GUNS AND GLORY

A sumptuously produced book on the Jodhpur armoury is a collector’s delight

- SNEHA BHURA

Aristocratic Rajputs hardly ever wielded guns in Jodhpur paintings, not until the second half of the eighteenth century. An officer with the British East India Company, James Tod, wrote in the nineteenth century: “The Rajputs who still curse those vile guns which render of comparative[ly] little value the lance of many a gallant soldier, and he still prefers falling with dignity from his steed to descending to an equality with his mercenary antagonists.”

Robert Elgood, an expert on historic arms, has referenced this quote and elaborated on Rajput’s disdain for gunpowder weapons vis-à-vis the Mughals in the sumptuously produced The Maharaja of Jodhpur’s Guns commissioned by the Mehrangarh Museum Trust— perhaps only to further accentuate the stunning range of Indian matchlocks, sporting guns, shotguns, revolvers and automatic pistols that reside in the Jodhpur collection. This book offers a richly illustrated account of historic Indian arms with its splendid interspersing of 350 crystalline images of guns and Rajput paintings sourced from private collections by Elgood.

FIRE POWER

Men carrying the ‘big and long’ lamchar; (below) a Bussey Air Pistol

The section 45(c) of the Arms Act, 1959, allows ownership of weapons of “an obsolete pattern or of antiquarian value or in disrepair”. Elgood takes care to mention at the very outset how during Indira Gandhi’s prime ministership, guns in the Jodhpur armoury were perforated with holes in their breeches to make them defunct. What follows is a fascinating account of gilded weapons in war and peace.