Museum objects, artifacts, and archival items from the Sarmaya collection.
This map, Vorder Indien, depicts the various European territories in India in 1857. British territories are marked in light red and French and Portugese territories in white. Colour is important in communicating ideas on a map, but the use of it is more recent. For long, maps were made in black ink and printed on… Read more »
This map points out the locations and broad layouts of several ancient cities of Delhi, while emphasising that they were isolated and did not overlap. Tughlukabad, Old Delhi, Jahanpanah, Hauz Khas, Purana Kila and Shahjahanabad stand out. There is cause to believe that this map was published later, even though it is dated 11th September,… Read more »
This map of India probably first appeared in The Illustrated London News in 1857. While some of the magazine’s illustrations were provided by artist-travellers or proprietors, others were contributed by men stationed abroad with specific designations, such as soldiers, naval officers and government officials on foreign stations. They became sources for visual information on India’s… Read more »
East India Company was a highly influential force in Britain by the end of the 18th century. It was fabulously wealthy, and the British leaders were among its stockholders. Naturally, then, there was curiosity among the ordinary Britons about the people in a faraway land whose politics and culture was suddenly part of the national… Read more »
The first wave of European immigrants included sailors, emissaries, merchants, and the armed forces, people who could seize the land; the next wave included physicians, cartographers, botanists, and naturalists, people who could research it. In the hope of finding new medicines and new sources of revenue, they studied Indian plants, and created or commissioned thousands… Read more »
Flowers of the Bombay Presidency offers fascinating insights into the botanical beauty of the western states of India in the 1880s, with 202 illustrations of Indian flowers and plants in watercolour painting. Nearly all of the paintings are supplemented by a handwritten pencil inscription with the name of the flower (often in Latin with the… Read more »
The history of the Indian Museum, is deeply associated with that of the foundation of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta. When British philologist Sir William Jones formed the Asiatic Society in 1784, he did not specifically address the establishment of a museum as part of the society’s projects. But over time artefacts and specimens started… Read more »
The Khada Parsi statue, or the Standing Parsi Statue, is a memorial fountain dedicated to Seth Cursetjee Manockjee Shroff (1763-1845), a Parsi businessman and educational reformer. He founded the Alexandra’s Girls English Institution which is considered to be one of the first schools dedicated to educating women in 18th century Bombay . Cursetjee’s son commissioned… Read more »
The Shah Hamadan or the ‘Khanqah-i-Moualla’ was built as a mosque and shrine to Mir Sayyid Ali Hamdani (also known as Shah Hamadan) in the late 14th century. Also called the Amir-i-Kabir (the Great Commander), he was a Persian Sufi saint who played a vital role in spreading Islam in Kashmir. Shah Hamadan was constructed… Read more »
The Brihadishwara Temple at Thanjavur marks the acme of the Southern Temple Architecture, in magnitude, design, technique, and art. This Great Temple, built between AD 1003 to 1010, is also called the Rajarajeshvara after its builder Rajaraja I, the great Chola Ruler. The Temple complex consists of various subsidiary shrines of different deities, and an… Read more »
Well known as a summer resort during the British Raj, Darjeeling was one of the many hill-stations favoured to escape the Indian summer. But more importantly, it commanded entry to neighbouring regions, Nepal and Bhutan, serving as a strategically important outpost for the British. The word Darjeeling comes from ‘dorje ling’ which means a place or… Read more »
This photograph depicts the before-restoration ruins of the Sun temple at Konark, in Orissa. Once famous as the Black Pagoda, for the temple resembles the chariot of the Sun God, with 12 wheels and seven horses that represent the number of months in a year/zodiac signs and days in the week. It was built by… Read more »
Built on Mount Shatrunjaya in the town of Palitana, these 863 temples receive millions of visitors each year. Of the 24 Tirthankaras in Jainism, 23 have visited this holy site. The first Tirthankara, Adinath is believed to have preached his first sermon here. The town was ruled by the Gohil family who have ruled parts… Read more »
The Basilica of Bom Jesus, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was as much a photographer’s muse two centuries ago as it is today. Construction on this Goan beauty began in 1594 and was completed in 1605. The main attraction inside is the incorrupt body of St Francis Xavier, a 16th-century Jesuit missionary whose work in… Read more »
It’s a word that makes us cringe today, but the ‘Orient’ was a place of infinite charm for artists of Victorian England. To them, the British colonies of the East were exotic regions of smouldering intrigue, where dark-eyed, inscrutable people went about their mysterious ways. Of course, now we know this attitude to be ignorant—at… Read more »
In the 19th century, there was great excitement among western anthropologists about the discovery of a ‘primitive’ tribe deep in the misty heart of the Nilgiris. The Todas are a pastoral community of Dravidian origins and among the earliest outsiders who landed to document them was William E Marshall, Lieutenant-Colonel in the Bengal Staff Corps.… Read more »
The Lokapurusha is the man who symbolises the universe in Jain cosmology. He appears in Jain cosmograms, like the one above, and the worlds of the gods, humans and the damned are mapped on his body. Urdhva Loka, the world of gods, is situated on his upper torso and dotted with images of shrines. Manushya… Read more »
The Town Hall building was built around 1863 and, until the end of the British Raj, it also served as museum, durbar room and library for the European residents. This classic Edwardian structure continued to serve as the seat of Delhi’s Municipal Corporation until 2009, after which it was relocated to a new civic centre.… Read more »
The Sunheri Masjid in Chandni Chowk was built in 1721 by Mughal nobleman Roshan-ud-Daula Zafar Khan. In 1739, Persian king Nader Shah invaded Delhi leaving the city in ruins. It is said that he arrived at Sunheri Masjid on the morning of 22 March 1739, stood on its roof, drew his sword and holding it… Read more »
The Jama Masjid, Delhi was built between 1650 and 1658 by Shah Jahan in Shahjahanabad. The Sanctuary’s main facade consists of five arches on either side of a massive central lawn. It is built in red sandstone with decorations in white and black marble. The minarets have white marble stripes inlaid while the domes feature… Read more »