THE ARTS OF THE SIKH KINGDOMS
Edited by SUSAN STRONGE
New York: Weatherhill, 1999. 256 pages, $50

Mary-Ann Milford-Lutzker

Lahore, the beautiful northern capital of the great Mughal emperors of India in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, became the capital of the Sikhs in 1801 when Ranjit Singh (1780 1839) was proclaimed the Maharaja of the Panjab. Sikh territory at the height of Ranjit Singh's power encompassed the Panjab, the land of the five rivers-all tributaries of the Indus River-which today lies mostly in Pakistan, Kashmir, and northwest India. Since the Indus Valley civilization of the third millennium B.C.E., this area has been enriched by its pivotal position on the trade routes that extended from China to Persia and Rome and from Central Asia to South India, and by the sea routes from Africa and Southeast Asia. Control of this area meant political and economic power, which translated into the accumulation of extraordinary wealth. This wealth allowed the enlightened Mughal rulers to build monumental tombs and mosques and paradisiacal gardens. They were connoisseurs and aesthetes who collected sumptuous jewels and textiles and brought to their courts outstanding artists to paint murals on their palace walls and miniatures for their albums. It was in this extraordinary milieu that the arts of the Sikh kingdoms flourished.
Guru Nanak, who was born in 1469, is revered as the founder of the Sikh faith; however, it was Guru Gobind Singh, tenth in the line of Sikh spiritual leaders, who formalized the beliefs and traditions of Sikhism into a religious organization. He created the Sarkar Khalsaji, the State of the Pure, in 1699, and to mark the 300th anniversary of that event, in 1999 the Victoria and Albert Museum in London organized an exhibition of Sikh art. Immediately questions were raised concerning the definition of such art. Although South Asian art can be distinctly separated into Hindu, Jain, and Moslem, these categories often blur, particularly in the arts of the Mughal courts, since artisans and craftsmen would work for patrons of different castes and religious affiliations. Therefore, to distinguish what was particularly Sikh has allowed for a comprehensive investigation of Sikh culture.

The Arts of the Sikh Kingdoms, edited by Susan Stronge, is both book and catalogue to the exhibition, which traveled from the V&A to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Twelve chapters, written by outstanding scholars and specialists, discuss the history, religion, architecture, rulers, paintings, textiles, and photography of the Sikhs. Much of the research and information included in them refers to art and objects that are not in the exhibition. At the end of the volume, is a catalogue of the 231 objects in the exhibition, each of which is fully documented and described.
In her essay on "The Arts of the Court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh," Susan Stronge details the opulence that surrounded the Sikh ruler. She quotes firsthand accounts by British governors and residents of Lahore who were deeply impressed by Ranjit Singh's collection of magnificent jewels, jades, textiles, and weaponry. The legendary Koh i nur diamond was just one among many of his treasures, the most splendid of which surely has to be his golden throne, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection.
Ranjit Singh's passion for precious objects was, perhaps, in emulation of the collections of the great Mughals Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan. However, he does not seem to have developed a similar taste for paintings as his Mughal predecessors had. B. N. Goswamy has written an insightful essay in the chapter entitled "Painting in the Panjab," in which he focuses on the work done in Lahore. He points out that there was not a school of Sikh painting that can be easily identified by style, but emphasizes that to accept the commonly held belief that Sikh painting consisted mainly of idealized portraits of the ten great Gurus and the Janam Sakhi and portrayals of the life of Guru Nanak, the founder of the faith, is to overlook the breadth of illustrations that were being made. They included palace murals, tales of Krishna from the Bhagavata Purana, and depictions of Ranjit Singh honoring the great goddess Devi, in the meticulous Kangra style.
Rosemary Crill writes at length on the lavish use of brightly colored silks, shawls, and gold brocade textiles that covered all surfaces at the royal court. Kashmir was defeated by Ranjit Singh in 1819, after which a yearly tribute was sent to the court in Lahore, a sizeable part of which was paid in shawls. Crill traces the development of European taste for Kashmir shawls and the impact that they had on trade and the fashion industry, particularly in France. The illustrations of the textiles are superb, showing in brilliant color details of the fine weaving and the intricate embroidery.
Photography arrived in India in the 1840s. The old sepia toned albumen prints record places and people from a romanticized past, yet they are compelling documents of an eternal India that hold a fascination because they reflect a certain reality. David Patel writes about early photographers such as John McCosh, a surgeon whose main interest was in recording everything he saw, including "natives." Patel discusses the colonial attitudes that were perpetuated through photography. Many photographs were sent to the India Museum in London, where they were placed in an eight volume set entitled The People of India, which was published between 1868 and 1875. The photographs included in those volumes catalogued the different "types" of people that the new discipline of anthropology was interested in studying.
The Arts of the Sikh Kingdom is encyclopedic in its treatment of Sikh religion, history, and culture. It is also highly accessible due to its clearly and thoughtfully written essays and its beautiful illustrations.

Mary Ann Milford-Lutzker, Carver Professor of Asian Art History at Mills College, has written extensively on the art of South and Southeast Asia and has curated exhibitions of Indian, Indonesian, Chinese, and Japanese art. Her current research is on contemporary Indian women artists.