The Stolen Treasures of Tipu Sultan

For over 150 years five Mughal emperors had ruled much of northern India with relative success. Following the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, the empire entered a period of such instability, that 10 emperors sat on the throne in the next 50 years. Fratricidal civil wars, foreign invasions, and court intrigues led to the decline of what was then amongst the world’s largest and richest  Empires.  The 1739 invasion of Nadir Shah dealt a final blow to whatever prestige that the Mughals retained after which there started a mad scramble among the many opportunistic powers to take advantage of the chaos that followed.

The East India Company, having defeated the Mughal army in the battles of Plassey (1757) and Buxar (1764), joined the land-grabbing enterprise. Similarly, the Marathas, led by ambitious generals like Peshwa Bajirao I (d.1740) also started to expand at the cost of the Mughal empire. The Sikhs in the Punjab and the Nizam in the Deccan also declared independence from Mughal rule. The decline of the Mughals and the resultant political strife gave rise to many foreign as well as local powers contending to ‘invest heavily in military innovation as well as professional soldiers’. Haidar Ali was one such professional soldier and military adventurer who rose through the ranks in the army of Mysore and helped carve an empire for his employer, the Wodeyar raja of Mysore. He later usurped power from the raja after relegating him to a titular head to become the nawab himself. It was but natural for him to come into conflict with other regional land-grabbing powers in order to protect his recently acquired domain. This made him to modernize the military along European lines.  From using new technologies on the battlefield to ‘constituting a department of Brahmin revenue clerks’ who were adept at garnering revenue from all parts of Mysore’s ever-expanding territory, his statesmanship propelled Mysore to become one of South India’s strongest powers, stretching from Dharwar in the north to Dindigul in the south and from the Arabian sea in the west to the Ghats which rose from the Carnatic in the east.

The first Anglo-Mysore war which was the first time that an Indian power dictated terms to the British at the gates of Madras saw the18 year old Tipu Sultan aiding his father Haidar Ali by staying guard with part of the army at Bangalore to stop any British move to outflank Haidar Ali. The 2^nd Anglo Mysore war saw a most humiliating British defeat at Pollilur where for the first and only time in Indian history a European army was decimated by an Indian one with Tipu himself among the commanders leading the charge into the British column led by Lt. Col. Baillie who would with many Englishmen be made prisoner of Mysore that day. It was in midst of this war while both father and son were campaigning at different ends of Mysore that Haidar Ali passed away in 1782 and Tipu Sultan succeeded his father to the throne of Mysore. Unlike his father, who had risen from humble beginnings and was illiterate, Tipu Sultan had received the education of a prince, which was immersed in the Indo-Persian culture of the time. Alongside his studies of Persian, Arabic, Hindustani, and Kannada, he was well versed in Islamic thought as well as horsemanship, archery, and the military arts that he learned from the teachers appointed by his father and through years of experience participating in military campaigns at his father’s side.

Tipu Sultan was one of the most creative, innovative, and capable rulers of the pre-colonial period in India. His innovations in areas as varied as agriculture, irrigation, as well as social reforms were unparalleled for Indian rulers of that time. Tactically, the Mysorean army was as advanced as the military of the East India Company. Tipu also excelled in taking the best of European military methods and combining them with the best of Mysorean military traditions. This steady rise of Mysore as a power that continuously confronted the British in its march towards dominance of Southern India and it’s friendship with Revolutionary France did not pass the notice of the highest echelons of the British government in London who now began to actively assist the East India Company to quell this Indian monarch whose freethinking and creative mind was very different from the minds of contemporary Indian rulers around him.

In 1792 Mysore resolutely faced a coalition of the English, Nizam and the Marathas. In several pitched battles at locations spread across South India today,  the Mysoreans matched the allies cannon volley by volley and even forced Lord Cornwallis’ and his army’s withdrawal from the walls of Seringapatam towards the start of 1792. However the arrival of the Maratha allies of the English meant that Tipu finally had to accept the British terms of surrender which involved paying a large indemnity to the British and giving up half of Mysore’s territory with handing over two of his  sons’ as hostages till Mysore could fulfill these demands. The next few years saw Tipu Sultan striving to bring Mysore back to the path of recovery from the severe economic and material damage that it had suffered in the last war. While this was being done very successfully the English continued to scheme to bring down this one power that continued to stand as a bulwark against it in India. Finally the curtain would fall on this great drama on May 4, 1799 when Tipu Sultan fell fighting by his men’s’ side in the final hours of the 4^th Anglo-Mysore war.

Tipu Sultan’s Mysore was an early example of a military fiscal state in India. This was a state, where a robust economy supported a strong army. Every arm of the state was geared to getting the best out of any revenue generating source be it trade, commerce, agriculture, manufacturing and taxation. It is no wonder that over nearly 30 years of continuous war with the English and its allies Mysore saw no famine or want and no rebellion induced by these factors; this was in no less measure on account of a strong reserve of wealth that the state built up for times of crisis. And it is this wealth that went towards creating some of the finest artifacts that Indo-Islamic civilization has ever produced and which are dispersed across the world today.

The Great loot of Seringapatam began in the evening of May 4, 1799 after his death and the total defeat of his army. Tipu’s palace, his treasury and the houses of the people of the city were plundered for 2 continuous days before some semblance of order could be maintained. Col. Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, in a letter dated 8 May, 1799 writes: “…Scarcely a house in the town was left un-plundered, and I  understand that in the camp jewels of the greatest value, bars of gold, &c &c, have been offered for sale in the bazaars of the army by our soldiers, sepoys and followers…”  He goes to write in another letter to his brother, Lord Mornington – “…priceless pearls were offered in exchange for a bottle of liquor….an army doctor was able to buy from a soldier two bracelets, set with diamonds. One among them was said to have been valued by a Hyderabad jeweller at BP 39000. The other bracelet was of such superlative value the jeweler could not fix a price for it…”

It was then suggested that a Prize Committee should be set up by Maj. Gen Harris, under the Chairmanship of General Floyd to determine the quantum of prize money to be distributed among the rank and file of the army and others. Each soldier would receive his share based on his rank. A systematic study of several recorded versions of the plunder, including the jewels looted and hidden away, estimates the value of the Prize money at BP360000. Apart from the magnificent gem studded, gold tiger throne and sparkling silver howdahs, there were gold and silver plates, expensive carpets, bales of fine muslin and silk as well as Tipu’s excellent library.

The throne of Tipu Sultan was in the form of a life size Tiger, clothed in shimmering gold metal sheets and studded with dazzling precious stones. The Asiatic Annual Register (1799) while providing the reasons and justifications for breaking up the throne during the sack of Seringapatam describes the features of the magnificent piece of art: ‘The Sultan’s throne being too unwieldy to be carried, had been broken up: it was a howdah upon a tyger, covered with sheet gold; the ascent to it was by silver steps, gilt, having silver nails and all other fastenings of the same metal. The canopy was alike superb, and decorated with a costly fringe of fine pearls all around it. The eyes and teeth of tyger were of glass. It was valued at 60,000 pagodas …‘

After the throne was dismantled, what remained was a massive Tiger head, two small tiger heads and the gorgeous bird of Paradise (Huma) that perched over the ornamental canopy of the royal seat. The tiger head was presented to King George III by Earl Mornington, Governor  General of India in 1800. It now rests in the Royal Collection in the United Kingdom. The Huma bird on Tipu’s canopy, is a beautiful specimen of oriental jewellery. It appears in a fluttering posture and occupies the central part of the gold canopy of Tipu’s throne.This fabulous bird, made of solid gold, nearly the size of a pigeon and covered with precious stones, is six inches high and has a brilliant wingspan nearly eight inches wide. The neck is of emeralds and body of diamonds with three bands of rubies. The beak is a large emerald, tipped with gold and has another emerald suspended from it. The pendant hanging from it has a ruby and two pearls, and the crusting on the head are of emerald and pearl. It’s back is one large and beautiful carbuncle, the long tail resembles that of a peacock, and is studded with jewels. The body and the tail are copiously studded with rare gems so closely that the gold is hardly visible. It’s eyes are two brilliant carbuncles. The pearl ornamented breast is covered with diamonds. It’s wings, spread as though it is hovering, are lined with diamonds and other stones. This magnificent bird is also today in the collection of the King of England and forms part of the Royal Collection Trust.

There were 8 tiger head shaped finials at the eight corners of the throne. These finials had the main gold surface of the head worked decorated with fine dotted pointille punching; symmetrically set on either side of the centre line with foiled table-cut diamonds, foiled cabochon rubies and foiled cabochon emeralds of varying sizes, with larger rubies set on the eyes and the tongue, the teeth set with foiled table-cut diamonds. The ears projecting above the head decorated with chased lines and further pointille punching. Of these 8 finials the whereabouts of only 3 are clear with one in the Clive collection at Powis castle in Scotland and the other two being sold at Bonhams Auction house over the past 2 decades with the last one sold fetching a price of  what will be in India Rupees 3 Crores. The current locations of the remaining finials are unknown.

Windsor Castle has Tipu’s turban ornament, the ‘sarpech’ as well as his war helmet. A part of another be-jewelled turban ornament in the form of a brooch from the family of Captain Cochrane who took part in the storming of Seringapatam, is at the V&A which is part of 3 valuable necklaces and 3 brooches made of the gems from the turban ornament of Tipu Sultan. The V&A Museum in London has an exquisite Emerald and Diamond Set as well as a Ruby and Diamond Set all in from of Bracelets, brooches, necklaces and pendants which were made of precious  gems plundered from Tipu Sultan’s treasury. A lot titled ‘An Indian antique gold ring’ with it described as being a heavy oval ring with the name of the Hindu God Rama in raised Devenagri script surrounded by chased floral buds to the octagonal base and ornate shoulders and hoop, and weighing 41.2 grams was sold in 2019 for a princely sum of Rupees one and a half crores.

Tipu Sultan’s palace also yielded up another curious treasure. This was not made of gold or silver but of wood. The tiger, an almost life-sized wooden semi-automaton, mauls a European soldier lying on his back. Concealed inside the tiger’s body, behind a hinged flap, is an organ which can be operated by turning the handle next to it. This simultaneously makes the man’s arm lift up and down and produces noises intended to imitate his dying moans. This was presented to the East India Company and taken to London where it is today among the V&A’s most popular objects. Tipu identified himself and his army with the Tiger which was a feared and respected animal in Mysore and used it’s symbolism like the tiger stripe, which was called ‘bubri’ as his state insignia.

Later, Wellesley took charge of Tipu’s personal clothing, to prevent it from distributed as sacred relics to potential rebels. The Tower of London has Tipu’s quilted cap. The V&A has a dressing gown as well as a quilted helmet. The Royal Collection has his Horse Trapping and Horse’s Head Armour. Tipu’s Sun banner which was Mysore’s flag is now in the Windsor Collection and so is his magnificent private seal made of gold. The Royal Hospital Chelsea has staffs of four flags captured by the English in Seringapatam.

The capture of Seringapatam also led to several weapons from Mysore – magnificent swords, daggers, flintlocks and cannon being captured by the British. Most of the weaponry produced in Mysore during Tipu Sultan’s time reflected the aesthetic sense of Tipu’s personality carrying beautiful designs, gilt inscriptions in Arabic and Persian and tiger stripes or the tiger head displayed boldly on them. Many ornate swords are distributed across the V&A, Windsor Castle, Meyrick Collection and other private collections worldwide. A rare and fine Sword with bubri patterned watered blade from the Palace Armoury of Tipu Sultan in Seringapatam (circa 1782-99) with the brass hilt cast in one piece, the pommel consisting of a tiger’s head in the round, punched and engraved detail, bubri-patterns extending down the facetted grip, the quillons terminating in tiger-masks, one langet with bubri patterns and punched decoration, the other with a low-relief tiger-mask, the slender knuckle-guard terminating in a tiger-mask, the blade of curved sabre type, forged of watered steel formed into a repeating bubri pattern, later inlaid in gold on either side with the two-part inscription – ‘No Me Embaines Sin Honor/ No Me Saques Sin Razon’ which translates as ‘”Draw me not without reason, sheathe me not without honour” was in 2015 sold at auction in London for an astounding figure of what is Rupees Two crores and thirty lakhs in Indian currency.

Tipu Sultan’s firearms are today the pride of collections in Museums spread from London to Kuala Lumpur to Doha. The Powys collection and the Royal Collection, Windsor has very good examples of his firelocks as well as Brass cannon. The last time, which a Tipu firelock came up for auction in the West, was in 2019 where it sold for more than Rupees 60 lakhs. While these are the ‘sensational’ pieces looted from Seringapatam, the loot also extended to furniture – there are chairs with provenance to Tipu’s palace in the Oriental Club, London and the V&A. His ornate floral burhanpuri  tent made of cotton, printed, painted and dyed is in the Powys Castle collection. A hookah of his was once in the possession of the noted antiquarian William Beekford. There are also caskets, medicine boxes and other ephemera from Seringapatam lying around in British army cantonments and clubs.

The court of Tipu Sultan was a reflection of Mysore’s prestige and prosperity. It was in fact an extension of Tipu Sultan’s unique personality and each of these objects associated with his court are testament to those  four decades on India history, a mere blip in time yet one that was sufficient to ensure that the name of Mysore was heard across parliaments, public house and homes in London, Washington , Paris and Constantinople.

Some new information upon the origin of Diwan Purnaiah – From a manuscript in the Mackenzie Collection

Purniya, Chief Minister of Mysore
 Thomas Hickey, 1741-1824, Irish – http://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/1665873

Purnaiah is well known in Karnataka’s history as an administrator and statesman during the time of both Nawab Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan as well as the 1st Diwan of Mysore in the time of Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar III. Blessed with a prodigious memory and proficiency in several languages he was a part of Haidar Ali’s introduction of direct control of the state using a centralized system of Government employing an elite corps of what Dr. Nigel Chancellor called as ‘Service Brahmins’, a method that would be fundamental to Mysore’s development as the most progressive state in India by the turn of the 18th C.

While we have always been aware of the general details around how young Krishnacharya Purnaiah happened to enter into Haidar Ali’s service the finer details about it had been unknown till Devaraj Galag, an astute researcher in Karnataka History stumbled upon a 3 folio note on Diwan Purnaiah among the Mackenzie papers’ in the British library. This would have been written during Colin Mackenzie’s time in Mysore and when Purnaiah was the reigning Diwan; there is also the probability that this was the note consulted when Wilks and others were writing their histories of Mysore, though they omitted a number of details the note carried and only concentrated on the bare basics.

A folio (#1) from the Purnaiah Note in the Mackenzie Collection: Picture Courtesy Board of Trustees, British Library, London

This biographical note is testament to how bright youngsters as Purnaiah were identified and nurtured into state offices and could steadily climb up the ranks depending on their performance. Here is the transcript of the manuscript (MSS Eur Mack Gen 27 pp. 281 – 283) from the British Library Collection:

Folio 1

Poorniah was born of parents both poor and when he had attained the age of 7 years his father died and he was left under the sole protection of his mother who put him to a common school to learn reading and writing. There resided at this time at Seringapatam a Soucar named Andan Chetty – to whom the mother one day carried her young son and desired this Soucar to take him under his protection – and to teach him accounts and business – To this request the Soucar inclined and took charge of the Boy. – after he had been a short time under his protection he attained a knowledge of accounts and learning with astonishing rapidity – and the Soucar soon after gave him charge Of some accounts and branch of his business, and by way of encouragement allowed him 10 Rupees a month – and his advancement soon qualifying him for a superior employment – and whenever the Soucar had any business to transact with the Cutcheree at Seringapatam he now always carried young Poorniah with him and correctness with which he wrote and calculated soon attracted the notice of the people of the Cutcheree and grew daily in favor of the Soucar who now advanced his

Folio 2

Pay to 25 Rupees per month and he appointed and entrusted to Young Poorneah the sale management of his business at the Cutcheree – which thus employed he attracted the particular nature of Shashgerry Row Dewaun to Hyder ally who meeting one day with the Soucar – told him if he agreed let young Poorneah come into his Service he would appoint him to be a Goomastah and give him the Pay of that appointment. The Soucar readily consented And delivered over Poorneah to the Dewaun – who allowed
Him 100 Rupees per month and gave him charge of the Records – in a vary short time he far surpassed all the other Goomastahs in and extant of knowledge and When the Dewaun Shashgarry Row died Hyder who Was well acquainted with the abilities of young Poorneah chose him as successor to his new Patron in which capacity he served Hyder until he died on the accession of Tippoo to the Dominions of Mysore he appointed Poorneah his Revenue Superintendent and also a principal Commander in his army on which capacity he served until the reduction of Seringapatam and Death of Tippoo – he was then selected by the British Government as the Dewaun to the Infant Rajah elevated by them to the musnud of

Folio 3

The ancient Rajahs of Mysore – The entire new settling and arrangement of that part of Tippoos Dominions which fell to the share of the Rajah – was the first task allotted him – in this was involved the conciliating or securing all the principal Mussulman supporters of the late Government – this weighty task he accomplished with a alacrity that was astonishing and to the mutual satisfaction of all Parties – and even exceeded his promises to and the expectation of his new employers – he has now the entire and almost uncontrolled management of a Country producing annually Lakhs of Pagodas – To which he correctly be called the sole collector – and sole Punisher of wrongs & Redressor of Grievances – and if his greatest Enemy was to travel through the whole extant of this extensive Country purposely to discover complaints – errors or Mistakes – he would most probably return without Meeting with one

Notes:

The manuscript names the Soucar (Merchant) under whom young Purnaiah is put to work as ‘Andan’ Chetty but I think the name is more likely to have been ‘Annadana‘ Chetty or ‘Annadana’ Shetty as the name is still popular among the mercantile Arya Vysya community in and around srirangapattana today. The ‘Cucheree‘ often mentioned here is a Government office while ‘Goomastah‘ is an accountant and ‘Pagoda‘ was a standard gold coin current at that time.

Diwan Purnaiah passed away in 1812 after having remained steadfast in service and loyal to all three of his masters – Haidar Ali, Tipu Sultan and Krishnaraja Wadiyar III, all 3 of whom had varying temperaments. Even after being wounded by a musket ball during the last Anglo-Mysore war in 1799 after having risen to rank of ‘Mir Maran’- ‘Lord of Lords’ in Tipu Sultan’s time, he gathered together the fallen reins of government and continued to serve the restored Wadiyar dynasty and after retirement was allotted a Jaghir at Yellandur by Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar III.

Acknowledgements:

Shri Devaraj Galag for his curiosity and largesse with finding and sharing this manuscript

The British Library, London for providing access to this manuscript

Tipu Sultan’s Factory at Muscat – Mysorean trade relations with Oman in the late 18th C

From times immemorial, Indian and Arab merchants held the keys to trade between India’s Southwestern ports and the Persian Gulf. Large quantities of merchandise would depart in ships owned by wealthy merchant families with connections across the subcontinent and the Gulf.

But with the triumph of the Europeans in the Arabian Sea shipping lines the Portuguese and later the English took over the monopoly of this trade. While most Indian Nawabs and Rajahs were powerless to see this monopoly slipping away from their hands and content with the still enormous profits as taxes they levied from these European merchant companies, it was with the advent of Haidar Ali in the Malabar coast in 1765, and after him his son Tipu Sultan that for the first time restrictions were placed on the European trade with Malabar. [1]

Tipu Sultan’s father, Haidar Ali had initially tried to establish a trading settlement in Shiraz but was offered Bandar Abbas by the Persians which was for some reason not taken advantage of. However the relations that were established with the Imam Ahmad of Oman led to more fruitful results. Such was the dependency of Oman on Indian rice that when its export from the port at Mangalore was withheld, it caused great hardship to the people there. [2] In July 1775, the Imam dispatched an envoy to Mangalore to find out why the export of rice to Muscat (the largest port city in Oman and it’s capital) had been prohibited. This was on account of a general order prohibiting rice shipment to foreign powers. However, the envoy was received by Haidar’s representative at Mangalore and the next year Haidar sent his representative to Muscat to sign an agreement with the Imam and to permanently stay there as the Mysorean envoy to Oman. The house that he occupied there was named the Bait ul-Nawab (House of the Nawab).

The discovery of the design of the Mohr (Seal) of Tipu Sultan’s factory at Muscat in the course of our (my and Adnan Rashid’s) study of Mysore’s seals [3] is an important milestone in confirming the importance of Muscat as a gateway to Mysorean trade and enterprise in the Persian Gulf as well as further insights into the date of the seal itself.

The design of the Mohr (Seal) for the Mysorean Warehouse/Factory (Kothi) in Muscat: Seals of the Khodadad Sarkar: Nidhin Olikara & Adnan Rashid, To be Published

This seal is in Persian which reads

kan z(e)r kh(i)Zr

kothi masQaT

This translates into

Gold Mine Khizr

Warehouse Muscat

The text on the seal is in a format that is specific to Mysore’s departmental seals where the first line of the seal usually has a combination of poetic phrase which is always related to the context of the department for which the stamp has been made and many a time a religious verse or reference too. The second line is always the name of the department itself.

Line I:

The wealth of merchandise that this warehouse is endowed with is testament to the epithet ‘Gold Mine’ bestowed to it.  Khizr, is a figure described but not mentioned by name in the Quran as a righteous servant of God possessing great wisdom or mystic knowledge[4] Legend also represents him as a sort of tutelary guardian[5] of the waters – which needed to be crossed for Mysorean and Omani ships to visit each other’s’ ports.

Line II:

Kothi is Hindustani for warehouse (also called factory by the English) and this line points to this seal belonging to the warehouse at Muscat.

The dating of the Seal:

Most Islamic seals have dates – the year of striking on them but these dates are almost in every case missing from Tipu Sultan’s government seals. Kirkpatrick in the ‘Select Letters of Tippoo Sultan’ mentions of a letter where Tipu says –‘the year being indicated by “the numerical value of each inscription, reckoned according to the Zar notation”, its insertion is unnecessary’. He mentions that it is only Line I of each of Tipu’s government seals which will points us to the year when the seal was struck. This numerical tagging of alphabets is derived from the Islamic methods of numeration where the nine units, the nine tens, the first nine hundreds and the number one thousand are assigned consecutively to the twenty eight letters of the Arabic alphabet arranged alphabetically.

Kirkpatrick himself in one of the letters observes the description of a seal of the Muscat factory which he says ‘is not perfectly legible’. He gives the date of this seal as 1201 AH (1786 – 1787) after numerically tagging each letter that the seal is described to contain. Fortunately for us, we have discovered not only the description of the seal but also the sketch of it which will make our attempt at deciphering the date on the seal easier than that of Kirkpatrick’s. Tagging each alphabet of the poetic part (Line I) of the seal inscription we have –

k(400)a(1)n(700) z(20)r(10) kh(7)Z(60)r(10)

400+1+700+20+10+7+60+10 = 1208

1208 AH is 1793 – 1794 CE which means that this particular seal was cast that year. What needs to be remembered here is that this date is only for the seal and not for the warehouse which would have been built earlier. What also needs to be remembered is that the same department seal could be cast in different years and this is why the seal that Kirkpatrick saw, though not as legible as ours’ had a different date to it.

Now with a Mysorean factory there, Muscat emerged as the entry port from which Mysorean merchandise was distributed across the Persian Gulf and goods from the Gulf sent out to Mysore. The Sultans purpose in establishing these trade depots can best be expressed in his own words – “Sending in charge of your deputies or agents to other countries, the produce of our dominions, and disposing of the same there; the produce of those countries must be bought hither in return; and sold at such prices as will afford profit.”

Timber, sandalwood, calico, cardamom, pepper, rice, ivory and cloth were exported to the Gulf while silkworms, saffron-seeds, pistachio, sulphur, copper, china-ware were imported from there. The Imam of Muscat and Tipu Sultan enjoyed excellent relationship with each other often crossing the narrow boundaries of profit and trade. Preferential treatment to Mysorean and Omani merchants in each other’s’ ports gave a fillip to this trade. While the Europeans had to pay a duty of 5%, Indian 8% and the rest of the Arabs and Persians 6 1/4%, merchants from Mysore paid only 4%. Similar privileges were also given in kind to the Imam and his subjects at Mysore ports which now stretched across Canara and Malabar.

The factory or warehouse at Muscat was placed under the administrative control of the Asaf of Jamalabad (Mangalore). The head of this factory was a darogha, and under him were mutsaddis (writers) and gumashtas (agents) as well as a body of troops. [6] The buying and selling was done either directly by the darogha himself or through a broker. Tipu Sultan’s chief broker at Muscat was Seth Mao. Tipu maintained a brisk correspondence with the darogha at Muscat giving him detailed instructions about buying and selling transactions and various other matters relating to trade and organization of the warehouse or factory. Letters from Tipu to the Darogha at Muscat abound with him ordering for rock salt and sulphur to be purchased in lieu for rice from Mysore. There are also orders to source young date trees, saffron plant seeds as well as send gardeners to take care of these young plants in Mysore. Tipu’s preferred policy of commerce in kind and not cash helped Mysore to stay bullion rich and thus prosperous during Tipu’s reign.

This particular letter[7] from Tipu Sultan to the Imam of Muscat is testament to the most brotherly ties between the two states:

To the Imaum of Muscat ; dated 4th Hydery.

[After compliments] A Dorr (sailing vessel), the property of Rutn Jee and Jeevviui Doss, merchants of Muscat, having in these days [i. e. lately] been dismasted in a storm, came into Byle-Koal, ( a sea-port), belonging to the Sircar. Although, in such cases, it is customary for the prince, or ruler of the place, where a ship happens to be wrecked, to take possession of it, and whatever it contains ; yet, as there is no distinction between the country of the Sircar and Muscat, and as the above mentioned merchants declared themselves to be your subjects, the vessel in question, together with all the stores contained in it, has been restored to the aforesaid merchants, and is, accordingly, now dispatched to you, along with this friendly epistle. For the rest, peace be with you.

This is a fascinating letter which shows Tipu Sultan speaking of an Omani merchant ship wrecked in Mysorean waters which as per law then would be property of the state of Mysore. Tipu Sultan goes on in the letter to inform the Imam that since the merchants were Omani subjects, he regarded ‘no distinction between the country of the Sircar (Mysore) and Muscat’ and that all the goods as well as the vessel was to be restituted to the Omanis.

It is to Oman that Tipu turned to when he decided upon setting up silk farming centers in Mysore and silk worms were sent for [8] and received with great care from Muscat. Mysore today is among India’s largest centers for silk production and textiles which is a bequest to it from Oman in the late 18^th C.

While no figures are traceable of the volume of Mysore exports to and imports from Muscat; from another letter of a broker at Muscat, addressed to the British Governor of Bombay, mention is made of five or six vessels, laden with goods, arriving annually at Muscat flying Mysorean flags. This was in addition to innumerable dhows and dinghies, belonging to Arab and Mysorean merchantmen plying the seas.

After the defeat of Mysore in the 4th Anglo-Mysore war and Tipu Sultan’s death the factory at Muscat actually continued to function under the Wadiyars for a year before the British shut it down [9] and ordered for the return of the staff stationed there in 1800.

It was a testament to Mysorean and Omani belief in lasting friendship between these two states that Oman treated Mysore as a most favored partner even collecting lower taxes from Mysorean traders in relation to the tax from traders hailing from other Indian states. It also remains to be said that Oman even as back in the 18^th C contained Hindu merchants who as Omani subjects traded with Mysore just as Mysore under Tipu Sultan had a Hindu Mao Seth to represent its interests in Oman. The Imam of Muscat would have had to play a fine balancing act with British merchants and the East India Company which would not have appreciated this relationship.

Tipu Sultan returned this favour by ensuring that the Imam of Muscat, traders and citizens of Oman received the choicest of Mysorean wares at most competitive prices. Mysore under Tipu Sultan emerged as the last bastion of resistance to colonialism under the British and it was in no small way a result of Tipu Sultan’s genius in creating what could be said an early model of a Military-fiscal state here. And the kothi at Muscat did play a large role in this success.

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References

[1] Waqai-I Manzil-I Rum, Tipu Sultan’s mission to Constantinople; Khwaja Abdul Qadir, (ed.) Mohibbul Hasan
[2] History of the Imams and Seyyids of Oman; Salil B. Razik, (trans.) G P Badger
[3] Seals of the Khodadad Sarkar; Nidhin Olikara & Adnan Rashid, To be published
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khidr
[5] Select Letters of Tippoo Sultan; Appendix E, (Trans. Ed.) W. Kirkpatrick
[6] Waqai-I Manzil-I Rum, Tipu Sultan’s mission to Constantinople; Khwaja Abdul Qadir, (ed.) Mohibbul Hasan
[7] Select letters of Tipu Sultan; (trans./ed.)W. Kirkpatrick [8] Select letters of Tipu Sultan; (trans./ed.)W. Kirkpatrick, Letter CCLXXII

[9] India office Records, BL

Under a benevolent Sarkar: The Mysorean Farmer during the rule of Tipu Sultan (1782 – 1799)

Mysore had begun to see the start of a centralized government even during the time of Raja Chikkadevaraja Wodeyar (r. 1673 – 1704) who initiated the transformation of Mysore from a mediaeval modeled state to a pre modern state borrowing many tools of governance from the neighboring Mughal and Maratha powers. Mysore threw up two new rulers—Haidar Ali and his son Tipu Sultan who reinforced and developed all the modernizing trends set in motion by Raja Chikkadevaraja Wodeyar, during their rule between 1761 and 1799 especially the suppression of the Palegars.

The  Palegars were provincial rulers who since the decline of the Vijaynagara Empire had consolidated themselves as quasi-independent rulers and only paid tax and a levy of fighting men to the Raja of Mysore when required and convenient. The same policy was vigorously pursued  by Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan because of which Mysore emerged as one of India’s earliest pre-modern states.

The Principal Collector of the Ceded Tracts, Munro wrote in 1802: “All native governments are little more than an assemblage of poligar-ships under a superior chief, who though he has a general control over the whole, possesses very little authority in the internal management. Hyder Ali was the only Indian sovereign we know of whoever subdued all his petty feudal chiefs and was really master of the country.”

Thus, an entirely new system of management through government functionaries was introduced in place of delegation to an intermediate group of palegars and other petty rajas. The old landlords were robbed by Tipu of all their power and influence. Their estates were annexed by the Government and the latter’s direct relationship with the peasantry was the hallmark of the new system.

Thus, unlike conquests by kings during the feudal period which hardly left any indelible change on the social relations; the territorial expansion of these two Mysore rulers invariably brought about a progressive transformation of society under their subjection since they always ensured the elimination of the aggressive warlord class which led to the easing of a severe burden on all the classes involved in the production and distribution of material goods—the peasantry, the artisan and the merchant.

This centralization of government meant that arable land was now available which could be provided to tenant farmers who were farming the land already or new and eager farmers could be allotted these lands. In a copy of Tipu Sultan’s  Revenue Regulations that the British found in Coimbatore, article 3 mentions: “An equal proportion of lands, which are dry or watered, and of those which are Ijara or Hissa, shall be equally distributed for cultivation among the old and new Ryuts…”

Around 1786 – 1787 Tipu Sultan also started to reassess lands given as endowments to religious institutions. These were Inam lands where generation after generation of privileged families would enjoy the income of lands awarded as gifts to one among their ancestors. While this gift was for maintenance of the family of the Temple priest or scholar or custodian of the Dargah they were very often in far excess of what was required.

Article 33 of the Mysorean revenue regulations stipulated: “All lands under the denomination of Inamaut ( exception the Deostan and the lands of the Brahmins) …..shall be brought into the measurement, and shall be included into the Jumma, and the Inamaut lands which are to continued to the proprietors, shall be written off against the Jumma in the accounts.”

This meant that only as much land was was required for the upkeep of the establishment would remain with the owner of the Inam (Gift/Endowment Lands) and the rest would be subsumed by the government and could be available for distribution to the needy. Another important reform, which was a continuation of the policy of Chikkadevaraja Wodeyar, however on a much larger scale, was the allotment of land to families of the soldiers of the Mysore army. Innumerable soldiers and kandachara militiamen were granted lands, making such grants a major aspect of the agrarian order of the period. N K Sinha tells us that the “Candechar peons, when at the respective houses, receive a small pay, partly in waste land partly in money….”

Tipu Sutan also stopped the ancient custom of awarding entire villages and talukas as Jagirs to noblemen and all noblemen in the court including ministers, army commanders, etc received payments in cash. However also Tipu Sultan went one step ahead by ensuring that soldiers serving in the army, even the junior most among them and across religion and caste received some land for him and his family to thrive upon after retirement. This also ensured a steady growth of land being farmed across Mysore and contributed to increased revenue especially the the last decade of his reign.

MH Gopal, citing Malcolm says that, “the system of assigning lands tothe army was a great change in the Mysore Revenue system lately introduced.”  This policy permitted the vise of castes such as the Bedas, Kurubas, Idigas,Vokkaligas and Lingayats all of whom found gainful employment in the army.

On the grant of lands to the Bedas who were a significant caste in Tipu’s army, Buchanan writes: “Throughout these hills [of Savandurga] which extended northward from Capaladurga, are many cultivated spots, in which during Tippoo’s government, were settled many Baydaru, or hunters, who received 12 Pagodas a year, and served as irregular troops whenever required.”  

Edgar Thurston’s observations may be traced to the reform initiated by Haidar and Tipu of granting land to soldiers. “Unlike the land tenures said to prevail in Chingleput or Madras, the Mysore system fully permits the Holeyas and Madigs to hold land in their own right, and as subtenants they are to be found almost everywhere.”

In addition to the above reform measures these two rulers undertook the general expansion of the area under agriculture and brought hundreds of acres of cultivable waste lands under the plough. Entire talukas such as Kanakapura were settled with migrant populations and encouraged to cultivate. One incentive for the state was the hike in revenue which every additional plough would bring. Accordingly, subsidies by way of remission of taxes were provided to farmers who would be ready to farm previously unfarmed land and also those cultivating cash crops as coconut and betel-nut.

Encouragement to farming crops like wheat and barley was also made . The regulation entailed – “ And in villages, where these articles (crops) are produced, the cultivation of them shall be encouraged by giving cowls to the Ryuts.”  Irrigation was a matter greatly stressed upon and Buchanan in his travels across Mysore in 1801 mentions a network of irrigation by ponds, tanks and canals unsurpassed anywhere else he had travelled to. This was credit to Karnatakas long tradition of rulers from a millennia ago building tanks and anecuts as well as the Khudadad Sarkar’s (the name given by Tipu Sultan to his government)  aggressively maintaining and expanding upon the existing irrigation capacities.

Tipu also ensured that the farmers who were often forced to till the land of the village Pateels (Patel) and Shanbaugs no longer needed to do so as article 5 says: “The Pateels and Teagecaurs and others, have for a long while fraudulently avoided paying full revenue of the government land….The Ryuts are not to plough the land of the Pateels, but the Pateels shall themselves plough them’. These are only a few of the important regulations introduced by Tipu Sultan to relieve the farmers of many of their age old burdens.

All these aspects then—the attitude towards the palegars, the cessation of issuing jaghirs, the assumption of religious endowments lands in excess, the modification of hereditary tenures of the Patels, the granting of lands to soldiers and militiamen in his army and the encouragement given to the often oppressed peasantry to emigrate and partake in the independent cultivation of land constituted the chief elements of the anti-feudal land reform policy of Haidar and Tipu, laying the foundations for the sound growth and expansion of agriculture and the ever increasing replenishment of state revenues drawn from this sector. It was only with the revenues from land owned by his satisfied farmer subjects that Mysore could for nearly 40 years stand as the only serious obstacle to thee taking over of South India by the British colonial power,

References:

1. A journey from Madras through the countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar, Francis Buchanan; 1807
2. Tipu Sultans Mysore – An Economic Study, M.H. Gopal; 1971
3. History of Tipu Sultan, Mohibbul Hasan; 1951
4. The Mysorean Revenue Regulations, Translated by Burrish Crisp; 1792
5. Making History, Saki ; 2004

This article was first published in the Souvenir Magazine released on 8 September 2021 in the presence of Shri Ashwath Narayan C.S. , Deputy Chief Minister, Karnataka during the accreditation of the HHS and HMS Dargah and Aukaf Institutions Centre for Skill Training in Bengaluru.

The Mysore Rocket

                                                                 

The era before Mysore Rockets

There are numerous references to ‘agnibanas’ in Indian literature.  This was simply an arrow set on fire and released from a bow. But the rocket came later with the Chinese who had pioneered the development of early gunpowder as well as its use in fireworks from the 13^th C onwards. A rocket is a device that works by action and reaction and moves forward simply by expelling their exhaust in the opposite direction at high speed.  The early war rocket was a tube made of wood or paper filled with a combustible powder and strapped to an arrow. These casings were not capable of withstanding high temperatures and pressure inside and as a result they could not fly large distances. Such rockets made of wood and paper which would only scare the enemy’s’ animals or set fire to his baggage were only a minor nuisance for the enemy and mostly unable of causing any serious damage to alter the outcome of the war. The development of Chinese rockets remained stagnant while the Indians went several steps beyond and used them extensively.

Mysore Rockets – Among the world’s first documented metal cased rockets

Towards the later part of the 18th C Mysore burst upon the world stage as the greatest threat to the British in India. It succeeded in doing this by transforming itself into Industrial state with a strong army. Haidar Ali and later his son Tipu Sultan established their dominance over strategic forts, trade routes, ports and resource rich parts of South India. The British fought them at every step of the way. It was in this series of wars that England and the wider world was introduced to a new weapon of war – The Mysore ‘Metal cased’ Rocket. While metal cased rockets were used elsewhere in India too it was only in Mysore under Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan that these weapons were used extensively and corps of rocket-men organized in such a manner so as to add substantial teeth and muscle to the army.

The British who saw these iron cased rockets for the first time in the Anglo-Mysore wars with Haidar Ali were both amazed and frightened of them. They mention that the shower of rockets, some of which entered the head of their column, passed through to its rear causing deaths and wounds from the long bamboos of twenty or thirty feet or sharp sword blades which were attached to them. The instant a bamboo stick or sword blade attached to the rocket passed through a man’s body it resumed its initial speed and destroyed ten or twenty further men until the combustible matter with which it was charged was spent. Mysore was among the first states in the world to have moved to the next stage of rocket development from wooden firework rockets to metal war rockets successfully.

                                                                                                                   

                            

Mysore Rocketman with a Rocket attached to flag: Robert Home, V&A Museum Collection

                                                                                                                                               

The Mysorean Rocketmen and fate of the Mysore rockets after 1799

The Mysorean infantry under Tipu Sultan was organized into divisions called Kacheris. In each Kacheri which had soldiers as well as clerical staff, a small group of rocket men called        ‘Bana-dara’ were also attached. Rockets were called ‘Bana’ and the person who was in charge of using  the rocket was called ‘Banadar’ – ‘Bana’ from the Kannada for arrow and ‘dar’ from the Persian for ‘who holds’. The Mysore rockets were observed to be made of iron cylinders strapped to a bamboo pole or to a sword blade with leather straps.

A banadar preparing a rocket for launch: Robert Home, V&A Museum Collection

It was only after the death of Tipu Sultan and the defeat of Mysore in 1799 that the British took away several of these rockets to England for study. They were brought and displayed as war trophies in Woolwich’s Royal Military Repository which still has two of these rockets. For over 200 years these and three rockets in the Bangalore government museum and one at the Murshidabad museum were the only Mysore rockets to be found anywhere in the world. The question of where did all the other rockets go had confounded historians as well as researchers of Rocket science for long. With this meager number of specimens available, any research that could be done on them and their characteristics was also limited.

                                                                                                                                               

Discovery of Rockets in Nagara

In April 2002, during the course of removal of silt from an old well in a Areca nut plantation belonging to Mr. Nagaraj Rao in Nagara, a large number of cylindrical metal objects which were later identified as Rockets were retrieved from the mud dug out of the well and then transferred to the Shivappa Nayaka Government Museum at Shimoga where they were deposited and can be found today. In 2018 during an exploration of the same site many more rockets were discovered. A map of Nagara in the British library shows the presence of an powder magazine and an armoury near this well in the early 19^th C. For the students of the History of Rocketry, this was for the first time in over two centuries, that such a large number of rockets was available for observation and study.

Find of the rockets in Nagara

                                                                                                                                               

The history of Nagara

The Keladi dynasty which was founded in 1499 AD rose into prominence after the decline of the Vijaynagara empire. The Nayakas built a formidable kingdom which stretched over the Malnad region and parts of coastal Karnataka extending up to Kasargod in Kerala. Shivappa Nayaka, the most prominent Keladi Nayaka ascended the throne at Bednur which became the third and the grandest capital of the Keladi kingdom. Soon Bednur would grow into a very large kingdom with about a lakh houses. In 1759 Nagara fell to Haidar Ali who was the military commander of Mysore’s army. Haidar was so delighted on the conquest of this city that he changed the name of the city from Bednur to Haidarnagara. It is popularly known as Nagara.

Nagara occupied a very strategic position as Keladi’s capital and later the second most important city in Mysore after Srirangapatna. Being at the heart of the Malnad region surrounded by dense forests and being unapproachable for most of the year because of heavy rainfall it could be defended from enemies and also commanded an important strategic position overlooking the coasts of Mangalore and North Canara as well as the passes leading down to the ‘Byluseema’ regions of Chitradurga. Much of the revenue from the rice, sandal and pepper trade of Malnad and North Canara landed at Nagara before going to Mysore. Along with it’s strategic location Haidar Ali  also made full use of the proficiency of the craftsmen of Nagar and used them to produce articles for Mysore.

Map of Mysore Kingdom, 1799: John B. & Co.

                                                                                                                                   

The Rockets found at Nagara

These are metallic cylindrical tubes sealed at both the ends. The sealing is done via a metal disc at both the ends with one of the discs having a circular hole for the purpose of the fuse and which functions as the rocket nozzle at one end. The rockets are filled with a black colored powder which has a pungent smell even today. A wide variance in dimensions of the rockets is seen with lengths varying from 19 cms. to 30 cms. and diameters varying from 3 cms. to 7 cms and weight varying from 500 gms to 1750 gms.

Samples of rockets found at Nagara

Top end of the Rocket   

           

                                              

Nozzle end of the rocket

                                                                                                                                   

The parts of the Rocket

The rocket clearly shows a cylindrical casing. One end of the rocket has a disc with a thick layer of some material under it. At the other end is another disc with a hole for the fuse clearly visible. Inside this cylinder we find  powder and a fuse.

Emission spectroscopy and wet Chemistry investigations point to the carbon percentage in the rocket metal to be from 0.03 % to 0.33 %. This is a very low carbon steel with other elements being negligible. The extremely low Carbon percentage was for making a cylinder from a metal sheet. The microstructure was shown to be ferritic. Than Mysorean blacksmiths could in the 18th C manufacture large quantities of Low Carbon Steel as this speaks volumes about their technological superiority.

A good amount of the brown colored substance seen lining the interior of the rocket casing is found to be a refractory material – Clay. This discovery is very important for the reason that the Mysorean technicians had realized that a thermal insulator was required between the charge inside the casing and the casing itself to protect the casing from the high temperatures that would be developed inside. The analysis of the powder from the rockets shows that it fits the composition of gunpowder. 

The thickness of the casing is between 2 to 4 mm across different portions. The End discs at both ends of the rocket are of the same thickness. It is seen that the nozzle diameters varied between 6 to 8 mm. So this meant that the Mysoreans were attempting to standardise nozzle diameters and largely succeeded in this too. Visual observation of the fuse through a Microscope  with 50X magnification showed the fuse consisting of several strands of fibrous material with dimensions of around 20 Microns.

Magnified image of Rocket Fuse: PAC Shimoga

                                                                                                                                   

X-Ray Image of a Mysore Rocket: Observe the dark tint of the heat insulating clay layer at the edges of the casing : Pallakki NDT Excellence Center, Bengaluru

Tools and other objects found with the Rockets

Augur like tool used for the fuse

        

Clay objects found with the Rockets

This augur like tool found in the same well as the rockets would have been used to make a cavity through the packed gunpowder in the rocket casing for inserting the fuse.

These clay pots may have been used in different stages of rocket manufacture with the conical shaped pot which is open at both ends being possibly used as a funnel to pour the gunpowder into the rocket casing. The Nagara site is also special for the fact that this is the first time ever that rocket manufacture tools were also found along with the rockets there.

                                                                                                                                               

Probable Method of Rocket Manufacture

Low carbon steel sheets would be made first, then cut to the required rocket sizes and rolled over a cylinder and finally the overlapping region would be joined using heat and pressure. After this, the two end discs would be cut out from a similar sheet with a hole for the nozzle made in the middle of one of the discs. Then a disc would be held at one end of the cylindrical casing and crimped to it using heat and pressure. After this, using some kind of tool, the interior of the casing would be lined with a coating of clay. After this gunpowder would added into the casing and packed tightly inside. After this some more clay would then be applied into the cylinder and the disc with the hole attached to end of the cylinder using heat. Finally the fuse would be inserted into the rocket into the cavity made through the powder by the augur tool.  After this a bamboo stick would be tied to the rocket with leather strips and it was ready to be fired.

Metal Rocket making technology in Nagara

Nagara was near some important sources of Iron ore. Towards the middle of January, 1792 after the British Bombay Army had captured Shimoga, they sent a detachment to a place nearby called ‘Toorkhunhooly’ that was said to be “a place famous for making rockets” Several areas around Shimoga are situated on the Geological feature called the ‘Dharwar Craton’ that is known for a very good deposits of Iron as well as haematite and magnetite schist. There are a string of sites nearby known for iron ore mining and smelting even prior to the 10th C AD.   

According to Francis Hamilton Buchanan, who in 1800 was sent by Lord Richard Wellesley, Governor General of India to Mysore to collect data, there existed in many parts of Mysore state, iron forges for the manufacture of iron. The Mysorean method of production of steel was superior to the contemporary European method of cementation by charcoal alone, which used to take anything between six to twenty days. By contrast, under the Mysorean method carbon and hydro-carbon acting jointly on iron formed steel within four to six hours.

                                                                                                                                   

The debt the world of Rocketry owes to India

After the Mysore rockets were taken away to Woolwich in England, William Congreve would improvise upon his earlier inefficient rockets and give to the British a much more effective war rocket that would play an important part in the wars that would follow against their American and European enemies. The citizens of Shimoga, Karnataka as well as India can be proud today that each and every rocket in any country right from India’s ISRO  to America’s NASA owe their origins to rockets similar to the ones found in Nagara that you can see today in what is India’s only Mysore Rocket gallery at the Shivappa Nayaka Government Museum in Shimoga (Karnataka State) now.

References:

Journal of the Arms and Armour Society, Volume XXII, No 6, 2018: Rudrappa Shejeshwara and Nidhin G. Olikara: ROCKETS FROM MYSORE UNDER HAIDAR ALI AND TIPU SULTAN: PRELIMINARY STUDIES OF ‘TIPU ROCKETS’ FROM THE NAGARA FIND’

Acknowledgements:

Late Mr. Nagaraja Rao and Family, Nagara

The Commissioner, Directors and Staff: Department of Archaeology, Museums and Heritage – Government of Karnataka

Mr. V.K. Divekar B.Engg., Principal Metallurgist &Director – Perfect
Alloy Components Pvt. Ltd., Shimoga

Prof. H.S. Mukunda, Former Group Leader – Combustion, Gasification
and Propulsion Lab, Department of Aerospace Engineering., Indian Institute
of Science, Bangalore. Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences

Prof. Sharada Srinivasan FRAS, Dean & Professor, School of
Humanities, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore.

A re-examination of Tipu Sultan’s date of birth as per the date specified by himself and presenting an online Mysorean Mauludi calendar

“ba beestum shahr zi-hijjah dar awwal sa’at roz shambeh sun yak-hazaar wa yak-sad wa shast wa seh hijri dar qasba-e-dewan hili.” ¹

“On twentieth of the month zi-hijjah at early hours of Saturday year one thousand and one hundred and sixty and three hijri at the town dewan hili.”

This is how Meer Hussein Ali Khan Kirmani alludes to the birth day of his former employer and ruler of Mysore Tipu Sultan in his book ‘Nishan i Haidar: Maroof ba Tarikh i Tipu Sultan’ which was written a few years after the death of Tipu Sultan and translated into English by Col. W. Miles for the Royal Asiatic Society in 1842 CE. Kirmani in his preface for the book writes in flowery Persian – “..this student in the school of ignorance, whose name is Meer Hussein Ali, Kirmani, the son of Syud Abdul Kadir Kirmani, (who served both these Princes, and remained in the service of Tippoo Sultaun, in a highly honourable rank, about five years, that is from 1196 to 1201, Hijri, but of which no further mention is now necessary), having spent two or three years in a search for information, respecting the forefathers of this illustrious family, which was with great difficulty obtained, he reduced it to writing, and formed it into a book; and, the detail of the months and years being added, he has named his work, the Neshauni Hyduri, and has left it as a memorial inscribed on the page of time.” ²

This is by far the most well known and widely accepted mention of the date of birth of Tipu Sultan. This date (20th day of the month of Zil-Hijjah, Year 1163) in the Hijri calendar corresponds to 20^th November, 1750 C.E. of the Gregorian calendar.³ Surprisingly, this day is a Friday (Al-Jumma) and not a Saturday as Kirmani mentioned when describing the date of Tipu’s birth. ⁴

However, we seem to have missed the wood for the trees for over 200 years now! Tipu Sultan had himself communicated to his subjects about the date of his birthday. A curious manuscript was obtained from the Mysorean camp by Colonel John Murray, Military Auditor General in the EIC during the Coimbatore campaign in the course of the 3^rd Anglo Mysore war. This manuscript was in Persian and given over to Burrish Crisp who translated it into English around June 1, 1792. This was in Burish’s words from the dedication to Col. John Murray where he described this document as ‘Tippoo’s Regulations’.

In Crisp’s words – “The Persian copy of the Regulations, from which this translation has been made, bears the impression of the Sultan’s seal, with the words Teepoo Sultaun. “ Page 42 of this translation⁵ has regulation no. 71 as follows:

71. The following rules are to be observed in firing salutes on days of rejoicing and in celebrating victories, &c.: on the day appointed for celebrating festivals, victories, &c., the guns are to be fired at the tenth Gurry of the day:……..

      The occasions upon which salutes are to be fired , and the number of guns  are as follows:

       On the Eede Ulmuneneen, the 13^th of Rejeb                                            20 guns

       On the Sultaun’s birth-day, the 14^th of the month of Toolooee            30 guns

This means that we no longer have to depend upon the information provided by a 2^nd party – M H A Khan Kermani for the date of Tipu Sultans birthday but can verify it ourselves from the information inside a manuscript produced on his own orders and marked with his seal and name.

The difficulty that we are faced with now is to relate the month Toolooee with the Gregorian calendar. There is no such month in the Islamic calendar. So, what is Toolooee? The answer to this question lies in an innovation introduced by Tipu Sultan in his 5^th regnal year (1786-1787 CE).

With the spread of Islam throughout the world, the Hijri was adopted as the calendar of the state for religious as well as secular dates. However, a hitch arose where the state was Muslim and using the Lunar Hijri calendar among a population which was in many cases Non-Muslim and using the Solar calendar. Almost all Muslim rulers chose to disregard this anomaly and tuned the activity of the state to the Hijri Era.

But, a question springs to our mind now. How does a difference between lunar and solar calendars affect the governing of a state?

The Hijri calendar is a lunar calendar. It contains of 12 months that are based on the motion of the moon, and because 12 lunar months is 12 x 29.53 = 354.36 days, the Islamic calendar is consistently shorter (11 Days) than a solar year, and therefore it shifts with respect to the Solar calendar.The use of the Hijrah Era was unfair to the peasantry, because 31 lunar years were equal to 30 solar years and the revenue was collected on the basis of lunar years whereas the harvest depended on the solar ones. So a farmer would often have to pay tax 31 times on each harvest when the actual number of harvests was only 30.

Tipu had a unique answer to this problem. He instituted a new calendar sometime between January and June 1784. The new era which he introduced consisted of twelve Luni-Solar years of twelve lunar months. In both the eras, the year consisted of 354 days. But while in the traditional Islamic year, the shortage of eleven days as compared with the solar year was not regularised, Tipu adopted the principle of intercalary months in order to make his calendar agree with the solar year. Significantly, this method was borrowed from the Hindu calendar. I have already explained the constitution of Tipu’s calendar in an earlier article here. The following were the names of the months of Tipu’s calendar (Abjad/Abtath):

1. Ahmadi
2. Bahari
3. Jafari/Taqi
4. Darai/Thamari
5. Hashimi/Jafari
6. Wasii/Haidari
7. Zabarjadi/Khusravi
8. Haidari/Dini
9. Tului/Dhakiri
10. Yusufi/Rahmani
11. Aizdi/Razi
12. Bayazi/Rabani

The number of cycles of Tipu’s calendar was also now different from the traditional Hijri calendar. The South Indian Hindu calendar or ‘Brahspatyam Masam’, so called because it corresponded roughly to the period of five revolutions of the Planet Jupiter, and consisting of sixty solar years, to each of which was assigned a separate name. According to South Indian reckoning, the not inconsiderable difference between one twelfth part of a single revolution of Jupiter and one year is disregarded, so that the ‘Masam’ and solar years are held to be exactly the same, and thus the sixty names of the ‘Masam’ years become simply the appellations of as many solar years.⁶

Tipu took the starting year of his calendar a controversial step further. This new era, he dated from the year not of Muhammad’s flight but of his birth, which was held to have taken place in A.D. 571. Tipu Sultan however, for some unexplained reason appears to have assumed that the Prophet Mohammad was born in 572 A.D. as the first year of his calendar definitely commenced in 1787 A,D. ( 1787 AD – 72 = 1215 AM). Tipu believed that starting an era with the date of birth of the Prophet was a signal of strength rather than starting an era with the date of his flight. Such was Tipu’s spirit! This newly invented era of Tipu was named by him as the ‘Mauludi’ era. The word Mauludi was derived from ‘Maulud-i-Muhammad’ which is Arabic translates as ‘Birth of Muhammad’.

In 1921, J.R. Henderson who documented Tipu Sultan’s coinage across his realm was confronted with the problem of identifying the exact Mauludi dates on the coins and relating them to the Hijri and Christian Eras so as to ascertain periods of existence of the royal mints vis-a-vis Tipu’s possession of the territories that these mints were in. He requested the Hon’ble Diwan Bahadur L.D. Swamikannu Pillai, M.A., L.L.B., author of Indian Chronology (Madras, 1911) and a well known authority on the subject to examine these dates.

Mr. Pillai found that the months of Tipu’s new system were Indian Lunar months, that the days of the month were simply ‘tithis’ or lunar days continuously numbered from 1 to 30, the fortnights being ommitted, and further that Tipu’s extra months were without a single exception the Indian ‘adhika’ months. He also found that the Mauludi year began regularly at the same time as the Indian luni-solar year, i.e. on Chaitra ‘Sukla Pratipada, or the 1st tithi of the bright fortnight of Chaitra and the the serial numbers of Tipu’s cyclical years, recorded on many of his gold and silver coins, are exactly the same as those of the South Indian cyclic years.⁷ This 1st day of Chaitra is always the auspicious day of Ugadi in the Mysore calendar. Thus the Mauludi calendar also began every year on Ugadi day.

So now a correlation between Tipu Sultan’s Mauludi calendar months and the Indian Lunar months is as follows:

1. Ahmadi      ======Chaitra
2. Bahari      ====-==Vaishakh
3. Jafari/Taqi      =======Jyeshtha
4. Darai/Thamari      =======Ashadha
5. Hashimi/Jafari      =======Shravana
6. Wasii/Haidari      =======Bhadrapada
7. Zabarjadi/Khusravi =======Ashrayuja
8. Haidari/Dini      =======Karthik
9. Tului/Dhakiri      =======Margsheersha
10. Yusufi/Rahmani      ========Pousha
11. Aizdi/Razi      ========Magha
12. Bayazi/Rabani      ========Phalguna

Thus, the dates of the Mauludi calendar Tului/Toolooi/Dhakiri month should correspond to the dates of the Margasheersha month now !

It was decided to conduct a test check of Hon’ble Diwan Bahadur L.D. Swamikannu Pillai’s assertion by verifying if the Hindu Luni-Solar calendar ( Panchanga) matched with Tipu’s Mauludi calendar. For this exercise, Appendix A from James Salmond’s – ‘A review of the origin, progress and result of the decisive war with the late Tippoo Sultaun in Mysore’ was chosen as it contained several letters from Tipu Sultan with the dates mentioned in both Mauludi as well as Gregorian years ( in the translation). We only had to reference the Gregorian calendar date with the Hindu Panchanga date (derived from the Mauludi date) and verify if they matched. They did !

The date matching was done using a very useful website https://jyotisham.github.io/jyotisha/output/Mysore. ⁸

Some examples chosen were:

Sl. No.	Letter No./Section	Gregorian Date	Mauludi Date	Probable Panchanga Date	Realised Panchanga Date in Software
1	1, Appendix A	2 April 1797	5 Ahmedy (5th day of 1st Month)	5 Chaitra	05-01 CORRECT
2	17, Appendix A	11 May, 1798	25 Bahari ( 2nd Month)	25 Vaishakh	26-02 ONE TITHI SKIPPED9 – CORRECT
3	20, Appendix A	13 October, 1798	4 Khusrovy       ( 7th Month)	4 Ashrayuja	CORRECT

Test Checks of Mauludi- Mysore Panchanga Dates

Tipu Sultan’s letters in Kannada to the Sringeri Dharmasamsthana as provided and translated by Dr. A.K. Shastry were most useful to us as here the letters had both the Mauludi as well as the Hindu Panchanga dates on them. Our understanding of the Mauludi calendar was further confirmed when these dates matched.¹⁰ Another crucial verification of dates was conducted using Tipu Sultan’s own Dream Register that he penned in his own hand providing the triumvirates of Mauludi dates, their Hijri equivalents as well as the day of the week. The Jyotisham site provided results that were an exact match for the dates in Tipu’s dream register with even the days of week matching. We are now confident that Tipu’s Mauludi dates matches with the Hindu Panchanga in totality with only an important difference being that unlike the Panchanga the Mauludi calendar does not skip (Tithi Kshaya) or repeat tithis (Vriddhi) but goes from the 1st day of the month to the last date in progression and restarts again on the 1st day of the succeeding Hindu panchanga month.

One must not forget that Kirmani only completed his biography of Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan in 1802 when he was a British pensioner and having served Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan between the years 1781 – 1786 C.E. He does not appear to have been a significant figure at court during this short period, however.¹¹ As he mentions in his preface to the work, he composed the biography and took time to collect the dates of the events that occurred. It certainly looks like he was misinformed about the date of Tipu Sultan’s birthday as his date contradicts the date as specified in the Regulations book for Mysore that was sealed with the stamp of Tipu Sultan himself and is now in the Royal Collection, UK.

Kirmani’s words towards the end of his preface¹² can be quoted here– “What he (Kirmani) hopes from the truly learned, the generous concealer of errors, is, that, if they at any time should peruse this book, they will not dwell on the want of arrangement, or of elegance, in the language and sentences, but, by the favour of correction, lay an obligation on him, which he is ever ready to acknowledge.’

So having discovered the birthdate of Tipu Sultan in a regulation book approved and printed by his government the next hurdle to surmount is to find the year of his birth ! While I did have the option to assume that while Kirmani may have erred on Tipu’s birthday, he may not have made a similar error with the year. But this would only be a optimistic assumption to make and it made sense for me to look further. And once again I chose to look at documents generated from the court of Tipu Sultan himself in the time when he ruled Mysore. And it did not take a long while to find an answer to my question.

William Kirkpatrick in his translation of select letters found in Tipu’s palace writes in his observations regarding letter number CLXXXII: ‘ In a loose paper in my possession, containing directions for the regulation of military salutes on various occasions, there is a note, or memorandum, purporting, that the Sultan was born on the 14th of Tulooey of the year of the Higera 1165 ‘ ¹³ Ursula Sims-Williams, curator of the Persian section in the British Library was considerate enough to locate this note for us.

The Note from Tipu Sultan’s library that Kirkpatrick mentions Image Courtesy: By Permission of the British Library IO Islamic 4683c Folio 24r

Persian:

عید ولادت با سعادت حضرت خداوند نعمت مد ظلہ تعالٰی چہاردھم ماہ طلوعی سنہ 1165 ھجری در ہر سال بتاریخ مذکور بعد دہ گہڑی روز بر آمدہ سی و یک ضرب سردادہ مراسم عید ھمہ مردم شہر ادا باید کرد۔

Transliteration:

“eid-e-wiladat ba sa’aadat hazrat khudawand nemat madzillahu ta’aala chahar-dahem mah tuloo’ee sanah 1165 hijri dar her saal ba-tareekh-e-mazkoor ba’d dah gharri roz bar aamadah se-wa-yak zarb sardadah marasim-e-eid hamah mardam-e-shehr ada bayad kard.”

Translation:

“Happy celebration for the birth-date of God’s blessing, may he live long, fourteen of month tuloo’ee year 1165 hijri every year on the mentioned date after ten hours upon day-rise thirty one canon-fires commence. The celebration/ceremony should be performed by all the people of the city…“

Kirkpatrick goes on to say that he has since he saw this also seen the same date (14 Tulooeey) mentioned in Tipu Sultan’s military manual, the Fath-ul Mujahideen. Ursula Sims-Williams once again made available a scan of the folio of the Fath-ul Mujahideen which has the same directions for the gun salutes on various occassions. The only difference here being that the manuscript mentions the 14th day of the month of Dhakiri, 1165 Hijri instead of the month of Tulooey. This is because the Fath-ul Mujahideeen was written post the year 1787 C.E. when the name of the 9th month in the Mauludi calendar was changed by Tipu Sultan from Tulooey to Dhakiri in the move to the Abtath system of nomenclature.

Observe Tipu Sultan’s Seal and Signature at the beginning of the first folio of the Fath-ul Mujahideen Image Courtesy: By Permission of the British Library IO Islamic 2216 Folio 1

The mention of the 31-Gun salute on Tipu Sultan’s Birthday in the Fath-ul Mujahideen Image Courtesy: By Permission of the British Library IO Islamic 2216 Folio 67-68

Higera or Hijri 1165 is the equivalent of the Gregorian year 1751-1752 C.E. This means that Tipu Sultan was not born in the year 1163 Hijri / 1750 C.E. but later! Now let us get down to determining the Gregorian equivalent of 14th of Tulooey, Hijri 1165. The 1st day of the 1st month Muharram of the Hijri year 1165 corresponds to the 2nd day of Margasheersha month for the Prajapati Samvatsara. This 2nd day of Margasheersha corresponds to the 3rd day of its equivalent Mauludi month – Tulooey for the Mauludi year 1179. The Mauludi calendar date has moved a day forward with reference to the Mysore Panchanga because as mentioned earlier Tipu Sultan’s calendar neglects Tithi Vridhis and the 1st day of Margasheersha for that year was a Vridhhi day. Thus in the Mauludi year 1179, the 14th of Tulooey i.e. 13th of Margasheersha corresponds to December 1, 1751 C.E.

Sl. No.	Mauludi Date	Panchanga Date	Hijri Diate	Gregorian Date
1	14th Day of Tului/Dhakiri	13th Day of Margasheersha, Prajapati Samvatsara (Tithi Vriddhi is seen on the 1st day of Margasheersha)	12th Day of Al-Muharrum, 1165 Hijri	1 December, 1751 A D

Tipu Sultan’s Birthday

So to summarize, we have 2 dates – November 20, 1750 if Kirmani’s work is taken into account and December 1, 1751 if Kirkpatrick’s observation is taken into account. Among the two, Kirkpatrick’s observation is robust as he refers to a note with the date and year of birth found among the state papers in Seringapatam. That the same date was repeated in another document dealing with revenue and other regulations and also in Tipu Sultan’s military manual for use of his military officers is further evidence of the need to take Kirkpatrick’s observation as correct. In total 3 different documents made and sanctioned by the direct orders of Tipu Sultan contain references to Tipu Sultan’s birthday being December 1, 1751 C.E.. Our Tipu is now younger by a year and 11 days!! And his birth sign has moved from Scorpio to Sagittarius !

Announcement:

In the course of this work to determine the Gregorian calendar equivalent of the Mauludi Calendar months a set of date sheets were generated which have now been moved to the website www.tipucalendar.com which may be used as a date converter tool where researchers can mover between Mauludi to Gregorian dates and vice-versa.

Acknowledgements:

The author is grateful to Prof. B. Sheik Ali, former Vice-Chancellor of Goa and Mangalore Universities and pre-eminent scholar of Mysore for reviewing and accepting the finding in this article.

The author is grateful to Ursula Sims-Williams, Curator – Persian Section of the British Library, London for facilitating access to the Library and sharing images of the manuscripts for research.

Vishvas Vasuki is to be thanked for the addition of the Mauludi calendar in the Mysore section of the Jyotisham website along with Prof. Karthik Raman as well as for giving his valuable time during useful discussions on the Mysore Panchanga.

The Persian text in the pertinent passage in M H A K Kirmani’s book would not have been cross referenced with Col. Miles’ translation and re- translated into English again without the assistance of Islamic and Persian scholar Adnan Rashid. Adnan Rashid was also most useful in helping translate the manuscript folio from the BL note as well as the relevant sections of the Fath-ul Mujahideen.

Manjunath Gaonkar of NeoTech is thanked for developing the Mauludi-Gregorian Date converter website. Special mention is to be made of Udaya Kumar P. L.  and Mohammad Masood with whom the author’s preliminary discussions proved most stimulating.

Notes:

1. Nishan i Haidar: Maroof ba Tarikh i Tipu Sultan, Meer Hussein Ali Khan Kirmani, pp.19.
2. The History of Hydur Naik, Meer Hussein Ali Khan Kirmani, pp. 29, trans. 1842
3. History of Tipu Sultan, Mohibbul Hasan, pp. 6.  This conversion may also be attempted on  several Hijri to Gregorian year converter  sites available online. 20 November, 1750 is the most widely held birth date in books from Mohibbul Hasan to Dennys Forrest.
4. There are also some other dates referred to as birthdays of Tipu Sultan one of which is 10 November that was pitched for a few years by the state of Karnataka as a celebratory day which came from an conversion of Hijri date to Julian date instead of Gregorian. A handful of websites also give December 10 as a birth date but there is no explanation again.
5. The Revenue Regulations of  Tippoo Sultaun, Tr. B. Crisp pp. 42 (https://persian.packhum.org/main?url=pf%3Ffile%3D21203010%26ct%3D7)
6. The coins of Tipu Sultan, Geo P. Taylor, pp. 17
7. The coins of Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan, J.R. Henderson, pp. 10
8. The website provides all details like Julian, Gregorian, Islamic, Hindu calendar dates along with positions of nakshatras , vaaras as well as important Hindu festivals as well for each tithi.
9. This is because in the C E month of May 1798, the tithi 10 (being not touching any sunrise) being skipped in the Hindu system (25-04-1798 CE) and so Tipu’s month of May goes off by 1. However such deviation are contained within that given month and do not propagate further down. The researcher needs to observe each month for these skipped tithis during the comparison with the Mauludi calendar. So the general Mauludi rule is – Do not skip or overlap dates, but keep counting from date 1 of each month till the day the Panchanga closes for that month. I learnt this after comparing dates given by Tipu Sultan himself in his Dream Register to match the Mauludi dates with the Hijri dates as well as the day of the week specified. Among the translated letters provided by James Salmond and Kirkpatrick only the former gets the Mauludi and Gregorian dates correct. Kirkpatrick does mention that he learnt about the intricacies of the Mauludi calendar only after he had left India and was back in England where he was bereft of first hand help in deciphering the dates.
10. The Records of the Sringeri Dharmasamsthana, Dr. A.K. Shastry
11. Tipu Sultan’s search for legitimacy – Islam and Kingship in a Hindu domain, Kate Brittlebank, pp. 12-13
12. The History of Hydur Naik, Meer Hussein Ali Khan Kirmani, pp. 31, trans. 1842
13. Select Letters of Tippoo Sultaun to various public functionaries, William Kirkpatrick, pp. 217 ( https://archive.org/details/selectlettersoft00tipu ) Most likely, the Hijri year is provided in the note and not the Mauludi year because the Mauludi calendar was instituted by Tipu Sultan only in 1201 – 1202 Hijri.

Between Liberty and Faith: When Tipu Sultan chose France over Turkey

Did you know that the Turkish Caliph actually beseeched Tipu Sultan to ally with the Turks against France!!

Vive La Liberte! Viva La Egalite! Vive La Fraternite ! – Thus spake Tipu Sultan when asked to chose between France and Turkey!!

On the 16^th January 1799,  the Governor General of India Richard Wellesley wrote to Tipu Sultan informing  him of the following:

1. The French have insulted and assaulted the acknowledged Head of the ‘Mahomedan Church’ and that they have provoked a cruel war in the heart of that country, revered by every Mahomedan as the repository of the most sacred monuments of the Mahomedan faith.
2. There is now a firm and intimate alliance between te Grand Seignior (Sultan) of Turkey and the British nation for the purpose of opposing the ‘excesses’ of the French.
3. The Sultan of Turkey is fully apprised of the connection between Mysore and the French for purposes hostile to England, and the Sultan offers to Tipu Sultan the salutary fruit of his experiences with the French in form of a letter.

A letter from Sultan Selim, Emperor of the Turks and Caliph is attached to Wellesley’s letter where the Caliph apprises Tipu of the following:

1. France has attacked Turkey’s province  – Egypt unprovoked. One of the French Generals by name Napoleon has reached Alexandria and is rallying the Arabs to join him against the ‘Beys’ of Egypt (Ethnic Turkish/Circassian (Non-Arab) Governors).
2. The Sultan has learnt that the French want to divide the Arabia into several republics and to extirpate Mussulmans from the face of the earth.
3. The French are bent upon the overthrow of all sects and religions, and have invented a new religion, under the name of Liberty; they themselves profess no other belief but that of Epicurus and Pythagorus. They have not even spared the territories of the Pope of Rome which from times immemorial have been held inviolable by all the European nations.
4. The Caliph expects that Tipu will break off all contact with the French and assist his brethren Mussulmans in the general cause of religion.

But unknown to both the English and the Caliph, Tipu had a year ago, in May 1797 itself pledged allegiance to Republican ideals when he participated in the opening of a Jacobin club in Seringapatam. Standards of Liberty were brought out that day , a tree of liberty was planted and all who  assembled there including Tipu himself wore a ‘cap of liberty’. The Mysorean army saluted the Jacobin club with a volley of shots from 2300 cannon and 500 rockets!

On the 16^th of February, 1799 Tipu wrote back to the Turkish Sultan mentioning:

1. He had understood the purport of the Caliph’s letter.
2. Even though the Caliph makes no mention of it, Tipu writes that ‘…whatever ground of uneasiness and complaints the English may have given me, when by the Divine aid and intervention of your good offices, all differences will be compromised, and opposition and estrangement converted to cordiality and union…’ This was Tipu telling the Caliph that he was aware the British were behind this letter.
3. Tipu promises all assistance and a concerted effort to the Turkish Sultan against the French.

That Tipu had no intention at all of allying with the Turks against France is clear because just a week earlier to Tipu replying to the Grand Turk,  Tipu’s agent Du Buc had already embarked at Tranquebar to proceed to France on an embassy. Tipu’s costly embassies to Constantinople and Versailles had only brought Georgian slave women from Turkey but watchmakers, cannon-founders, gardeners and  armourers from France. Tipu was well aware of the difference in capabilities of the two states. Tipu had requested the Caliph for help against the British way back in 1787, but no help had arrived from there till date.

In 3 months time from then towards the end of the siege when Tipu’s French officers realized that holding on for longer was futile, the senior officer Monsieur Chapuis asked the Sultan “ to deliver him (Chapuis) and the rest of  the French to the English so that an accommodation may be made between the contending parties…” This was because the English had made it known that they were at the gates of Seringapatam because of Tipu’s alliance with Republican France. Tipu in response to Chapuis replied back in his inimitabile style, as recounted by an eyewitness to that time, Mir Hussain Ali Khan – “..if on your account, you being strangers from a distant land, the whole of our kingdom should be plundered and laid waste, well and good; but you shall not be delivered up:..” . A day from then, Tipu would be dead, fighting by his soldiers’ side on May 4, 1799.

The curious fact that Tipu could not be moved by religious reasons and external pressure to choose his allies showed his independence of thought, which was among his qualities that riled the English and also hastened his end.

Images of Republican and Monarchist French Corps Flags taken by the British at Seringapatam

References:

Collection of Select letters, W. Kirkpatrick

Tarikh i Tipu Sultan, M H A K Kirmani

History of Tipu Sultan, Mohibbul Hasan

Waqaiat i Manzil i Rum, Ghulam Qadir

Tiger of Mysore, Denys Forrest

Tigers round the Throne

Tipu Sultan and the Rajputs

This article was prompted by a recent interaction between myself and my dear friend R. G. Singh of the iconic Ramsons Kala Pratishtana at Nazarbad in Mysore. RG as we know him has one of India’s finest private collections of Mysore style paintings and has done yeoman service to our cultural traditions by working hard to conserve, revive and popularize traditional Indian board games many of which but for his and of his establishments’ efforts would have gone extinct.

The Singhs are of Agnikula Rajput origin and their family hail from Bassi in Chittorgarh, Rajasthan. His Rajput clan were ‘specialists’ in the breaching of forts. The family tradition mentions that they moved from the desert sands of Chittorgarh to Seringapatam by the Cauvery sometime in the 18^th C to serve in the army of Tipu Sultan. This will surprise many among us!  Rajputs in Tipu’s army? How?

We get the answer to this in one of Tipu’s new regulations for his army drafted after Mysore’s defeat in the 3^rd Anglo Mysore war. This was noted by Macleod here:

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“The strength of the infantry has increased considerably since the year 1794. This is accounted by the effect of of the Sultan’s regulations of not admitting any Hindus into his corps – Mahrattas and Rajputs excepted. It may be urged that there ought to be present in his army as many Mahomedans, Mahrattas and Rajputs as there had been in 1794; but the deficiency may be reconciled when it is recollected how much the sources of his recruiting have been limited by the cessions he made in 1792;”

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The strength of the Mysorean infantry after 1794 became considerably larger than the cavalry because the prime recruiting grounds of the Sultan’s horsemen – Northern Karnataka (the Deccan region) was lost after the 3rd Anglo Mysore war and the treaty with the British and their allies in 1792. Much of the cavalry came from the Northern Karnataka stock and since Mysore no longer had these areas the number of cavalry men in the army greatly reduced. Old Mysore proper, the coast and hill regions did not have as many quality horsemen as the plain terrain of the Deccan which was more conducive to horse breeding as well as cavalry warfare. So the Mysorean army was in a precarious situation with the numbers of its horsemen decreasing considerably compared to the pre 1792 situation.

Tipu could either increase the number of his cavalry forces by recruiting the available Hindu talent which was deficient in horse warfare in comparison to their counterparts up North or recruit more Muslim soldiers from within Mysore if available. The first option was ruled out as there were not enough quality horsemen available here and the second option though available would upset a balance that Tipu deliberately maintained, ostensibly for the safety of his state. As a matter of statecraft Tipu ensured that no single community contributed to a majority in the army. So in 1795, by the time the reorganization was complete Mysore had 6 kacheris ( Divisions ) of ‘silladar horse’, of which 2 were composed exclusively of Hindus and the remaining 4 of Muslims. Each kacheri was further divided into six maktoubs (regiments). Tipu again ensured that each of these Muslim kacheris had a mix among Syeds, Sheikh, Pathan , Mahdavi ( an esoteric Muslim sect) and Shiite soldiers. Only the Ahmadi kacheri had a majority of a single sect of muslims – Syeds supposedly of the Koreish tribe that Prophet Mohammad also hailed from.  The Asadollahi kacheri was exclusively made of new Muslim converts taken captive from among the British as well as in the Mysorean campaigns in Coorg and Malabar. Altogether the number of men here came to 6000. Wellington recorded in his despatches that the Mysore Silladars were ‘the finest light cavalry in the world‘.

Recruitment to the Hindu kacheris was vigorously carried out and it was for this that preference was given to the Rajputs and Marathas as they were the Hindus largely available for the cavalry at that time. They came in large numbers because of the good pay that Mysore offered –26 Rupees a month which was even better than the pay the East India company in Madras then ( Year 1779 pay scale ) offered for a native Corporal who would have put in at least 14 years of service –20-5-6 (Rupee, Anna, Paisa). Tipu’s choice of the Rajputs in his army was not a surprise as he would have met more than a few of them in his wars with the Nizam where the Rajputs had already entrenched themselves as part of the Mughal entourage that accompanied the first Nizam from Delhi to his seat in the South nearly a century earlier.

Around 1796 Tipu proposed to Zaman Shah the King of Afghanistan to come to India and help him rid India of the British. He writes a letter to the Afghan king and this paragraph inside is interesting :

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” That your Majesty should remain in your capital (Kabul), and send one of your noblemen, in whom you have confidence, to Delhi, with an army; that this person, on his arrival there, should make the necessary arrangements, and, after deposing the infirm King (Mughal Emperor Shah Alam), who has reduced the faith to this state of weakness, select from among the family someone properly qualified for the government; he should remain one year, for the purpose of settling the country (North India); and taking with him, the chiefs of the country who are Rajpoots and others, direct his standard towards the Dekhan;”

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This goes to show the awe Tipu had regarding the prowess of the Rajputs, that he asked the Afghan King to arrange for them to join him and come to the Deccan to rid the South of the English (Marathas and the Nizam as well). It is well known that this plan came to naught with Zaman Shah being unable to come to Mysore’s aid.

Muhammad Hussein Ali Kirmani who lived through the time of Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan in their court and wrote their biographies too mentions about a curious request made by Tipu to the Jadeja Rajput  Maharao (King) of Kutch. We know that the Mysorean diplomatic embassy to Afghanistan was asked to visit enroute the court of the Maharao of Kutch. A large Mysorean factory or warehouse already existed there which was one among Mysore’s several warehouses where various finished gods as well as raw material from Mysore would be traded for cash or goods in return. Kutchi traders were very enterprising and Tipu used their reach and skills to trade with the Persian Gulf too. A khilat or honorary robe had already been presented to the brother of the Maharao and gifts to other senior officers there. Kirmani mentions in the Nishan-i-Haidari :

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“as according to the customs of kings of Delhi, first introduced by Sultan Jalal-uddin Muhammad Akbar; for they previously, demanded the daughters of the family of Jaswant, previous to the Sultan’s accession a certain ceremony remained unperformed, the Sultan having dispatched hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Raja of Kutch; by his presents and favours made him obedient and willing to send his daughter to him in marriage. At that period, however, fortune being employed in endeavours to ruin those professing the true religion, and the defender of God’s people; this happy result was not obtained.”

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So Tipu had in a grand scheme of emulating none other than the Mughal Emperor Akbar who he had already emulated in replacing the Hijri calendar with the Mauludi and in assuming some names not usually used by Muslim monarchs, requested Maharao of Kutch for a Royal Princess in marriage. The Jaswant that Kirmani mentions in his manuscript signifies any Rajput ‘possessed of courage and enterprise’! The proposal failed obviously because the Jadeja Rajput would have refused to offer his daughter to a Muslim king however friendly he would have been. Those were the days when a clan of Rajputs would not dine with another Rajput clan who they perceived as below their standing.  And in that age, marrying ones daughter to a muslim, even a muslim monarch would have been catastrophic to the Maharao’s  social standing. This in all probability masks Kirmani’s account of the curt dismissal of Tipu’s marriage proposal by the Maharao of Kutch as ‘misfortune’.

So over two centuries ago the prestige that the Rajputs carried with them and Tipu Sultan’s great desire to have military alliances with this community brought in a  number of Rajput families to Mysore who have since adopted the city as their own home to whose well being, families like R G Singhs’ have contributed in no small measure.

References:

Computation of the Forces of the Sultan in June 1798, from Macleod’s computation (Forrest’s selections, Maratha series, Vol. I, part III, p. 723)

From Appendix (A) No. 22 – Translation of  paper entitled Proposition to his Majesty Zemaun Shah from A review of the Origin, Progress, and Result of the Decisive war with the Late Tippoo Sultaun in Mysore, 1800

Karnataka State Archives, Red Books, Col. W Morrison, Notes on Mysore – 1834 vide Tipu Sultan, Mysore State and the early Modern World, Dr. Nigel Chancellor

Mir Hussain Ali Khan Kirmani, Nisan-i-Haidari – History of Tipu Sultan (trans.) Col. W. Miles

Kate Brittlebank, Tipu Sultan’s search for legitimacy

Pay, Allowances and Pension of the British Army

Of Tongues and Kings: Tipu Sultan and Kannada

“Tipu Sultan was a traitor to the Kannada language. Kannada which was the administrative language of the Mysore state under the Wodeyars was replaced by Farsi by Tipu Sultan. He was an opponent of the Kannada language…”

These were the words spoken by a  Minister for Higher Education, Government of Karnataka in the midst of a speech at a seminar  titled  “Shikshan Bachao! Save Education!” on 25 September 2006 in Bangalore (1).  No rabble rouser, this prominent politician is known for his devotion to public service and impeccable integrity.  It was assumed that he would be sure of what he was speaking. Yet, after this speech, it was like the deluge. The newspapers were for the next few months awash in print with the deeds and misdeeds of Tipu and there were speeches, articles, petitions and memorandums made by scholars as well as politicians on all sides of the spectrum supporting the speaker’s  assertions as well as criticizing them.  That the politician speaker whose mother tongue was Telugu and who was speaking about Tipu Sultan being an opponent of Kannada in the course of  a seminar with a title in Hindi and English was itself testimony to India’s varied linguistic heritage.  Even a decade later in 2015 at the Bangalore literature festival of all places, we were witness to another lawyer turned politician enlightening the audience that it was on account of Tipu Sultan’s short rule over Mysore, that Hindustani-Persian-Arabic terms like Khatha, Bagar-Hukum among others entered the repertoire of legal speak in Karnataka replacing the older Kannada terminology (2).

In all these years, like an audio tape in a state of eternal play-rewind-play, this angle of Tipu Sultan as an anti-Kannada tyrant has picked momentum and is quite popular now in the imagination of many. So, what is the truth here? Do we let this tape go on running or can we make an attempt to slow or shut this down.

But at first let us frame a set of questions to verify the statement or ‘allegation’ that Tipu Sultan was anti-Kannada. Broadly, they are:

1. What do the contemporary primary sources speak about Farsi REPLACING Kannada as the administrative language in Mysore? Is this ‘allegation’ True or False?

Since it will only make sense to move on to the other questions after this question is answered, let us answer this first with some exhibits.

EXHIBIT 1: Memoir on the Ballaghat Karnatic: British Museum. Additional Manuscript Vol. 13680, folio 58 – 59 ; Tipu Sultan’s Mysore:  An Economic Study, M H Gopal  pp. 72 – From papers collected via Colin Mackenzie’s Report on the Mysore Survey (3)

“It was so far the practice in Mysore for the tarafdars to make out the revenue accounts in Kannada, fair copies of which were communicated to the Amildars who had them translated into Marathi. Copies in both languages were kept under separate and independent  officers as a reciprocal check. This practice prevailed under Haidar and probably in the early part of Tipu’s rule.  After 1792, Tipu ordered the accounts to be substituted in Persian probably to help his Muslim officers and perhaps to Persianise Mysore. Thus, 3 sets of copies of accounts were kept. “

EXHIBIT 2: Tarikh-i-Tipu Sultan, Mir Hussain Ali Kirmani pp. 109 – Kirmani was a biographer who penned accounts of the life of both Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan, he having lived through the rule of both the father and son (4)

“He accordingly selected a number of Musalmans who could scarcely read and write, and appointed them Mirzas of the treasury departments and placed one over each of the other accountants to the end that the accounts might be submitted by them to him in the Persian language”

It should now be clear from the accounts of both these authors who lived through Tipu Sultans rule in Mysore that Tipu Sultan did NOT REPLACE Kannada with Farsi but he only INTRODUCED Farsi as ANOTHER language of administration along with Kannada and Marathi.

It will be a surprise to many as to why Marathi was in vogue among the account keepers along with Kannada in Mysore. Mark Wilks who was again present during the period of the Anglo-Mysore wars and also went on to write a 3 volume history of Mysore states the reason for this: “ In the expedition (of the Bijapur Sultan) for the conquest of the Carnatic in 1638, to which we have already adverted, Shahjee (the father of Shivaji) was second in command to Rend-Dhoola-Khan, the general of the forces; and on the return of that officer to court, two or three years afterwards, was left as provincial governor of all the conquests of Vijeyapoor in Carnatic and Drauveda; …….His first residence was at Bangalore but he afterwards seems to have divided his time between Balapoor and Colar, when not engaged in military expeditions. It was at this time that a swarm of Mahratta bramins was  first introduced into the south for the purpose of establishing, under the direction of Shahjee, a new system of revenue administration and of suppressing not only the universal anarchy which then prevailed” (5)

Thus 2 centuries after a foreign language Marathi would be introduced into Mysore by the Marathas serving under the Bijapur Sultans, as an administrative language, another foreign language Farsi would also occupy a place in the court henceforth.  So, how would this work in practice? Let me illustrate it for you. Assume it is the year 1795 and you are the Shanbhog (village accountant) responsible for preparing the accounts of the village for which you have been hereditarily responsible. The village is in the Nagara Taluk (District) of Mysore and your language of communication as well as the language used by the villagers is Kannada. You will write the accounts of the revenue and Sarkar (Government) expenses pertaining to that villages in the language you know, which will be Kannada. This account book is during the course of the yearly reconciliation of accounts (Jummabundhy) dispatched to the Amildars office in Nagara where the Amildar will instruct his Hindavi (Marathi) Munshi to prepare a Marathi copy in verbatim of the account book. In case the Amildar has the services of a Farsi Munshi available, a copy in verbatim of the original in Kannada will be transcribed into Farsi and the copies dispatched to the capital in Srirangapattana. Where Farsi scribes were hard to come the translation from the source language to Farsi would be done at the court in Srirangapattana itself.  But only the Farsi document would be presented for the examination of Tipu Sultan.  At Srirangapattana Purnayya was in charge of the Kannada department, Krishna Rao in charge of the Marathi department and Munshi Habibullah is said to have been in charge of the Farsi department. In the Malabar, Tamil and Telinga regions under Mysore the administration at the local level as well as all correspondence, especially revenue documents would be made in Malayalam, Tamil or Telugu. And from there copies of these documents would be made in Kannada or Marathi and invariably in Farsi. William Kirkpatrick who after Tipu’s death translated several select letters found at Srirangapattana asks a question in one of his observations in his resulting  book on this correspondence  when he came across Marathi letters there and gives the pertinent answer too: “It is not easy to conceive, what motive the Sultan could have for addressing his
agents on any occasion in the Hind’wy, rather than in the Persian language ; in
which last, it may be safely presumed that he usually conveyed his written orders to such of his servants as understood it.”  For correspondence dispatched from the Mysore court, special care was taken to ensure that this correspondence was in a language intelligible to the receiver. That is why all the Sringeri correspondence from Tipu Sultan to the Mutt is in Kannada and not in Farsi because he would have known that no Farsi Munshi was available at the Mutt in Sringeri. (6)

EXHIBIT 3: ‘Halapusthaka Muthsaddiana’ – A most important and hitherto unknown Kannada document from Tipu’s time.

While the earlier 2 exhibits were merely references to the changes brought by Tipu Sultan with regards to the introduction of Farsi as a language of the Court, no hard statistical evidence was available till date to get an idea of the proportions of documents generated in each of these languages. However good fortune awaited us and we now have a fair idea of these numbers too. The document mentioned as the Exhibit  is from Tipu Sultan’s library which was sacked by the British victors on May 4, 1799 and the large majority of the collection sent to Calcutta and London.  It enlightens us upon several aspects related to the Stores and Supply department at Tipu Sultan’s capital city, Srirangapattana. (7) That such an important  document is in Kannada, by itself renders the allegation that Tipu was anti-Kannada baseless! Dr. Jagdish and myself have been working on this document for over a year now and we were pleasantly surprised to see the lists of scribes  employed by the Khodadad Sarkar ( Tipu’s Government) in Srirangapattana classified as per the language they wrote in, their number and wages earned  written on 2 folios of the 45 in this manuscript.

2 Folios from the Halapusthaka of the Stores & Supply Dept. of the Srirangapattana Fort with details of the scribes and languages they write in

The list goes like this:

1. A sum of 56 Sultani Gadyanas (Mohurs) is expended for a team of 3 Farsi writers and 1 ink man. Total 4 members.
2. A sum of 108 Sultani Gadyanas (Mohurs) is expended for a 4 teams of 3 Hindavi (Marathi) writers and 1 ink man each . Total 16 members.
3. A sum of 108 Sultani Gadyanas (Mohurs) is expended for 5 teams of 3 Kannada writers and 1 ink man each . Total 20 members.

This shows that the largest number of scribes was those who were working in Kannada (15 scribes) and this number was 5 times more than the number working in Farsi (3 scribes).

1. This could only mean that the number of documents generated in Kannada was far in excess compared to those generated in Farsi.
2. The per scribe pay for Farsi was higher than that for Kannada. This meant that scribes with skills in Farsi were rarer to find than scribes with Kannada writing skills.

The sum of these 3 Exhibits goes on to prove that Farsi did not replace Kannada but only added to the repertoire of languages used for government use in Mysore. This being said there is no denying that Farsi was the first among equals among languages in Tipu Sultan’s Mysore  towards the end of the 18^th C. It  occupied the same place that Hindi today occupies in India along with the state languages (Kannada in the case of Karnataka) and a wider link language – English. Not much has changed, only the languages have. Let us now move on to the next question!

2. Why was Farsi chosen as the link language in the Court? Why not Urdu, Kannada, Marathi or even French?

It is difficult to think of Persian as an Indian language today. Yet for hundreds of years, Farsi held sway as a language of administration and high culture across the subcontinent. It was brought in by Persiophile central Asians during the 12th century, and played a role very similar to the one Hindi and English does in modern India. So, in the 17th century, when the Marathi King Shivaji wanted to communicate with Rajasthani King Jai Singh, the general of the Mughal army in the Deccan, they used Farsi.  By the mid 17^th C and all through the 18^th and the middle part of even the 19^th C, Farsi remained the primary language used in the courts of the Deccan and the Carnatic. (8)

The kingdoms across India be they Mughal or whatever was left of them, Hyderabad, Bengal, Marathas, Rajput Rajahs, the Sikhs and even the British and the French  were in Tipu’s time using Farsi as the medium of communication between each other. This was the language using which ideas were exchanged from Kandahar down to Arcot. Mysore with it’s unique position as being the earliest Indian power to realize the value of mercantile trade as well as a vibrant import of military personnel could not shirk away from using the advantages of  India’s most important and widely used language  then– Farsi.

What greater testimony to the importance as well as acceptance of Persian in those days in Mysore proper even after the demise of Tipu Sultan  can be provided than the images of coins from the reign of Mummadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar III who succeeded Tipu as well as a Royal  invitation to the coronation of Nalvadi Krishnarajendra Wodeyar IV with the Wodeyar family’s Persian seal embossed on it!

A Silver Rupee coin from the period of Mummadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar who succeeded Tipu to the throne of Mysore. Observe the text on the coin all of which is in Persian. Image Courtesy: Heritage Auctions

Invitation for the Coronation of Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar with the Wodeyar Persian Seal on the card Image Courtesy: RG Singh Blog

3. Was Tipu Sultan responsible for introducing several Persian-Arabic terms prevalent in Revenue and Legal departments in Karnataka?

Tipu Sultan while using Farsi as the language of the court was only doing what the greatest of the Mysore Wodeyars – Kanthirava Narasaraja Wodeyar had initiated  toward the mid 17^th C when he would begin to emulate Mughal practices with respect to revenue assessment as well as military organization for which he used the services of Marathi Brahmins many among whom had already started moving into Karnataka following Shahji’s army. Thus, Marathi over some time took a strong foothold in Mysore. If one will not grudge Marathi as a court language of Mysore, neither should one grudge Farsi. By that time even Maratha coinage across it’s geographical extant – Gwalior, Indore, Baroda even smaller principalities like Sandur, Thanjavur were minting coins and writing documents in Farsi alsong with Marathi. The state anthem of Baroda state which is in Gujarat is not in Gujarati but in Marathi! Diwan Purnayya himself came from a family of Deshastha Marathi Brahmin origin.

Among other thing that the Marathas introduced with their language were revenue and legal terms used by the Mughals and with a Persian-Arabic origin. Mark Wilks writes about this in the year – “Among other innovations the offices and Mahratta names of Deshpondee, Deshmook, Koolkurnee, together with the Persian designations of Canoongoe, Serishtadar, and numberless other novelties, were then introduced.”  (9) So, once again contrary to the lawyer turned politician’s allegation it was not Tipu but the Marathas who introduced these foreign terms into Mysore.

I was also surprised to read an article by Late Dr. Chidananda Murthy where he says: “He (Tipu) replaced Kannada with Perso-Arabic as the official language. Barring a few letters written to temples, all his correspondences were in Arabic. ” A brilliant scholar, Dr. Murthy at least here, had been misinformed. (10)

4. What was the immediate reaction of the Kannada speaking working class to the British victory over Tipu Sultan?

We have now looked at contemporary accounts of the introduction of Farsi without displacing Kannada and the larger proportion of Kannada document writers in comparison to the Farsi ones as well. Now let us close this cycle by looking into the future post the tumultuous events of 4 May, 1799 when Tipu died defending Mysore bravely and interview the erstwhile Kannada speaking working class to know if they felt  ‘discriminated against’ in any way!!

For this let us go back in time to 11 May, 1801 where we may accompany Francis Buchanan in his travel through the newly conquered dominion of Mysore and with him now in Bangalore where he has just interviewed some Brahmins and has this to say: “I was much surprised to hear that the greatest complainers against the change of government are certain Brahmans;…….being the only men of business in the country, were in full possession of the revenue department. During the reign of the Sultan, the number of petty officers in this department was immense,  and everyone was permitted to share in the spoil of the country.” (11) So here we have the actual class of Kannada speaking revenue officers who tell Buchanan that they are unhappy at Tipu’s fall as this has robbed them of their prosperity. What other evidence does one need to know that this tale of Tipu removing Kannada from his administration giving those who hear this grim tale visions of decrepit and hungry Kannada speakers formerly well employed but now victims of the thieving Persian Tipu Sultan walking around seeking alms, a morsel of food and shelter !

At the end, one can only hope that  this shrill tape that keeps playing in the background of Tipu Sultan being an opponent of the Kannada language will just……stop!

Notes & References:

1. Mr. D.H. Shankaramurthy, Minister for Higher Education, Government of Karnataka expressed these views on the occasion.

2. Mr. Tejasvi Surya, Member of Parliament, Bangalore South expressed his views on the occasion.

3. Mackenzie Collection at the BM, London

4. M.H. Kirmani a contemporary of Tipu through his biography of Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan presents to us an excellent account of many quirks of character of the protagonists and events in which they play a role; yet his accounts are tinged with an element of Muslim orthodoxy or even fanaticism.

5. History of Mysore, Lt. Col. Mark Wilks, V 1 pp. 72

6. The records of the Sringeri Dharmasamsthana, Late Dr. A K Shastry pp 167 – 220

7. Towards an understanding of the Stores and Supply department in Mysore from a reading of Tipu Sultan’s Hukumnama; Dr. Jagdish & Nidhin G. Olikara, Unpublished

8. Forgotten Farsi; Maryam Papi; Quartz India, Sept. 8, 2017

9. History of Mysore, Lt. Col. Mark Wilks, V 1 pp. 73

10. TOI, Nov 10, 2016 Tipu was no Freedom Fighter, Dr. C. Murthy

11. A journey from Madras through the countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar; Francis Buchanan Vol 1 pp. 47

The Pining Princess: The tragedy of Shahzadi Noorunissa

I have over the past few years been intermittently working upon over a century of correspondence deposited at the West Bengal state archives in Kolkata between Tipu Sultan’s sons’ and extended family in Russapaglah, then a malarious swampy suburb of Calcutta with their British‘captors’ at Fort St. William nearby, from where
colonial India was administered. While the larger number of these letters relate to mundane matters of allowances,  furlough and obituaries there are some that strike a chord in you and exhibit the state of utter helplessness that the family would have felt in British captivity and exile after having lived for so many years at home in Mysore
with their father Tipu Sultan, inveterate enemy of the British by their side.

One such particular letter is this one here dated 28 July, 1809 which is from the Persian Office which dealt with letters in Persian to the Superintendent of affairs of the Mysore Princes, a position created specifically to oversee the affairs of the exiled Mysore family. The letter confirms to the Superintendent that an earlier letter received from him has been forwarded to the paymaster of stipends. But what is most intriguing here is a note in finer print added to the left of the main content of the letter. This note said that the younger sister of the late Prince Mohiuddeen was requesting Capt. Marriott in Vellore to send her husband to her in Calcutta. This was the translation of the Persian letter received and now said to be forwarded to Vellore.

Who was this Princess? What was her name and what was her story? We have a clue in the letter that calls her the youngest sister of the Late Prince Mohiuddin and says that her husband is Meer ***uddeen (a part of the name is obfuscated now). I began with
looking at the genealogy chart of the Haidar-Tipu family. Now. Mohiuddin had several half sisters but only 2 full sisters that were born to the same mother, Ruqayya Bano. THe youngest among his 2 sisters was Shahzadi Halima Begum Sahiba who was married to Khwaja Ali Husain Khan in 1819. This could not have been our Princess obviously from her husband’s name and the fact that she was married 3 years after this letter was written. I now looked at the other sister Shahzadi Noorunissa Begum Sahiba. She was married on 3rd July 1806 to Mir Nizamuddin.  This was our Princess! It begins with her being born to Ruqayya Bano who was her father Tipu Sultan’s childhood sweetheart and favourite wife.

As I started connecting the dots around her life, a story of continuous tragedy unfolded. Princess Noorunissa lost her Uncle Burhanuddin  who was Ruqayya Bano’s brother and Tipu’s closest friend when he died fighting the English in 1790 near Satyamangalam. Just 2 years later she would lose her mother Ruqayya who died in childbirth in 1792 in the midst of the British siege of Seringapatam where she went into shock on account of fright at the noise of the British batteries cannonading into the fort. And then, on May 4, 1799 her father would be killed when Seringapatam fell to the British and she would
become an orphan with her brother Mohiuddeen who was the Padshah Bahadur now as heir designate to the throne. The children who had since their birth been privileged to grow up as Royalty were now prisoners and at the mercy of those who were responsible for the death of their parents. Soon Lord Wellesley ordered the removal of Tipu’s family from Mysore, “with the least practicable injury to their feelings”, so that the Mysorean populace was prevented from rallying around the heirs of their late ruler. The four elder princes of Tipu – Fath Haidar, Abdul Khaliq, Moyinuddin and Mohiuddeen, with their respective families, crossed the Kaveri river and proceeded on their march to Vellore on the morning of 19th June 1799. Princess Noorunissa followed in this large group of despondent royals. She would have settled down to a dreary life in Vellore sequestered in the fort there along with her brother Prince Mohiuddeen and other relatives. Her train of continuous sorrows would hopefully end on 3rd July 1806 when her wedding was fixed with Mir Nizamuddin, son of Tipu’s confidante Syed Makhdum. But again fate had something else in store for her.

There were about 3000 Mysoreans in Vellore in around the time of the wedding festivities. Native solders in the British army in April 1806 were ordered to wear a new kind of turban made of leather (prepared from cow hide in most cases), which was against their religious feelings. This new form of turban was actually resembled a round hat topped by cockade, similar to what some European and Indian Christians were using. This was on top of too hugely unpopular orders, one banning sepoys from displaying ash on the forehead or a beard on chin. Consequently some of the fort’s sepoys and their Indian seniors refused to wear it, whereupon two havaldars, one hindu and the other a muslim, were punished with 900 lashes. The wedding reception of Noorunnissa Begum took place on the night of July 9th, 1806.In the early hours of 10th July 1806 the flag of Tippu Sultan bearing ‘the sun in the centre with green tiger stripes on a red field’ was hoisted on the garrison flag staff amidst victorious shouts of ‘Deen’, ‘Deen’! Princess Noorunissa’s half brother Mousa Uddeen as well as her own brother Mohiuddeen were reported to have encouraged  the Sepoys in their revolt. Alas, the revolt after a violent struggle was harshly put down by the British and once again a spell of retributions on the family followed. The Princes were taken into custody and Noorunissa’s brother Mohiuddeen was subject to  bitter punishment. After a military trial he was jailed in Vellore and in October 1807, he along with the other Princes was exiled far away to Calcutta. He was jailed there while his sister Noorunissa lived in apartments in a large estate allocated to them. They were guarded all through their time there and were prohibited from any contact with the outside world. The Princes were subject to negligent and brutal treatment in jail which led to Prince Mohyuddeen taking his own life in Jail in 1809. One can but imagine about the state of his only sister Noorunissa then.

Now coming back to this Persian letter she sent to Vellore, it becomes apparent that the British did not allow her husband to join her in Calcutta. He would have regarded as dangerous in the company of the Princes in Calcutta and would have continued to stay under house arrest with the remaining family members in Vellore. Shahzadi Noorunissa Begum Sahiba as she was officially called would have enjoyed married life for but 6 days from the wedding on July 3 to the reception on the ill fated day of the Vellore mutiny on
July 9, 1807. She was not allowed to be with her husband after that and 9 years after her exile to Calcutta she seems to muster courage to request Captain Marriott who had custody of the Mysore Family in Vellore to send her husband to her. I am not sure as to what reply he gave to her and if her husband was allowed to come to Calcutta to be with the rest of the family. I am yet to see a reply from Capt. Marriott of this request. But what is known is that her husband died in 1829 and Princess Noorunissa herself passes away in 1831, childless. I will not be surprised if the couple ever saw each other again.

This letter like many other in the archive brings out the despair in the Royal household at their state of captivity and dependence on the English who their father and grandfather spent their lives fighting. And we can only think about what it means for someone, Tipu here to risk all on his stand that Mysore would not have any alliance with England and would do all it could to fight them on all available fronts. This stand of his not only led to his death fighting with sword in hand in that cramped water-gate on the afternoon of May 4, 1799 but also caused immense hardship to his family which endures even today where most of his descendants eke out  a miserable but honorable living in the heat and humidity of bustling Calcutta. Steadfastness to a cause is not just wielding a sword in it’s name but also swallowing the poison of awareness that even after you are gone, there will be a price to pay. But for Tipu Sultan, there was no price more precious that the continued independence of Mysore.