India: Princely banners and the republic’s different emblem

✦ A substantive research chapter

An 1880s photograph contains an earlier banner

The British Library catalogues Photo 209(27), showing the Maharajah of Dhar in durbar, to the 1880s. Its description identifies a state-armorial banner in the background as one presented at Delhi’s Imperial Assemblage in 1877.¹ The photograph and the banner therefore have different relevant dates.

This is an excellent opening to Indian princely armory. Heraldic objects appear within court presentation, ceremonial exchange and colonial political relationships. Their history cannot be recovered by extracting the shield and assigning it to a ruler without retaining the event and material setting.

The photograph’s catalogue supplies a defined discovery witness. It does not give us an inspected full transcription of every banner detail or prove the date of every later use. Begin with what the catalogue identifies, then seek the image and underlying presentation record for the next stage of analysis.

The assemblage is an institutional setting

The Bowring Collection’s indexed descriptions identify several armorial and banner witnesses associated with the 1877 event, including Jaipur, Travancore and Cochin material.² These records support a corpus organized around a specific ceremonial and administrative context.

The context matters to authority. A banner presented through a colonial event can identify a princely ruler while also expressing the relationship claimed by the presenting power. The local bearer’s history and the imperial ceremony’s political argument need separate attention. Neither should be allowed to absorb the other entirely.

A useful catalogue consequently records state or ruler, presenter, ceremony, design description, object and witness date. The arrangement permits study of what was standardized across the event and what remained locally specific. A collection of shield images alone would conceal the mechanism through which the devices entered this particular public setting.

Local figures occupy recognizable positions

The indexed descriptions include conch shells, elephants, a tiger, ships, a sun and other identifying figures within shields and surrounding arrangements.² Familiar armorial structure can therefore combine with local references without requiring the design to become visually European in every detail.

A conch shell should be described and investigated through the particular bearer’s account. Its presence does not provide one universal interpretation for every Indian device. Compare the adoption instrument, court use and local symbolic history before supplying a meaning.

The same caution applies to human supporters. Identifying a represented community or role requires the record, and representation does not automatically establish participation in the design. The colonial and Indigenous chapter asks who chose the figure and how the relevant authority was exercised.

A painter is named in the archive

The Bowring catalogue identifies a Patiala armorial item signed by Besharatulla, painter of Patiala.² That maker attribution changes the research possibilities. A princely design need not be treated as an anonymous colonial office product when the witness preserves a local artist’s name.

Separate design conception, drawing, painting and official adoption. One person may perform several roles, but a signature on an artwork does not automatically establish authorship of every prior design decision. The catalogue attribution is evidence to investigate through related works and documents.

This also gives the corpus a human scale. An artist’s treatment can reveal local workshop practice, translation between descriptions and images, or negotiation of an official model. The heraldic record becomes a history of making as well as a history of granting, provided the researcher does not erase the maker field when exporting the image.

The republic uses another identifying form

The government’s national-emblem portal identifies the present emblem with an adaptation of the Sarnath Lion Capital.³ That design’s public identifying function does not require a conventional shield, helmet and supporters. India’s visual governance includes princely armorial objects and a later state emblem with another historical source and composition.

The ancient sculpture, modern adaptation and official graphic files should receive separate records. A sculptural source can be very old while the act selecting and adapting it for a modern polity is much later. Calling the sculpture itself the republic’s ancient coat of arms would project the modern institution backward into the object’s original setting.

The state-emblem law’s official catalogue distinguishes enactment in 2005 from enforcement in 2007.⁴ It provides another dated legal layer concerning use. The antiquity of the source image does not make the modern public device available as anyone’s official mark.

Do not extend princely status through a surname

A historical princely banner identifies a defined bearer and relationship. It does not confer the same status on every contemporary person with a related surname or on every commercial organization adopting the image. Genealogy, political office, design use and present public-symbol law require separate evidence.

This is a comparative lesson with Austria and Russia. An earlier institution can create an armorial record whose historical reality survives after its political system changes. The record remains valuable while present entitlement or official status becomes another question.

Further research should incorporate court records and scholarship in the relevant Indian languages. The present English catalogue corpus provides verified discovery points, not a complete account of all princely traditions or local emblem systems. The next work must add the voices and administrative records of the named states themselves.

Jaipur supplies a specific armorial composition

The Jaipur banner record in the Bowring Collection describes a sun on five bars, with a tiger and horse supporting the shield. It relates the banner to Lord Lytton’s grant at the Delhi Imperial Assemblage of 1877.⁵ This gives us named components and a documented ceremonial setting. It does not supply a complete color transcription, which should remain a question for the underlying image and instrument.

Read the sun and bars as one organized shield design before looking at the supporters. A sun placed on a barred field is not equivalent to a shield containing an inventory of one sun and five unrelated objects. The ordinary arrangement supplies a framework within which the sun appears. The tiger and horse then flank the shield, rather than simply adding two more animals to the field. Their external positions are part of the composition.

The mixed supporters are worth comparing with achievements using two of the same animal. A tiger and a horse provide different silhouettes and identifying references. An artist must coordinate them without making them visually identical. Symmetry can concern their relationship to the shield rather than sameness of species. This is a practical problem in drawing an achievement, as well as a reason not to reduce its catalogue entry to the shield alone.

The sun’s presence invites historical interpretation, but the catalogue’s short description does not itself establish a particular dynastic claim or religious reading. Those questions should be pursued through Jaipur’s court records and relevant scholarship. The design is already a concrete object of study without a fabricated symbolism paragraph. We can explain its armorial organization now and investigate its local political account next.

Travancore and Cochin are different compositions

The Bowring descriptions give Travancore a shield with conch shells and elephant supporters. For Cochin they record conch shells and ships, with a bison and tiger as supporters. The catalogue associates these records with the 1877 event.² A shared charge therefore appears within different compositions and bearer relationships.

That is an important limit to motif-based attribution. Finding a conch shell does not identify one princely state by itself. Its number, arrangement and companions matter. The ships and the differing supporters can help distinguish these catalogued designs, while the specific colors and positions need the fuller witnesses. Identification should move from a shared motif toward a complete composition, rather than stopping at the first familiar object.

The records also make a comparison with Jaipur possible. All three descriptions use a shield and external supporters; their component selections differ. The shared frame can be studied as part of the imperial ceremonial context, while the named local figures direct attention toward the particular court. We do not need to choose between a story of imposed standardization and a story of entirely independent local creation before investigating the evidence. Both common structure and local selection can be examined.

A useful comparative table would record each component’s role as well as its name. Put a conch shell in the field column, an elephant in the supporter column and the recorded ceremonial act in another column. Then add a separate field for the source of any symbolic interpretation. That arrangement prevents a charge’s supposed meaning from quietly becoming evidence of who selected it or under what authority.

The administrative history continued after 1877

British Library file IOR/R/1/4/368 concerns Travancore’s armorial registration and forms for ruling princes’ applications in 1938–1939. The next file, IOR/R/1/4/369, concerns Jubbal registration and a Travancore enquiry in 1939–1940.⁶⁷ These are catalogue descriptions of surviving administrative files, not a fresh reading of the decisions within them.

They nevertheless change the chapter’s research map. An account confined to Delhi in 1877 would leave out a later bureaucratic history. Presentation, registration, enquiry and subsequent use can occupy different dates and documentary series. The existence of a later registration file should prompt investigation of what the act added, rather than an assumption that the earlier banner must have been unofficial.

The distinction resembles the grant-and-registration question in Kenya, but the legal relationships should not be imported from one setting into the other. The Indian files need their own correspondence, application forms and authority records. A shared English word identifies a topic for comparison; it does not prove identical legal effects across institutions or periods.

For an archival exercise, begin with the Travancore banner record and the later registration-file description. Construct a research plan that could determine continuity or alteration in the design. Request the relevant correspondence and any accompanying drawings, identify the applicant and authority, and compare the described content. Until those witnesses are examined, keep the possible outcomes open. The file title establishes an administrative subject, not the answer to every question within it.

Sarnath is a sculpture before it is a national graphic

Sarnath Museum dates its stone Lion Capital to the Mauryan period, in the third century BCE. Its account describes four lions above a circular abacus carrying animals and wheels, with an inverted lotus below.⁸ The source is a three-dimensional architectural object. Its relation to the modern state emblem involves selection and representation, not merely copying a flat ancient logo.

The official NCERT teaching account distinguishes the original components, including a shaft and a crowning wheel, and explains that the national emblem uses the capital without the crowning wheel and lotus base.⁹ This makes the adaptation concrete. A modern identifying device can retain a powerful association with an ancient monument while deliberately selecting only part of its structure.

Viewpoint matters as well. Four lions arranged around the capital cannot all present themselves equally in one frontal graphic. An approved two-dimensional representation necessarily organizes visibility. A viewer should not decide that the fourth lion has been historically deleted merely because it is not visible in that view. The sculpture’s arrangement and the graphic’s projection answer different questions.

The same discipline applies to the abacus. An animal visible at one side of a frontal drawing occupies a position on a circular sculptural source. Transferring that feature into a flat image changes the way a viewer encounters the larger sequence. The educational task is to explain the relationship, not to imply that the modern graphic preserves every possible view of the sculpture simultaneously.

This is a useful comparison with heraldic lions. The term “lion” can identify the same broad creature while the compositional operations differ sharply. A lion rampant on a shield is organized through a conventional pose within a field. The Sarnath-derived emblem represents a particular sculptural grouping. Recognizing a shared animal does not establish a shared design grammar or authorize us to invent a European blazon for the republic’s emblem.

Antiquity and modern state use have different dates

The sculpture’s ancient date, the selection of a modern emblem and legislation governing its use belong to separate historical layers. The 2005 statute already cited in this chapter introduces another layer, with enforcement in 2007.⁴ None of those acts changes the sculpture’s date; none can be derived from the fact that the sculptural source is ancient.

This distinction helps explain why the public device deserves a record of its own. A museum catalogue identifies the source monument and its material history. A government specification identifies the approved adaptation. A use statute identifies a legal framework for the modern public emblem. An image file realizes a particular version for production. Keeping those records connected allows the reader to understand both the long historical reference and the contemporary institutional act.

We should also avoid describing the modern emblem as the continuation of one uninterrupted armorial entitlement from Ashoka to the present republic. That would require a historical relationship far stronger than the documented act of adaptation. Selection from the past can express continuity, authority or a political aspiration without establishing an unbroken institutional identity. The nature of that claim is part of what historians should investigate.

Compare local making with imperial presentation

The signed Patiala artwork introduces a maker into a collection otherwise easy to read only through princes and colonial officials. Retaining that attribution allows us to compare the making of a particular rendering with the presentation of a banner and the registration of a design. The three activities can involve different participants and different degrees of control.

A serious project should therefore seek court evidence alongside the British archival series. Local accounts may explain why a figure was selected, who produced the object and how it was used beyond the imperial ceremony. The English catalogue can locate witnesses without exhausting their meanings. Translation should preserve local titles and names, then explain them through the documented setting rather than replacing every rank with its nearest European approximation.

For a final exercise, compare Jaipur’s banner with the Sarnath-derived national emblem. Identify the bearer, historical source, composition and institutional act in each case. One is a princely armorial object presented within an imperial setting; the other is a republican public emblem adapted from a much earlier sculpture. Their differences are the substance of the comparison. “Indian heraldry” becomes useful when it helps us find those relationships rather than flattening them into one national style.

Workshop: one photograph, several historical layers

Catalogue the Dhar photograph through four fields: photograph date, banner presentation date, named bearer and current archival witness. Explain why dating the entire image to 1877 would be wrong. Then compare a signed Patiala artwork with an official adoption instrument and identify the question each can answer.

For graduate work, assemble a small corpus from one princely court, including a banner, seal, coin and administrative document where accessible. Preserve local names, artist attributions and original-language descriptions. Investigate how the court used the devices before and after the imperial ceremony, so the event does not become an assumed beginning for every form of its visual identity.