A Persian Gypsy Woman and Her Children
[Original caption] A Persian Gypsy Woman and Children. These itinerant vendors of small articles travel far and wide through India, often pretending also to occult knowledge.
[Original caption] A Persian Gypsy Woman and Children. These itinerant vendors of small articles travel far and wide through India, often pretending also to occult knowledge.
Thomas Paar was one of the earliest publishers of Darjeeling postcards, and a longtime photographer with a grand studio in the middle of the hillstation.
According to the Indian census of 2001, 74% of the population of India lived in 638,365 different villages.
Many of the earliest postcards were actually advertising cards, given the expense of producing lithographic cards like this French view of a 17th century Nawab and son. The woman in the back holds a nautch girl's pose.
This odd twist of phrase was used by another firm in Quetta, Fred Bremner, on a postcard which he titled "A Human Nest," (Pathan Woman & Child). This suggests that putting Balochistan's residents on the margins of the human race was not uncommon.