Kalyan Singh succeeded as a minor in 1798, but after he came of age was unable to resolve disputes with his nobles and fled to Delhi where he spent most of his time. Here he seems to be in his 30s and has obviously been portrayed taken from the life during his self-imposed exile in Delhi. Here the artist has combined a beautifully detailed Mughal pavilion with a typically European curtain swag derived from the type of portraits done by British artists in India. Many of the Rajput nobility, at least those who were not too far from Delhi, would seem to have maintained houses in the city and hence could be portrayed in contemporary fashion.
Bhai Uday Singh (reg. 1819-43), as with others of the rulers of Haryana and the Punjab, appears to have been painted from the life, as the melancholy ruler sits amidst his cushions, a magnificent Kashmir shawl round his waist, holding his sword upright with his katar and shield on the rug beside him between two stylized vases of flowers. The artist has absorbed enough of European portraiture to depict the carpets in perspective and to provide a standard column, but he also provides other more mysterious uprights and diagonals of undisclosed purpose. Horizontal bands of saturated colour set off the whiteness of the Bhai’s gown. Perhaps the Bhai’s apparent melancholy is owing to his childless state, since after his death in 1843 his state lapsed to the British.
One of the most striking of the pictures is the only female portrait in the manuscript. Radaur is one of the small former Sikh states in the Ambala district, but its history is as yet very obscure. Nonetheless, the Delhi artist has lavished his invention on the widow’s portrait, showing her seated in a richly ornamented window arch in the zenana with a bed behind her, and producing a sumptuous array of colours in the lower part of the painting contrasting with the cool grey of the decorated plaster work above.
Skinner ends his survey of princely families with four states under Muslim rule. Two of these, Farrukhnagar and Dujana, are just west of Delhi and were established like Jhajjar (Losty and Roy 2012, pp.230-2) from land grants to Afghan military chiefs helpful to the British 1803-05. The portrait of Nawab Zabita Khan, who held land round Rania now in western Haryana (ibid., fig. 163), is the only one in Skinner’s manuscript which is based on a portrait from the Fraser Album.
Skinner’s patronage of Delhi artists doubtless began on account of his friendship with the Fraser brothers, the commissioners of the Fraser Album of paintings from 1815-19 (see Archer and Falk 1989). Skinner’s major commissions include the paintings in his album put together in the 1820s (British Library, Losty and Roy 2012 pp. 222-5), the three large watercolours he commissioned from Ghulam ‘Ali Khan in 1827-8 showing his regiments and his estate at Hansi and another two in 1836 marking his newly built church of St. James in Delhi (National Army Museum, see Dalrymple and Sharma 2012, nos. 58-60, and Losty 2012, figs. 102-3), and those illustrating his writings on castes and rulers (British Library and elsewhere). This is a significant body of work that marks Skinner as the most important patron of the time in Delhi. For overviews of Skinner’s patronage and literary compositions, see Losty and Roy 2012, pp. 222-8, and Dalrymple and Sharma 2012, pp. 32-9.
Skinner was a well-educated man and although his English was from all accounts never very good, his Persian was excellent. This post is concerned with the newly digitised manuscript of one of the two texts that he wrote in that language. His
Tazkirat al-Umara (Add.27254, ‘Biographies of the Nobles’) deals with the history of the princely families of Rajasthan, Haryana and the Punjab, tracing their descent and including a portrait of the present head of the family (
Rieu 1879, vol. 1, pp. 302-3). The British Library’s copy is dated 1830 with 38 paintings and begins with a dedication (f.3v) in four
baits of Persian verses to Skinner’s friend Sir John Malcolm (1769-1833), who had just retired as Governor of Bombay, together with an impression of Skinner’s seal with his titles
Nasir al-Dawlah Kirnil Jams Iskinar Bahadur Ghalib Jang (‘Defender of the State, Colonel James Skinner, Lord, Victorious in War’) and the date 1830. These were the Mughal titles which were given on 3 May 1830 to Skinner by the Emperor Akbar II and which are repeated beneath the portrait of Skinner himself on the facing page.
The manuscript is beautifully bound and presented and rarely for an Indian manuscript is decorated round the fore-edge, top and bottom of the text block with decorations.
Typical of the more old-fashioned Rajput portrait (including those of Jodhpur and Bikaner) is that of Maharaja Jagat Singh II of Jaipur, showing him standing in profile, his jama flaring out at the hem, and holding a long sword. Several of these portraits are of rulers already deceased in 1830, but in this case Jagat Singh had a posthumous son, Jai Singh III, born in 1819, so that perhaps portraits of so young a prince were not readily available. Skinner follows his account of Jaipur with notices of fifteen of its thikanas or tributary states, an area of research yet to be tapped.
Skinner concludes with the large state of Bahawalpur on the left bank of the Sutlej and Indus, although the portrait of the ruler labelled Nawab Dalil Khan is enigmatic. The ruler should have been either Nawab Sadiq Khan II (reg. 1809-26) or Bahawal Khan III (reg. 1809-52). The portrait’s composition seems based on one from earlier in the 18th century, but no Nawab Dalil Khan seems known from that time. The text of the Tazkira has never been published or translated and its on-line digitisation will surely be welcome not just to admirers of late Mughal Delhi but also to historians of early 19th century India
Skinner’s text includes accounts of all the contemporary Sikh rulers, beginning of course with Maharaja Ranjit Singh himself. By 1830, his appearance was well known and our Delhi artist has been able to produce a good likeness of him, albeit playing down somewhat his blind left eye. He is seated on a hexagonal gold throne which may be an attempt to render the Maharaja’s actual golden throne now in the V&A. This has the shape of two octagonal tiers of lotus petals, the traditional seat of Hindu deities, which our artist has perhaps attempted to suggest by portraying Ranjit Singh seated in one of the traditional postures of Hindu deities. Instead of the divine attributes, he bears instead those of a warrior – sword, dagger, shield, bow and arrows. Otherwise the setting is that of a refined Delhi interior with a view to the terrace and curtain swags.
Other Sikh rulers described in Skinner’s text include those of the major Cis-Sutlej states Patiala, Jind, Nabha and Kapurthala, all of which accepted British suzerainty in 1809 rather than risk be swallowed up in Ranjit Singh’s still expanding empire. Karam Singh ruled the largest territory of the Cis-Sutlej chiefs as suggested perhaps by his large and sprawling person in this portrait. As if to contain him, the artist closes the vista with an arcaded wall behind him. Karam Singh was very helpful to the British in the Anglo-Nepal war of 1814-15 and received in reward a large tract of the Himalayan foothills below Simla.
Whereas the history of the major Sikh princely states is well known, many of the small ones disappeared in the first half of the 19th century. These include all those established in what is now northern Haryana, which in British India were in the Punjab districts of Ambala and Karnal. James Skinner notices several of these small Sikh states, which were his neighbours to the north from his base in Hansi, including Kaithal, Kalsia, Radaur, Ladwa, Jagadhri and Buria along with portraits of the incumbent rulers. These small states were founded in 1763 after Sikh warriors fled south across the Sutlej to escape the carnage wrought on the Punjab proper by Ahmad Shah Durrani. When the land around Delhi was parcelled out after the British victory over the Marathas in 1803-05, these small rulers like their larger neighbouring ones were confirmed in their status and privileges, reinforced again in 1809.
Seal of William Price, dated 1811/12: Vilyam Prāʼīs, 1226. This seal occurs on the same manuscript, mentioned above, which was previously owned by James Browne
Seal of William Yule dated 1213 (1798/99), an example of musanná calligraphy in which the letters of his name are written on each side as mirror images. Yule subsequently developed this design to form a cat-shaped bookplate dated 1805 (BL Add.16802
Seal of Richard Whytell Rotten dated in the 32nd regnal year of Shah ʻAlam II (1790-91): Rawshan al-Dawlah Mubāriz al-Mulk Richārd Viṭal Rāṭin Asʻad Bahādur Sābit Jang, [year] 32. The seal is accompanied by Rotton's signature: ʻR.W. Rotton 14 April 1791ʼ
Seal of Major James Browne dated 1191 (1777/78): Muʻīn al-Dawlah Naṣīr al-Mulk Jīms Brawn Bahādur Ṣalābat Jang, 1191. From a history of the Kachwaha Rajas of Dhundhar commissioned by Browne in 1784
Seal of James Skinner (1778–1841): Nāṣir al-Dawla Karnīl Jams Iskinar Bahādur Ghālib Jang, 1830
Seal of James Grant dated 1193 in the Bengali era (1786/7): Jams Grānṭ Ṣadr-i Sarrishtahdār va Mulāḥiz̤-i Kull-i Dafātir az ṭaraf-i Dīvān-i Ṣūbahjāt-i Bangālah va Bahār va ghairah Madār al-Mahām Sipahsālār Angrīz Kampanī, sannah Bangalah 1193. Unlike the seals above which included Mughal titles, this is an official Company seal though it seems to have been used here in a private capacity. Note the early typographical use of a retroflex <ṭ> in Grant's name,
Seal of Archibald Swinton (1731-1804) dated 1174 in the 2nd regnal year of Shah ʻAlam II (1760/61): Archībāld Svīntan Bahādur Rustam Jang, 1174 [year] 2. From a copy of the poem Sūz va Gudāz ‘Burning and Melting’ by Nawʻī Khabūshānī
Bookplate of Richard Johnson (1753-1807) based on his seal dated 1780: Mumtāz al-Dawla Mufakhar al-Mulk Richārd Jānsan Bahādur Ḥusām Jang, 1194. (BL IO Islamic 1518)
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