SUGGESTIONS THAT MEDALS FOR THE INDIAN ARMY SHOULD BE INDIAN IN IDEAS, AND IN THE LANGUAGE USED FOR INSCRIPTIONS.

[A. D. 1846 AND 1849.]

TO LEONARD WYON, Esq.

Cork, 1 October, 1846.

MY DEAR LEN,-I have to thank you for your letter of the 28th, but am so pressed for the post that I can only notice one part of it, the intended medal for the victories on the Sutlej.

In a paper which will appear in the Supplement to my Olla Podrida (and which would have been in the press ere now if we only knew the extent of the demands on us which this potatoe disease would, or rather will, occasion), I have taken the liberty of giving my opinion, that in placing English inscriptions on the coinage of the East Indian empire, our Government are wrong; and that an East Indian people should have East Indian language on their coins; and, further, that Her Majesty's bust should appear crowned, to suit Eastern ideas of royalty, and that it should be inscribed, “ Victoria Queen of India." If Sir Henry Hardinge may call himself GovernorGeneral of India, is his mistress and sovereign to appear, and to be designated, as a less personage than Queen of India? On this principle, and considering also that the great proportion of the soldiers to whom these medals are to be given are natives of India; as you are not to represent the glorious and actual fact, that the Indian soldiers beat down the Sikhs, I suggest to you that, instead of employing the Gods of Greece* and Rome, and the personifications of Christianity paganized, you will do much better to make the medal Indian in its subjects and language. Represent our sovereign lady as a Queen in all her ensigns of royalty-crown, ear-rings, necklace, and robes; and your reverse, the preserving Indian deity (Vishnu, I rather think) overthrowing the destroying spirit (who, I believe, is Siva). One of Vishnu's incarnations is, bursting from a

*Mars, Minerva, Britannia, and so forth-nonentities.

tree, or from a rock, and destroying a giant. This would be well understood by the Indian soldiers, and enhance their value of the medal. With Hindustani inscriptions, and let these inscriptions really tell, for the information of future ages, what was done and why they were struck. I have hit pretty hard on this part of the subject in my paper to the Cuvierians, on the former medals for Ghuznee, &c. and which will appear (I hope for the improvement of future medals) in the threatened "Supplement of the Olla." I merely have time to give you this hint of an idea, hoping its common sense may lead your good father* to improve upon it. In galloping haste,

SIR,-About five years since I printed for private distribution an 8vo. vol. "an Olla Podrida," chiefly on coins and medals, dedicated to my friend and county man Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, which I presented to the principal public libraries, that of the East India Company being one; and I mention this that you may be aware that I have, though a merchant, given some consideration to the subject on which I take the liberty of calling your attention. The newspapers bringing the right welcome intelligence of the conquest and annexation of the Punjaub, state that the Governor-General had promised the troops a medal, which indeed we should now expect as a matter of course, considering the immense consequence of what Oliver Cromwell would have termed, and most justly, "a crowning mercy." My idea of a medal, and which in the Olla Podrida I have endeavoured to impress on those who strike them, is, that it should be a record in itself, and suitable to and understood by those among whom it is to circulate. I therefore think that medals to

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* The Chief Engraver, coinciding as to the propriety of this innovation, proposed it to the authorities of the India House, by whom it was rejected, and the sterotyped " Victory," a female winged figure, for the thousand and odd times repeated, so that my Indian pearls were cast (to no useful purpose) before English swine. Putting this, however, out of consideration, the Victory is most beautifully designed and engraved.

commemorate an event of Indian history, and a great proportion of which are to be given to Indian soldiers, should be as Indian as possible. We understand that splendour of appearance is one requisite of the sovereign to ensure respect from the subject in India; therefore the portrait of Her Majesty on the medal should be similar to that by Mr. Wyon, R.A., Chief Engraver of the Mint, Tower Hill, on the last crown, or five-shilling piece, wearing the crown and richly habited, rather than the mere head and neck, as on the previous medals. This crown-portrait of Queen Victoria is without any exception the most beautiful and dignified that has ever appeared of any female sovereign or deity on ancient or modern medals. Look over the Greek and Roman series in the British Museum, and judge for yourself; and as I apprehend, from what I have read of India, it realises the Hindoo idea of "The Ranee."

The reverse of a medal, in my opinion, should come as close to the actuality of the event it records as the artist can represent it; and in this case the Anglo-Indian soldier should be represented overthrowing the Sikh soldier, as he actually did. Costume and arms of both soldiery accurately portrayed, so that the Anglo-Hindoo on receiving his medal would at once understand it, though he might not be able to read the inscriptions, which should be Hindoostani or Persian. There can be no objection to this, "lest we should offend the Sikhs." You have found out at last that the mode to prevent their being offended is to prove and to proclaim your own superiority, by first annihilating their army and then their state. This I think the best kind of reverse-the fact represented in its actuality.

But if allegory is preferred, your allegory should be Indian: Vishnu, the preserving deity, overthrowing the Siva, the destroying deity. To your Hindoo subjects as well as to their English auxiliaries in India this would be plain " A, B, C ;" and I should suppose to the Hindoo it would also carry a religious conviction that his deity was the friend of the English. At all events in India it must be more suitable than a reference to the Pantheon of Greece or Rome, or to any paganized personification of Christian justice or religion. This I think is the plain common-sense view of the subject, which is but too often unheeded; and propriety taken for granted to be one with precedent-without a consideration of whether a Greek,

Roman, or English precedent is the most or at all suitable in India. Your Indian empire has I suspect been worked out by European intellect on Indian precedents.

Believe me to remain, Sir,

Your obedient Servant,

RICHARD SAINTHILL.

To the Honourable the Chairman

of the East India Company.

P.S.-A learned friend (John Lindsay, Esq.) to whom I submitted this letter, observes "that the medal should have two inscriptions; one English or Latin, and below the same in Hindoostani or Persian ;" and he remarks, that "India affords the precedent for it, as the Greek kings of Bactria, &c. had double inscriptions of Greek and Hindoo on their coins, as your collection at the India House will shew you."

India House, 4 June, 1849.

M.-General Sir Archd. Galloway presents his compliments to Mr. Sainthill.

He has received Mr. Sainthill's interesting letter of suggestions on medals, and begs to return him his best thanks for it.

Richd. Sainthill, Esq. Cork.

MEMORANDUM.-Sir Archibald Galloway died rather suddenly a very short time after honouring me with this letter; and so unfortunately ended my hopes of Indianizing an Indian medal of merit.

NOTICES OF MEDALS FOR THE WAR IN

AFFGHANISTAN.

[READ BEFORE THE CORK CUVIERIAN SOCIETY, 1 APRIL, 1846.]

FROM the interest which the Society take in the medallic branch of numismatics, I feel assured that I shall be willingly afforded such a portion of their time as may be necessary while calling their attention to a few recent English medals.

Our unfortunate interference in the affairs of Affghanistan to restore Shah Shooja-ool-Moolk to the throne of his ancestors as King of Cabul, occasioned the striking of four medals as military decorations. One for the storming of Ghuznee in the first and brilliant campaign of 1839, and three for events in 1842.

*

The first medal (which was furnished by Messrs. Piltar and Co. of Calcutta, but has not the engraver's name on it), presents on its obverse the Cabool gate of Ghuznee, protected on its right and left by advancing bastions, and in front by a work raised about four months previous to the arrival of the English army, by Lieutenant Vilkievich, a Russian officer,† considered as the Russian envoy to the

* So I am informed by an officer who earned the distinction.

In the "Times," Saturday, September 25, 1852, there appeared a very able review of a "History of the War in Affghanistan. From unpublished Letters and Journals. By John William Kaye. Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street. 1851;" from which I extract a passage that gives a full account of this Russian officer, and confirming what I had been informed by an English officer engaged in the whole campaign, and present at the storming of Ghuznee :

"But there is left still to tell one other portion of the history-perhaps the saddest of all-though a portion nearly eclipsed by the more exciting record of the actual conflict. With what feelings did the authorities in this country first prompt the exposure of those lives? What feelings, in other words, predominated when the issue had made itself plain? On the 23d of June, 1842, upon Mr. Baillie's motion, the then Sir J. Hobhouse and Lord Palmerston asserted in the House of Commons that Lord Auckland had adopted, and could not have done otherwise than adopt, the views of Alexander Burnes. To support this theory and throw their own blame upon the memory of a man who was no longer alive, and who was not then known to have left behind him duplicates, and even tripli cates, of all his official letters, a blue-book was presented to Parliament in which every portion of every document was diligently cut out which could implicate the really responsible persons. Even the first few lines of one letter were expunged, leaving just enough of