Rajputana Aboriginal
[Original caption] Aboriginal, Rajputana. Rajputana is an administrative territory of India. It lies between Sind, the Punjab, the North-Western Provinces, and the several native states of Central India.
Nature
Calcutta
Nautch dancers inspired stories like Hassan Shah’s The Nautch Girl, “the first known modern Indian novel” in the 1790s, as well as the first Urdu novel, the story of the Lucknow courtesan Umrao Jaan Ada in 1899.
A version of this card was sent by
Rice Fields, Ceylon
Traditional wet rice farming involves keeping the rice seeds and young plants submerged under water to keep weed infestation at bay until the young rice plants are well established.
Greetings from South India
One of the earliest roughly dateable postcards of India, made by a German firm that soon seems to have vanished from history. It probably dates to 1896, when a similar card of Haiti was made (see Haiti's First Postcard by Peter. C. Jeannopoulus in
Naina Devi Temple
[Verso, handwritten] "Buddhist temple from which Naini Tal takes its name. Immediately behind this is the polo ground."
Country Boats on the Jhelum
A postcard by what was probably an amateur artist, Miss L. Barne, in Madras who self-published the card as a series of six cards. [Verso] "To be obtained from Miss Barne, St. Ebbas, Madras, and from Miss Farnell, 56, Manchester Square, W. I."
Kradyal Canal, Srinagar, Kashmir
A view of the canal in Srinagar, the summer capital of the Maharajah-ruled state of Jammu and Kashmir during the Raj. This view of a house jutting over the canal was popular among photographers and postcard printers.
Apple Tree Nala, Srinagar, (Kashmir)
This is among the earliest postcards of Kashmir, printed for a British publisher most likely by Raphael Tuck & Sons in London just before they themselves started printing what are probably the most well-known series of Indian postcards under their
Temple Chenar Bagh
This card is from a series of 6 postcards by the unknown painter E.E. probably self-published around 1910. It is of unusual size, and came in a nice envelope with the imprinted title Six Artistic Views of Kashmir. Many British residents had some
Darjeeling (Himalaya)
The postcard artist, who signed other cards in this India series published by an obscure Munich firm, was Johann Friedrich Perlberg (1848-1921). Son of a painter, he best known for his paintings of Egypt, Palestine and the Middle East, many of which
