The story
Just before the hour, a crowd gathers in one gallery of the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad. They are waiting for an English musical clock made by the firm of Cooke and Kelvey. When the hour comes, a little timekeeper figure steps out and strikes a gong once for each hour of the day.
The clock was bought by Mir Yousuf Ali Khan, Salar Jung III, who was briefly prime minister of Hyderabad State under the Nizam from 1912. Over about 35 years he spent much of his income on objects from across Asia and Europe, adding to what his grandfather Salar Jung I had begun. He died in 1949 without children, the collection passed to a committee, and in December 1951 it opened as a museum in Dewan Devdi, the family palace. In 1961 an act of India's Parliament declared it an institution of national importance, and in 1968 it moved to its present building on the south bank of the Musi River.
Range is the point here. One room holds jade daggers of the Mughal court, others Persian manuscripts, Chinese porcelain and European furniture. In the sculpture gallery stands the Veiled Rebecca, a marble by the Italian sculptor Giovanni Maria Benzoni that Salar Jung I bought in Rome in 1876, carved so the veil seems to lie transparent over her face. Among the European paintings is Byblis, an 1884 canvas by the French academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau, showing the girl from Greek myth who wept until she turned into a spring.
