Posted on: 25 September 2010

Digital Book :
Warren Hastings in Bengal : 1772-1774
By Mary Evelyn Monckton
Printed at The Clarendon Press, London - 1918


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Read Book Online : http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924023971595#page/n11/mode/2up

Download pdf Book : http://ia341328.us.archive.org/2/items/cu31924023971595/cu31924023971595.pdf

Great - there's Sunday's reading taken care of - what would I do without you?

Isnt it an interesting picture ? It is a Mughal painting of Warren Hastings.

Wonderful. Any clue who the painter is?

may not be either---Mughal miniatures are characterized by "hasias" on all four sides which are beautifully illustrated---and generally very ornate---even the time period is incorrect--by now the "kampani kalam" was in and Indian painters --both Hindus and Muslims had moved out of traditional centres due to lack of patronage from the Mughal descendants

Rohini: The name of the artist is not given in the picture. I was wondering what the attendant could be doing ? There is hardly a need for a barber, so it must be "tel-maalish" i.e., oil massage of His Excellency's head. Most Europeans in India had great times those days; each had up to two dozen attendants and one dozen wives (but Hastings was not one of them). The line beneath the picture says something about "aqil-e-awwal" meaning first-class intellect.

I agree with Suhag Shirodkar that this is evidently Company art....even though the source attributed it to Mughal art.

" Kampany kalam" is Company art