Add Or 1347-1396

Add.Or.1347-1396

50 drawings bound into a volume; 31 depicting people of the Punjab and neighbouring areas, 11 depicting infantry and cavalry of the Punjab and its environs and 8 depicting rulers of the Punjab and their ministers as well as princes of the Punjab Hill states.

By an Indian artist, probably at Amritsar, 1838-39.

The majority inscribed with titles in Persian characters and in English. Water-marks of 1837 (e.g. Add.Or.1348).

Pencil and water-colour, some drawings unfinished; size of volume: 10.5 by 8.25 ins.

Purchased 12 December 1919.

Note: These drawings when acquired by the Library were in a bound volume entitled ‘Panjabi Characters,’ but owing to the poor condition of the Indian binding they were later rebound. They could well have belonged to one of the British visitors to the Punjab in the late eighteen-thirties and early forties. The drawings show marked British influence in the use of pencil and water-colour and uncoloured backgrounds, although the portraits are water-colour versions of conventional Sikh miniatures. They are on English paper and were therefore probably commissioned by an Englishman who supplied the paper. The Persian and English inscriptions suggest that the owner obtained them over a period of about a year from 1838 until some time before October 1839. The fact that certain drawings are unfinished indicates that the owner may have left the Punjab before the drawings were completed (see Add.Or.1368-9, 1377-8, 1380, 1383). The English inscriptions on 1382 and 1385 show that some at least of the drawings were supplied in 1838, but the Persian inscription on 1389 which refers to ‘Maharaja Kharak Singh’ implies that the drawing was made after June 1839 when Kharak Singh became ruler of the State. A few of the English inscriptions, however, must have been added later; the note on 1390 could not have been made until after 1843 when Dhian Singh was murdered.

In 1838 few Europeans knew the Punjab intimately. The British had not advanced beyond the river Sutlej and negotiations with the Sikhs were conducted from Ludhiana. The mixed subject matter of this volume, which includes types from Tibet and Afghanistan, suggests that the drawings were made by an Indian artist either touring the Punjab with a British traveller or at Amritsar, a great trading mart which attracted many different peoples.