Museum objects, artifacts, and archival items from the Sarmaya collection.
Mirza Aziz Koka aka Kotaltash was Emperor Akbar’s foster-brother—or more accurately, his milk brother, so-called because he was the son of the Emperor’s wet nurse, Jiji Anga. Kotaltash’s father was Ataga Khan, Akbar’s prime minister, upon whose death a grand mausoleum was constructed in near the dargah of the Sufi, Nizamuddin. Built in the early… Read more »
Thomas and William Daniell were a British artistic duo of uncle and nephew who visited India in 1786 and made some iconic watercolour paintings and aquatint engravings of the monuments and landscapes here. To many Britons of the Victorian era, the Daniells’ picturesque art of the Subcontinent were the defining views of the ‘exotic East’—which… Read more »
Following in the footsteps of the Daniells was Thomas Bacon, who painted romantic scenes from ‘Hindostan’ for the paying public back home in Victorian England. It was not uncommon for artists to have help from army officers in recreating landscapes they had never visited—perhaps this artwork too was the result of such a collaboration because… Read more »
This is the image of a shrine built over the tomb of revered Sufi saint, Nizamuddin Auliya, who died in 1325. The tomb, which remains an important destination for pilgrims to this day, has undergone restoration several times. The current structure is based on the building that was built during Akbar’s reign in 1562 but… Read more »
The monument was constructed as a hunting lodge and an observatory by Firuz Shah Tughlaq. The observatory was at the centre of the action during the siege of Delhi, in the Uprising of 1857. It was occupied by the British and used as an outpost. The heavy battery used by the British, was stationed very… Read more »
Alai Darwaza is the main entrance (and the only surviving one) to the Quwwat-ul Islam mosque inside the Qutb Minar complex. It was built by the Delhi Sultan Alauddin Khilji in 1311 CE. The Darwaza was constructed using red sandstone and white marble, inlaid with black marble and blueschist—all richly carved in low relief. This… Read more »
The Diwan-e-Khas is inside the Red Fort, which was built between 1639 and 1648 CE by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan at his newly minted capital, Shahjahanabad. With its white marble pavilions inlaid with precious gemstones, Diwan-e-Khas was reserved for meetings between the Emperor and courtiers, government officials and foreign dignitaries. The famous Peacock Throne… Read more »
This is a portrait of an unidentified dancer from Western India. The dancer is photographed seated against a very peculiar wallpaper. She holds a hand-held fan in one hand and a small bowl in the other. She is dressed in a very simplistic style with a zari bordered sari and wears minimum jewellery. This photograph… Read more »
This is a photograph of an unidentified nautch party in Bombay. It was taken by a French photographer Eugene Auguste Taurines who was active in Bombay from the mid-1880s to around 1901 and ran a studio in the city. Starting around the Mughal era, entourages of dancing girls performed for rulers and chieftains, not only… Read more »
Among the Mughals, Jahangir was undoubtedly the greatest patron of the arts, the man with The Eye. To him, even an object of prosaic commerce like the coin deserved to have beauty poured upon it. Jahangiri currency encompasses a remarkable variety of coins with interesting calligraphy and portrait designs. Because he was passionate about poetry,… Read more »
Ujjain has been a prominent urban centre stretching back to 600 BCE. In ancient India, it was one of the most important hubs connecting all the major trade routes, including those from Pataliputra (Bihar), Shravasti (Near Sopara in present-day Maharashtra) and Bharuch in Gujarat. Ujjain was the capital of power and learning, from where the… Read more »
Greek coinage unlike the early Indian punchmark coins were very finely made. They went beyond the use of symbols to include bilingual legends, and bear-headed and helmeted busts of kings and gods from the Greek pantheon. The rule of the Indo-Greeks covers a period of 300 years from 2nd Century BC to 1st Century CE.… Read more »
In this painting, Badri Narayan has juxtaposed the figure of a seated female nude with a still-life composition. So much so that the woman itself appears to be another fixture in the still-life composition. There is a certain mystic dream-like quality to the painting that is a feature common to a lot of Badri Narayan’s… Read more »
The kingdom of Travancore was a Hindu feudal kingdom till 1858 and later an Indian princely state ruled by the lankini Travancore royal family. In ancient times, the region had been ruled by the Cheras, Cholas and briefly by the Vijayanagara dynasty, until it became an independent state in the mid-18th century. The Travancore royals… Read more »
“It was not the British government that began seizing great chunks of India in the mid-eighteenth century, but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office….” In his 2019 book ‘The Anarchy’, this is how William Dalrymple describes the East India Company—the only trading company in the world to mint its own currency.… Read more »
The French period in Pondicherry began in 1673 with the establishment of the French Trading Centre. From then on Pondicherry became the chief Indian settlement for the French, who stayed here for 138 years. It was captured by the Dutch and British for short periods of time, but the French always took it back. As… Read more »
This coin is symbolic of both the power and the precariousness of a queen’s role in an empire of men. Nur Jahan was the twentieth wife of Jahangir and especially favoured by the emperor. This placed her a unique position for a woman of her time and she used it to influence Mughal politics and… Read more »
Nazrana were limited-edition novelties minted not as currency, but as gifts to a superior or souvenirs to mark special occasions. A Nazarana was crafted simply to be presented with all the pomp and circumstance at the giver’s disposal. This is a silver one minted in the name of Queen Victoria by Madan Singh; coins like… Read more »
In the years following Aurangzeb’s death in 1707, the lustre of the Mughal empire began to dull. Territories shrunk as three emperors came and went, dispatched speedily by enemies and influential noblemen. But even in these uncertain times, one managed stay on and reign for 29 years. Roshan Akhtar Muhammad Shah, popularly known as Rangeela,… Read more »
A silver coin bent like a hairpin or a fish-hook and then stamped on either side, this unit of currency was named after the thriving 16th-Century trade centre of Lar in Iran. It was first minted by the Safavid ruler Shah Tahmasp and subsequently, the rise of strong trade relationships between Egypt, Arabia, Persia, India… Read more »