. They come from several different phases and rebuildings between the 1st century BCE and the 8th century CE of this important Buddhist site, the southernmost known grand pilgrimage stupa in India.

The London Amaravati artefacts entered the museum's collection in the 1880s. The Amaravati sculptures were sometimes also called the Elliot Marbles on account of their association in with Sir Walter Elliot, who had them removed from the site to Madras in the 1840s. This was essentially a 19th-century term, in emulation of the Elgin Marbles and other Greco-Roman groupings, which was applied to the whole group taken to Madras by Elliot. Most of it is now in Chennai (Madras), supplemented by later finds. Nearly all of the smaller group now in London come from Elliot's group.

There are also large collections of Amaravati sculpture in the Chennai Government Museum, which has the best collection, and at the site museum at Amaravati, and smaller ones in other museums in India and around the world.