The Antiquities and Art Treasures Act 1972

In one line

The movable half of heritage: nobody but the Government may export an antiquity, nobody may deal in one without a licence, and the notified ones must be registered.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: section 3 provides that on and from the commencement of the Act it shall not be lawful for any person, other than the Central Government or an authority or agency authorised by it, to export any antiquity or art treasure; section 5 provides that no person shall carry on the business of selling or offering to sell any antiquity except under a licence granted under section 8; section 14 empowers the Central Government to specify by notification the antiquities which shall be registered, the owner registering within three months if he holds it at the notification and within fifteen days if he acquires it later; and section 19 empowers the Central Government to compulsorily acquire an antiquity or art treasure where it is desirable to preserve it in a public place.

Two definitions, and a difference from 1958

Section 1 gives the short title, extends the Act to the whole of India, and allows the Central Government to bring it into force on different dates for different provisions and for different States, a reference to the commencement of the Act in any provision being read as the coming into force of that provision.

Section 2(1)(a), antiquity. It includes any coin, sculpture, painting, epigraph or other work of art or craftsmanship; any article, object or thing detached from a building or cave; any thing illustrative of science, art, crafts, literature, religion, customs, morals or politics in bygone ages; any thing of historical interest; and any thing notified by the Central Government to be an antiquity, which has been in existence for not less than one hundred years.

And a second limb. Any manuscript, record or other document which is of scientific, historical, literary or aesthetic value and which has been in existence for not less than seventy-five years.

Two numbers, then: one hundred years for an object, seventy-five for a document. That difference is the sort of thing MU asks in a short note, and the reason for it is that paper does not survive as stone does.

Notice also that this definition includes a painting, where the 1958 Act's list does not. The two Acts define "antiquity" differently, and this is the definition that governs trade, export and registration.

Section 2(1)(b), art treasure. Any human work of art, not being an antiquity, declared by the Central Government by notification to be an art treasure, having regard to its artistic or aesthetic value. Proviso: no such declaration may be made in respect of a work of art so long as its author is alive.