The Institute has approximately 40,000 rubbings of more than 28,000 bronze and stone items. Except for a few donations, most of these were purchased in the early 1920s. Among the Institute’s collection, many rubbings are not recorded in other sources; some of them were made at an early date or are of exceptional quality. Four themes are exhibited: “Full-surface Rubbings of Bronze Artifacts”chosen because of the fine technique of the rubbing, or because the typology of the original bronzes is not recorded in catalogues, or because of earlier scholars' writings on them. “Han Dynasty Rubbings” includes rubbings of illustrated carvings, bricks and tomb murals. “Buddhist Statues” presents mainly rubbings of Buddhist statues and other stone tablets in the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534); they express the characteristics of Buddhist belief at that time. “Funerary Inscriptions of the T’ang and Sung” shows the evolution of distinctive Chinese funerary culture during the T’ang  periods (618-907).