Asian and African studies blog

Postscript, 15 March 2018: This manuscript has now been digitised and is on line here. The images below have been updated with hyperlinks.

Editor

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The British Library’s sole Judaeo-Urdu manuscript is a copy in Hebrew script of the well-known Urdu theatrical work, the Indar Sabha, written by Agha Sayyid Hasan ‘Amanat,’ a poet at the court of Vajid Ali Shah of Awadh.

Opening folio of the Indar Sabha (Or.13287, f. 7r)

Our manuscript bears a colophon dating its creation to 1887, perhaps by a member of the Baghdadi Jewish community of India. Originating in the Arabic-speaking regions of the Ottoman Empire, the Baghdadi Jewish community settled in India from the late 18^th into the 19^thcentury and was primarily centred in two major urban centres of India, Calcutta and Bombay. A printing industry in Judaeo-Arabic grew in both locations to cater to the religious needs of the community as well as its appetite for news and entertainment, producing devotional treatises, gazettes, and also the occasional historical novel, murder mystery and romance (Musleah, On the Banks of the Ganga, p. 522-531). The British Library’s collections are a rich resource for these publications and for the history of the Baghdadi Jewish community in India, and our Hebrew curator has previously written about a Judaeo-Arabic serial issued in Bombay for our blog.

The Emerald Fairy (Sabz Pari) at the heavenly court of Indar (Or.13287, f. 17r)

As for the contents of the manuscript, while many elements of the play itself are reminiscent of fabulous Urdu dastaans or legends, such as the Sihr al-Bayan by Mir Hasan (1727-86), the plot itself is relatively simple, avoiding the complex story-within-a-story structure of its predecessors. The play opens with a sensuous depiction of the court of the king of the gods, Indar, populated by fairies bearing the names of jewels (Emerald, Topaz, Sapphire and Ruby).

Left (f. 18r): the Sabz Pari (Emerald fairy) and the Kala Dev; right (f. 19v): the Sabz Pari and her earthly lover, prince Gulfam (Or.13287)

As with many dastaans, a story of forbidden love ensues when the Emerald fairy (Sabz Pari) falls in love with a mortal prince, Gulfam, and conspires with the help of the Black Demon (Kala Dev), to sneak her beloved into Indar’s heavenly court. When this transgression is discovered, the Emerald fairy’s wings are clipped, and she is ejected from the paradise of Indar’s court and falls to earth, while her lover is imprisoned in a well (Hansen, ‘Indar Sabha Phenomenon,’ p. 83).

Left (f. 22r): the Sabz Pari, having been shorn of her wings; right (f. 26r): Gulfam is punished in a well for his transgression of entering the heavenly court of Indar (Or.13287)

In addition to the echoes of Urdu dastaans, the multi-coloured fairies bring to mind the Haft Paykar of Nizami, in particular, the images of the main character’s fantastical adventures , and the Hasht Bihisht of Amir Khusraw, of which an example can be viewed online, while the unlucky prince hidden in a well as a result of his trangressive love is reminiscent of the story of Bizhan and Manizheh from the Shahnamah, creating a further layer of intertextuality and adaptation of visual motifs from the Persian epics from which the Urdu poetry of the 19^th century clearly drew much of its inspiration. However, the story takes a more Indic turn when the Emerald fairy, ejected from heaven, wanders as a yogini or female ascetic, playing music that tells of her love and charms her way back into Indar’s court, wins his favour and secures her lover’s release.

The Sabz Pari wanders on earth as a female ascetic or yogini, charming the wild animals with her beautiful music (Or.13287, f. 26v)

Establishing a direct link between the Baghdadi Jewish community and theatrical production of the Indar Sabha has proven elusive. According to the gazette of the Baghdadi Jewish community from the early twentieth century, social clubs in both Bombay and Calcutta staged events, such as films, plays and musical performances, and hosted amateur dramatic clubs from within the Jewish community (The Jewish Advocate, 1932, p. 425; 1933, p. 9). It also seems that Baghdadi Jewish female actresses took part in early productions of the play and other Urdu-language theatrical productions, establishing a possible connection between the Indar Sabha and the Jewish community. While such a conclusion is purely speculative at this point, it might be the case that this Judaeo-Urdu manuscript was created for (or by) one of the actors or theatre producers of the Baghdadi Jewish community.

Fortunately, due to the generosity of the Hebrew Manuscripts project, this unique Judaeo-Urdu manuscript will be digitised and made freely available online, which we hope will encourage further research into the language, cultural context, and history of this fascinating manuscript.

Bibliography and Further Reading
Kathryn Hansen, ‘The Indar Sabha Phenomenon: Public Theatre and Consumption in India (1853-1956)’ in Pleasure and the Nation: The History, Politics and Consumption of Public Culture in India, edited by Rachel Dwyer and Christopher Pinney (Oxford, 2001): 76-114.
Rabbi Ezekiel Musleah, On the Banks of the Ganga: The Sojourn of the Jews in Calcutta (North Quincy, Massachusetts: Christopher Publishing House, 1975).
Aaron D. Rubin, A Unique Hebrew Glossary from India: An Analysis of Judaeo-Urdu (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2016).

Nur Sobers-Khan, Lead Curator for South Asia

Connecting Stories: Our British Asian Heritage, the joint Library of Birmingham and British Library exhibition exploring Britain's enduring connections with South Asia opened on July 15th. Featured in the exhibition is a rather lovely portrait of the children of Sir John Spencer Login (1809-63)  with their ayah (governess) painted in Lucknow, India in 1846.

Login and his family's lives changed in the aftermath of the Anglo-Sikh war and annexation of the Punjab by the British, when he was appointed as the legal guardian of the ten-year-old Maharaja Duleep Singh in Lahore in April 1849.

'Maharaja Dhulip Sing', plate 1 from Recollections of India. Part 1. British India and the Punjab by James Duffield Harding (1797-1863) after Charles Stewart Hardinge (1822-1894), 1847. British Library, X738/1(1).  

Login was born in Stromness, Orkney in Scotland and trained at the Royal Infirmary at Edinburgh. After arriving in India in 1836, he obtained the position of surgeon to the 1^st Brigade Horse Artillery and served under Sir Charles Metcalfe in Agra. In 1838, he was transferred to Lucknow where he was appointed as the Residency Surgeon and Postmaster General. It was in Lucknow that he met his future wife Lena Campbell, whom he married in 1842.

A rarity in the British Library’s collection is this rather lovely miniature painting on ivory, featuring the young children of John and his wife Lena who were born in Lucknow. Riding astride on the rocking horse and dressed in a tartan kilt is the eldest son Edward William Spencer Login (b.1843). Standing in a blue dress and missing a shoe is Lena Margaret Campbell Login (b. 1845). In the arms of their ayah is Louisa Marion d’Arcy Login (b. 1846). Standing off-centre is an Indian playmate. Painted by an unnamed Indian artist, it was completed a few months after the birth of Louisa.

The Children of Sir John Spencer Login in Lucknow by an unnamed Indian artist, 1846. British Library, Add Or 5639.

Lena Login’s published account Lady Login’s Recollections reflects on her life in Lucknow and her interactions with the women of the royal family of Awadh.  She wrote, ‘Indeed, Malika Geytee, the King’s favourite wife, treated me always as an intimate friend, and all the Princesses made a point of presenting me, on the birth of each of my children, as a sign of personal regard with a complete outfit of native dress for myself and the newcomer, of their own handiwork, gorgeously embroidered in gold and silver bullion’. Lena Login learned to speak Urdu and regularly assisted her husband to treat the women in the zenana that she could see first-hand and report symptoms back to Dr Login. As Login declined accepting payment for treating the local Nawabs, the family often received rather extravagant presents including a carriage ‘lined in satin and gold’ with ‘horses [that were] enormous milk white creatures with pink noses and tails of brilliant scarlet’. The children were sent baby elephants as well as ‘two huge Persian cats, more like leopards’.

After the departure of Lena and their children from India back to England, John Login fought in the second Anglo-Sikh War (1848-49). In the aftermath, the British appointed Login as the guardian to the young ruler Duleep Singh. The Maharaja, only a few years older than Edward William Spencer Login, would remain under the care of the Login family until he was 19. They travelled from Lahore to Fatehgargh and ultimately Duleep Singh was permitted to travel to England in 1854. Invited to court, he developed a close relationship with Queen Victoria and her family. For the next several years, he remained with the Login family at Castle Menzies in Scotland. While visual evidence of his early years in England is primarily limited to formal portraits commissioned by Queen Victoria and her own sketches, an informal group portrait picturing the Maharaja with the Login children amongst other party goers at Castle Menzies taken in 1855 appeared at auction just a few years ago. It would be interesting to know if other visual representations of the young Maharaja and his adopted family have been identified and can be explored in a future blog post.

The painting of the children of John Spencer Login is currently on display at the Library of Birmingham in the exhibition Connecting Stories: Our British Asian Heritage from 15 July – 4 November 2017.

Further reading:

Edith Dalhousie Login, Lady Login's recollections : court life and camp life, 1820-1904, London, 1916. 

Malini Roy, Visual Arts Curator

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Connecting Stories: Our British Asian Heritage

In recent weeks I have been examining bindings of the British Library’s manuscripts which formerly belonged to Tipu Sultan, Sultan of Mysore (r. 1782-1799). The British Library collection probably constitutes about 25% of the original Library as it was in 1799 after the fall of Seringapatam. The manuscripts originate ultimately from a number of different, largely unspecified, locations, but fortunately there is a distinct corpus (23 out of 242 so far examined) which can easily be identified as belonging to Tipu Sultan's court. These are works bound in his own individualistic style of binding or else were copied or composed at Seringapatam.

Front board of Tipu Sultan’s personal Qur’an with flap showing inscriptions 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 below. This binding is unusual of Tipu bindings for its use of gilt decoration. Note also the diced patterned background which is a feature of several other manuscripts. (IO Islamic 3562) 

One of the most lavish is Tipu Sultan’s personal Qur’an (IO Islamic 3562), illustrated above (more on this in a future blog). Decorated heavily in gilt on a diced patterned background, the binding also includes a number of inscriptions. These were described in general terms by Charles Stewart in A Descriptive Catalogue of the Oriental Library of the late Tippoo Sultan of Mysore, (Cambridge, 1809), p.v.

All the volumes that had been rebound at Seringapatam have the names of God, Mohammed, his daughter Fatimah, and her sons, Hassen and Hussein, stamped in a medallion on the middle of the cover; and the names of the Four first Khalifs, Abu Beker, Omar, Osman, and Aly, on the four corners. At the top is “Sirkari Khodādad,” (the government given by God); and at the bottom, “Allah Kāfy,” (God is sufficient).”

I thought it would be helpful to expand on these inscriptions which are stamped on the outside of the bindings. Typically, but not always, they consist of:

1. Front top: Sarkār-i Khudādādī ‘God-given government’
2. Front central medallion: Allāh, Muḥammad, ʻAlī, Fāṭimah, Ḥasan, Ḥusayn
   
3. Back central medallion: Qur’an Surah 2:32: Subḥānaka lā ‘ilma lanā illā mā ‘allamtanā innaka anta al-‘alīm al-ḥakīm ‘Exalted are You; we have no knowledge except what You have taught us. Indeed, it is You who is the Knowing, the Wise.’
4. Four corners: Ḥaz̤rat Abū Bakr Ṣiddīq; Ḥaz̤rat ʻUmar al-Fārūq; Ḥaz̤rat ʻUsmān ibn ʻAffān; Ḥaz̤rat ʻAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib
5. Pendants hanging from central medallion: Allāh kāfī ‘God is sufficient’
6. Cartouches: Lā ilāha illā Allāh Muḥammad Rasūl Allāh ‘There is no God but God and Muhammad is his messenger’
7. Spine: Qur'an Surah 56:79: Lā yamassuhu illā al-muṭahharūn ‘None may touch it except the purified’

Left: back board with inscriptions 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6; right: doublure; below: flap with inscription 7 which currently, perhaps as a result of restoration, lies on the outside of the front board. (IO Islamic 3562)

A similar binding occurs on IO Islamic 3351, a less ambitiously decorated Qur’an, possibly dating from the 17^th century but rebound at Seringapatam. Its small size (16.5 x 10cm) accounts for it only being inscribed in the central medallion, on the spine and with the usual sarkar-i khudādādī. Unlike many of Tipu's bindings, which have been altered during subsequent restoration, this one has been preserved in its original state with the flap designed to go inside the outer cover.

Back board and flap showing inscriptions 3 and 7. (IO Islamic 3351)

Less ambitious Tipu bindings show considerable variation and demonstrate that the inscriptions could be stamped quite carelessly as illustrated in the examples below.

  
Left: IO Islamic 695, a late 18^th century copy of works by Gīsū Darāz and ʻAṭṭār, with inscriptions 1, 2, 4 and 5 stamped somewhat inexactly on the binding; right: IO Islamic 491, Javāhir al-qur'ān, an index to bowing places (rukūʻ) copied for Tipu in 1225 of the Mauludi era (1797/98) with only inscription 1 at the head.

Not all of Tipu Sultan's bindings included his characteristic inscriptions. Two examples of comparitively simple bindings are illustrated below.

This manuscript is a translation into Persian from Dakhni by Ḥasan ʻAlī ʻIzzat of the love story of Lal and Gohar which was commissioned by Tipu Sultan in 1778. The binding is contemporary and still carries the Prize Agentsʼ label dating from when they were first examining the collection in 1799. (IO Islamic 464)

Another work commissioned by Tipu, his army regulations Fatḥ al-mujāhidīn by Zayn al-Dīn Shūshtarī. The scalloped flap is the only example I have found in the collection and unlike IO Islamic 3351 above, it was designed to lie on the outside. Note also the hole, presumably for ties. (IO Islamic 713)

Altogether I estimate that the British Library has about 600 volumes from Tipu Sultan's collection. These consist of 197 volumes of Arabic and Persian manuscripts deposited in the Library on 16 July 1806, further volumes deposited in 1807 (204 vols) and April 1808 (68 vols) and a proportion of the 308 manuscripts sent to London in 1837 after the closure of Fort William College in Calcutta and the dispersal of its collections. For more on this see my earlier post Revisiting the provenance of the Sindbadnamah. I'm hoping that by examining the whole collection I may be able to discover more about the provenance of each volume and establish certain regional binding styles, but this is very much work in progress, so watch this space!

Ursula Sims-Williams, Lead Curator, Persian

Related posts on Tipu Sultan

Tipu Sultan’s dream book (IO Islamic 3563)

Revisiting the provenance of the Sindbadnamah (IO Islamic 3214)

Nasir Shah's Book of Delights

The curious tale of Solomon and the Phoenix

Campaign medals from the India Office collections

The ‘South Asia Series’ of talks recommences in August, with a diverse line-up of speakers, based on the British Library's ‘Two Centuries of Indian Print’ Project and the South Asia Collection. The talks, on topics ranging from the 16th-century founder of the Mughal Empire, to Indian theatre and Shakespeare in South India, will be followed by discussions facilitated by BL curators and other specialists in the field. The presentations, which will take place at the Foyle Learning Centre at the British Library, between 5.30-7.00pm, will include the following:

On 21st August 2017, Professor of Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, Michael Charlesworth will talk about the works of Reginald Farrer (1880-1920), who was an alpine plant collector, gardener, and the garden writer who single-handedly changed the way the anglophone world writes about garden plants. The talk entitled “From Sri Lanka to the Western Front: Reginald Farrer's Buddhism” will trace the energy of Buddhist thought in varied works by Farrer, particularly in his account of temples and ruined cities.

Front cover of ‘In Old Ceylon’ (1908). British Library, 010058.f.9

Dr. Thea Buckley examines the curious case of how Pericles, Shakespeare’s tale of a seafaring prince and a princess abducted by pirates, circulated to South India’s Malabar Coast. In her talk in September, ‘In the spicèd Indian air’: the East India Company, Malabar black gold, and Shakespeare, she will connect the East India Company’s import of Shakespeare with the export of spice from today’s Kerala state, and discuss the resulting literary fusion.

Front cover of William Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’ in Malayalam (1942). British Library, Mal B 737

In her talk in October, ‘Stages of Partition: Prithvi Theatre during the 1940s’, Dr. Salma Siddique, a postdoctoral research fellow at Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies, Freie Universität Berlin, will discuss how partition was ‘performed’ on stage before it had even happened. Using surviving transcripts, memoirs and press coverage, she reads in the repertoire both partition’s proleptic history and its creative force.

Image of Prithvi Theatre stamp from ‘Dīvār’ (1952). British Library, Hin B 13795

In November, Daniel Majchrowicz, an Assistant Professor of South Asian Literature and Culture at Northwestern University, will talk about Tukoji Holkar, Maharaja of Indore, his clandestine tour of Delhi, Agra and Haridwar and subsequent Urdu travelogue. This presentation will examine how and why princely travel writing appeared in mid-19th century South Asia and argue that the Maharaja's decision to write travel account – and to do so in Urdu – served to stabilize Indore's legitimacy and legacy at a time when colonial predations had rendered these increasingly precarious.

Image of the Palace of Indore from ‘Bagh I Nau Bahar’ (1852). British Library, 306.23.e.17

We will end the year with talks on alcohol and botanical publishing. On 11th December 2017, Dr Sam Goodman will argue in his talk ‘No beer to be had unless prescribed medically: Alcohol and Health in Colonial British India’ how alcohol was a paradoxical substance in the context of colonial British India, regarded as an evident source of personal and broader public risk, yet at the same time still used regularly in medical practice and perceived as vital to the preservation of health in both lay and professional contexts. He will draw upon courts martial proceedings, medical reports and other sources drawn from the India Office Archives from his talk. 
Image from the ‘The Military Adventures of Johnny Newcome’ (1904). British Library, 012203.F.32/8

A full list of talks is given below, while the abstracts can be downloaded here:

Download BL South Asia Seminar Abstracts Long August-December with pics:

Monday 7th August 2017: Writing Empire: The Memoirs of Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, Founder of Mughal India. Lubaaba Al-Azami (University of Liverpool).

Monday 21st August 2017: From Sri Lanka to the Western Front: Reginald Farrer's Buddhism. Prof. Michael Charlesworth (University of Texas-Austin).

Monday 4th September 2017: ‘In the spicèd Indian air’: the East India Company, Malabar black gold, and Shakespeare. Dr. Thea Buckley (University of Birmingham)

Monday 18th September 2017: Persian Grammar Books as a Get Rich Quick Scheme in Colonial Calcutta (Dr. Arthur Dudney (University of Cambridge),

Monday 2nd October 2017: In a Place of Dreaming and Secrecy: College Magazines and Young Womanhood in South India. (Dr. Sneha Krishnan (University of Oxford)

Monday 16th October 2017: Stages of Partition: Prithvi Theatre during the 1940s. Dr. Salma Siddique (Freie Universität Berlin)

Monday 30th October 2017: Applied Cosmology and Islamic Reform in North India: Shāh Walī Allāh of Delhi and the Urdu Common Reader. Daniel Morgan (PhD Candidate, University of Chicago)

Monday 6th November 2017: Princes, Politics and the Urdu Travel Account in mid-Nineteenth Century India. Daniel Majchrowicz (Northwestern University)

Wednesday 22nd November 2017: Reintroducing the Celebrated Niʿmatnāmah Half a Century Later. Dr. Preeti Khosla (Independent Scholar)

Monday 4th December 2017: Publishing colonial science: the struggle to communicate the results of the botanical investigation of India. Dr. Adrian Harris (King’s College London)

Monday 11th December 2017: ‘No beer to be had unless prescribed medically’: Alcohol and Health in Colonial British India. Dr. Sam Goodman (Bournemouth University)

Please do come along, listen and participate. No advance booking is required, and the sessions are free to attend. For further information, please contact:

Dr. Layli Uddin, Project Curator of ‘Two Centuries of Indian Print’

[email protected]

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The story of Sinbad or the seven sages

Tipu Sultan's dream book (IO Islamic 3563)

Visitors to the Treasures Gallery at the British Library may notice that the display of Dara Shikoh album pages have changed. On exhibition are eight folios from the Dara Shikoh Album (Add.Or.3129), one of the great treasures of the Asian and African department. The album was compiled by Prince Dara Shikoh (1615–59), the eldest son and heir of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, and presented as a gift to his wife Nadira Banu Begum in 1646-47, whom he married in 1633. A new selection went into the gallery at the end of May in time for the Jaipur Literature Festival. You can find these in the Arts of the Book section near the entrance to the Magna Carta. For information on the previous display, please read our blog post on 'New Display of Dara Shikoh Album'.

The album contains seventy-four folios with sixty-eight paintings interspersed with calligraphy and gilt tooled leather covers.  Inside the album, paintings are arranged in facing pairs alternating with facing pages of calligraphy. The album features eighteen portraits of Dara Shikoh, portraits of princes and notable women of the court, holy men, and studies of natural history subjects. 

In this new display, visitors can view a set of facing portraits of Dara Shikoh as a teenager, approximately 15-18 years of age. This complementary set  features the prince standing against blossoming shrubs. He is dressed in fine white muslin garment worn over vivid coloured trousers. In both studies, he is adorned in necklaces composed of enormous pearls, jewelled bracelets and earrings. On the portrait to the right, he holds a gold tray containing two loose pearls and a red spinel.

 
Portraits of Prince Dara Shikoh, unknown artists, Agra or Burhanpur, India, 1630-33. British Library, Add Or 3129, f.36 and f.35v.

The second pair of portraits features women at the Mughal court. This includes an unidentified beauty of the court and a  portrait of Dara Shikoh’s elder sister Jahanara who was an influential political figure and profoundly spiritual. She wrote ‘The Confidant of Spirits’, a biography of the Sufi saint Mu’in al-Din Chishti in 1640.

[Left] A lady of the court, by an unknown artist from Agra or Burhanpur, India, 1630-33. British Library, Add Or 3129, f.14. [Right] Princess Jahanara aged 18, attributed to Lalchand, Agra or Burhanpur, India, 1632. British Library, Add Or 3129, f.13v. 

The remaining four works on display were not intended as pairs, but are representative works from the album. This includes a study of two pigeons perched beside a portable dovecote, a pink crown imperial lily (one of eighteen floral studies in the album), a calligraphic exercise by Muhammad Husain al-Kashmiri who was one of the most eminent calligraphers during the reign of Mughal emperor Akbar (1555-1605), and an engraving of the Virgin and Child by either a Dutch or Italian artist from the 16^th or 17^th century.

   
[Left] Two pigeons. [Right] A pink lily, artists unknown, Agra or Burhanpur, India, 1630-33. Calligraphic exercise by Muhammad Husain al-Kashmiri, northern India, c. 1590; flowers added, c. 1630. British Library, Add Or 3129, f. 31v, f.62, and f.40v.

For our audience and readers unfamiliar with the history of Mughal art, the European engraving pasted onto a Mughal album page may appear to be unconventional or even eccentric. In this album, the facing page too features western prints picturing St. Catherine of Sienna by Antonia Caranzano and a print of St. Margaret pasted into a Mughal album page.  Artists at the Mughal court were in fact exposed to European engravings, specifically Christian iconography, through Jesuit missionaries who visited the court of Emperor Akbar from 1580 onwards. Mughal artists were commissioned by Akbar and his son Jahangir to illustrate scenes on the life of Christ. While Mughal interpretations of Christian themes and studies of foreign visitors appear in albums, the original prints that inspired such works are more uncommon.

Engraving of the Virgin and Child by a Dutch or Italian artist, 16th or 17th century, British Library, Add Or 3129, f.42v

Further reading:

Falk, T., and Archer, M., Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, London, 1981
Inayat Khan, The Shah Jahan Nama of ‘Inayat Khan, trans. A.R. Fuller, ed. W.E. Begley and Z.A. Desai, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1990  
Losty, J.P., ‘Dating the Dara Shikoh Album: the Floral Evidence’, in Ebba Koch and Ali Anooshahr, eds., The Mughal Empire under Shah Jahan (1628-58) – New trends of research, forthcoming
Losty, J.P., and Roy, M., Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire – Manuscripts and Paintings in the British Library, London, 2012
Losty, J.P., 'Mughal flower studies and their European inspiration', Asian and African Studies Blog, 14 March 2014.
Sims-Williams, Ursula, 'Princess Jahanara's biography of a Sufi saint', Asian and African Studies Blog, 01 February 2013.

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The Jaipur Literary Festival comes to the British Library

One of the treasures of the Urdu manuscript collection at the British Library has been digitised and made available online. The Pem Nem (Add.16880) is one of the finest examples of manuscript illustration from the court of Sultan Ibrahim Adil Shah II, who ruled the kingdom of Bijapur from 1580 to 1627. Containing 34 miniature paintings illustrating the Sufi love story of prince Shah Ji and princess Mah Ji, the manuscript was written by an author by the name of Hasan Manju Khalji, bearing the pen name of Hans.

Left: The hero, Shah Ji, faints at his first sight of his beloved, Mah Ji (BL Add.16680, f. 82v)
Right: The hero, Shah Ji is enflamed with passion (BL Add.16680, f. 87r)

While the author claims in the introduction that the manuscript was written in the year 999 AH (1590/91 CE), scholars doubt that this claim is more than an attempt to harmonise the year of the manuscript's production with Ibrahim Adil Shah II's fixation with the nauras, the nine rasas or essences/flavours art. The introduction tells us that the body of the poem contains 199 rhyming couplets (dohas, two lines of seven syllables) and 999 quatrains (caupais, four lines with the rhyme ABCB), and praises the 99 names of God, suggesting that the text is indeed structured around the ruler's fixation with the number nine. Although the dating of the text to the exact year of 999 AH may be no more than poetic license, the art historian and expert on the Bijapur court, Deborah Hutton, has identified stylistic and textual details that allow the creation of the manuscript to be safely dated to the period 1591-1604 (Hutton, 'The Pem Nem', p. 45).

Originally mis-identified in Blumhardt's Catalogue of Hindi, Panjabi and Hindustani Manuscripts (1899) as a variation on the Padmavat of Jayyasi, the text of the manuscript was later studied by the eminent Urdu scholar, David Matthews, who describes the spiritual love story of the two main protagonists that differs from the Padmavat and is a unique work, although it shares the central feature of narrating a spiritual quest through the trope of a love story.

  
Left: Convinced that Mah Ji is only a reflection of the image in his heart, he weeps a stream a tears (BL Add.16680, f. 90v)
Right: Mah Ji passing time with her companions during her period of separation and longing, playing board games and tending to pet birds (BL Add.16680, f. 135r)

Not unlike other Persianate tales of spiritual awakening and the search for truth, the story begins with the hero, Shah Ji, encountering an image of his as-yet-unseen beloved, Mah Ji, brought to him by a tortoise, while Mah Ji receives a similar portrait-via-tortoise delivery. The two main characters fall deeply in love (Matthews, 'Pem Nem', p. 174). This curious scene, quite unfortunately, is not pictured among the illustrations of the manuscript. The hero's love for the heroine is uniquely depicted through the innovative visual metaphor of the princess' image appearing on his breast throughout the illustrations.   After falling in love, Shah Ji embarks on a journey to find his beloved, which takes him to an island where his paternal uncle rules as king, and where his daughter, Shah Ji's beloved, resides.   Upon finding his beloved, Shah Ji faints, and then later refuses to believe that Mah Ji is anything more than a pale reflection of the image on his chest, who he mistakes for the real beloved. In a case of mistaking the real for the reflection, Shah Ji abandons Mah Ji. At this point, the text integrates the Indic baramasa genre, which depicts the emotions of the different seasons as the twelve months of the year pass, into the Persian masnavi tradition, or Sufi love story of spiritual awakening written in narrative verse.   During her period of abandonment, Mah Ji is depicted as aflame with longing - quite literally on fire - for her absent lover, just as the same striking visual metaphor was used to paint Shah Ji's desire for his beloved before he encountered her.   Mah Ji is painted in scenes of amusement with her companions in the garden of the palace, although she maintains an isolated and melancholy air, such as in the images of celebrations for Holi, in which she broods while a maid fans her, presumably to cool her passions.

  
Left: The heroine is aflame with passion and longing for her absent beloved (BL Add.16680, f. 138r)
Right: While Mah Ji’s companions prepare fireworks and celebrate, Mah Ji sits alone and is fanned by an attendant (BL Add.16680, f. 147r)

After much solitary meditation, the hero of the story, Shah Ji, realised the spiritual error of mistaking the real beloved, the actual Mah Ji before him, for the reflection of Mah Ji in his heart, and returns to the palace to much rejoicing. The largest number of illustrations, twelve of the thirty four, in the manuscript represent the celebrations and rituals surrounding their union in marriage. As in other tales of the same genre, the union of the lover and beloved is a metaphor for the union of the soul with God after mistaking the image, the majaz or symbol (here the image of Mah Ji on the hero's chest) for the haqiqa, or truth.

  
Left: Realising that Mah Ji is the real beloved and not an illusion, Shah Ji returns, and then faints (BL Add.16680, f. 166r)
Right: The lovers are now united in marriage, and Mah Ji offers Shah Ji paan (BL Add.16680, f. 232r)

While the images of the manuscript have been studied by art historians, much research remains to be done on the text and its languages. David Matthews has commented that, "One of the most striking features of the work is its language. The gist of the text can be understood with a little patience; the grammar, syntax and meaning of many verses defy interpretation," and he has also identified the use of many words borrowed from Marathi and Telegu into the Dakani Urdu verse of the manuscript (Matthews, 'Eighty Years', p. 96), suggesting that a team of specialist scholars would have to examine the text of the manuscript together in order to make full sense of it. While the images have been studied, published and displayed, Marika Sardar in her description of the manuscript for the Sultans of the Deccan India exhibition, has observed that some of the paintings, undertaken by three separate artists, seem to date from a later period and serve the purpose of expanding the illustrative narrative without adding content. She also comments that the manuscript seems to have been dis-bound and re-bound slightly out of order, so much work remains to be done on both the text and the study of the images. While the gist of the story and the dating of the images have been established, further study of the linguistic and art historical intricacies are still needed, which should be helped by the availability of the digitised manuscript on the British Library's website. Regardless of the mysteries surrounding certain aspects of the manuscript, the artists have given us the striking visual metaphor of the hero carrying an image of the heroine in his heart throughout the course of his spiritual quest, and also the flames of passion quite literally springing from the two main protagonists as they long to be together.

Bibliography and Further Reading
Along with other manuscripts from the courts of the Deccan Sultanates, the Pem Nem travelled to New York as a loan to Metropolitan Museum of Art for the 2015 exhibition, Sultans of Deccan India 1500-1700, Opulence and Fantasy, for which Jeremiah Losty wrote a blog (British Library loans to Sultans of Deccan exhibition in New York).

See also:
Deborah Hutton, "The Pem Nem: A Sixteenth-Century Illustrated romance from Bijapur" in Sultans of the South: Arts of India's Deccan Courts, 1323-1687, edited by Navina Najat Haidar and Marika Sardar (Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2011): 44-63.
D.J. Matthews, "Eighty Years of Dakani Scholarship", The Annual of Urdu Studies, No. 8 (1993): 91-108.
David Matthews, "Pem Nem: A 16th Century Dakani Manuscript" in From Cairo to Kabul: Afghan and Islamic Studies presented to Ralph Pinder-Wilson, edited by Warwick Ball and Leonard Harrow (London: Melisende, 2002): 170-175.
Marika Sardar, "The Manuscript of the Pem Nem (The Laws of Love)" in Sultans of Deccan India 1500-1700, Opulence and Fantasy, by Navina Najat Haidar and Marika Sardar (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015): 97-98.
Mark Zebrowski, Deccan Painting (Sotheby Publications, University of California Press, 1983): 67-121.

Nur Sobers-Khan, Lead Curator for South Asia

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British Library loans to Sultans of Deccan exhibition in New York

As part of the Visual Arts collections at the British Library, we hold an extensive collection of drawings, sketches and watercolours by amateur British and European artists who travelled through the Indian subcontinent. In 2015, we acquired a wonderful little sketchbook, measuring a mere 80 x 204 mm, by an unknown artist who documented his/her journey from Calcutta to Bihar in the winter of 1849. Unfortunately, none of the sketches are signed or offer any details regarding the artist’s identity. The sketchbook contains 12 double-sided pages, each filled with sketches in either pen-and-ink or done in watercolours. The subjects include topographical views, portraits studies of locals, as well as documentation of crafts and transportation methods. Each illustration is annotated by the artist providing details of the subjects and documenting the shades of colour – such as ‘very white’ or ‘yellowish’. It is most likely that this incomplete series of sketches were preparatory studies that could be worked up at a later stage.

View of Government House, Calcutta, anonymous British artist, c. 1849. British Library WD 4593, f. 7

The illustrations in the album include studies of relatively well known buildings such as Government House and Fort William in Calcutta to lesser known spots along the Ganges and Hoogly Rivers. The artist’s impressions demonstrate a quick study and artistic impressions rather than providing an accurate visual record. One of the first views in the series is that of Government House (Raj Bhavan) that was designed by Captain Charles Wyatt and constructed from 1799-1802. The artist prepared the study from a position on Esplanade Row facing north. This neo-classical building, inspired by Robert Adam’s Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire, was the official residence of the Governor-Generals and the Viceroys until 1911. Along the parapet of the central building, the artist sketched the East India Company’s coat of arms featuring lions. It is most curious that the artist featured the coat of arms on the south front of the building as they in fact are positioned along the parapet of the north face and main entrance to the building. A drawing by Lady Sarah Amherst, dated to 1824, shows the correct position.

View of Fort William, Calcutta, anonymous British artist, c. 1849. British Library, WD 4593, f. 9

On another folio, the artist illustrated a distant view of Fort William. Designed by Captain John Brohier and built during the 1750s and 1760s, the octagonal fortification was built close to the banks of the Hoogly River, just south-west of Government House. On the left, the artist wrote ‘white dark pinnacle’ and ‘church’ which is likely to be a reference to St Peter’s Church that was built in 1826.

'Hindoo Temples of Tin & Coloured Paper, Coolies, and Ganges Pilots', anonymous British artist, c. 1849. British Library, WD4593, f.14

Aside from architectural and topographical views, the artist also documented local inhabitants and customs. On folio 14, he wrote ‘Hindoo Temples of Tin and Coloured Paper’ and provided pen-and-ink sketches of what he assumed to be local and religious crafts. He meticulously documented the colour scheme of these objects. However, in finding comparative material in contemporary drawings and later photographs, it appears that the artist may have documented painted structures called ta'ziya, instead of ‘Hindoo temples’ that were created for the Muslim festival of Muharram. Examples of ta’ziya used in processions were recorded in paintings and photographs by local as well as British artists during the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

 

‘Native boats’, anonymous British artist, c. 1849. British Library, WD4593, f. 25.

The album contains several charming river scenes that document forms of river transportation, from small row boats to a steamer. From the sequence of illustrations and the inscriptions provided, it is possible to document the artist’s journey along the Hoogly and then the Ganges rivers from Calcutta to Bihar by way of the Rajmahal Hills, Monghyr, Patna, Dinapur and Ghazipur.

Further reading:

Archer, M. British Drawings in the India Office Library, Volume 1: Amateur Artists, London, 1969

Losty, J.P.,  'Charles D'Oyly's voyage to Patna', Asian and African Studies Blog, September 2014

Losty, J.P., ‘A Career in Art: Sir Charles D’Oyly’, in Under the Indian Sun: British Landscape Artists, ed. P. Rohatgi and P. Godrej, Bombay, 1995, pp. 81-106

Rohatgi, P., and P. Godrej, Under the Indian Sun: British Landscape Artists, Bombay, 1995

Malini Roy, Visual Arts Curator