Chetty Rice Merchant and Money Lender. Ceylon
[Original caption] The Chettya are one of the trading castes of India whose mercantile activities take them far afield.
Postcard
Types of Men (I)
This is actually a real photograph postcard of a water colour on paper by M.V. Dhurandhar, part of a series by the artist on the people of Bombay. The recent and first major book on him, M.V. Dhurandhar The Romantic Realist (DAG, 2018) has three of
Bombay Police
A rare lithograph from 1907 or beyond. Note the British policeman in side profile, the local constable saluting him. They are nearly the same height. The background reveals itself to be a cutout of the city, the policeman's terrain.
Sardar Bhagat Singh
Bhagat Singh, who was hung in a Lahore jail on March 23, 1931 is the subject of continuing dispute in Lahore. Motions have been filed to name what is now a traffic chowk after Bhagat Singh. From The Times of India story: "Bhagat Singh Memorial
A Mountebank
A curious case of an Italian word finding itself stamped upon a postcard of a characteristic type in India (the fakir, in this case a mendacious one). Mountebank is an old word for a charlatan, or salesman of quack medicines.
In the Mosque of Machii-Kaman
Possibly the earliest postcard of Hyderabad, by the Austrian artist Josef Hoffman who painted this scene during a visit to India in 1893-94 when he was in his sixties.
Watching the Pageant, Delhi
[Original caption, Verso] “Watching the Pageant, Delhi. The great Delhi Durbar is known by means of the vernacular press to the inhabitants of the remotest parts of India.
Result of an Intrusion
A interesting very early lithographic card from Bombay by the little-known city artist/publisher W. Cooper, who seems to have specialized in the risque postcard (the same woman seems to be the model for A Trysting Place). Two things are particularly
Hindoo Ayahs
An early court-sized card made from an albumen photograph with the studio inscribed in the glass negative at the bottom.
Hobson-Jobson defines "AYAH, s. A native lady's-maid or nurse-maid.
Sudder Bazaar, Peshawar
The central bazaar in Peshawar, capital of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP, now KPK) was a common postcard subject, even for distant publishers like H.A. Mirza in Delhi. Murrays Handbook for Travellers in India Burma and Ceylon (1928) wrote:
