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Alexander burnes on Sikhs


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5 hours ago, shastarSingh said:

Alexander burnes write a book 'travels into bokhara' in 1834. It can be downloaded at

https://archive.org/details/travelsintobokh04burngoog

He personally met Maharaja Ranjit Singh during his travels.

His quotes:

1. About half way across the “ Doab" we reached Pidana, the seat of one of the principal chiefs of the Punjab, Sirdar Juwala Sing, who
had been sent from Lahore to entertain us at his family mansion. He met us about a mile out,
and delivered a letter with a bow and a bag of money. The chief had robed himself in a rich dress of brocade, and his retainers were arrayed in tunics of yellow, which is the favourite colour of the Seiks. 

Do you think the repeated references to yellow might reflect a particular 'fashion' at the time rather than a Sikh 'colour', which a lot of sources seem to suggest was dark blue? 

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36 minutes ago, dallysingh101 said:

Do you think the repeated references to yellow might reflect a particular 'fashion' at the time rather than a Sikh 'colour', which a lot of sources seem to suggest was dark blue? 

Dark blue is no.1 khalsa colour but yellow is also a khalsa colour as mentioned by daya Singh rahitnama and other 18th century sources. Plz read 

Akali fauj wore blue all the time.

So Ranjit Singh opted for yellow as it was also a khalsa colour.

Though yellow was the main colour of his Darbaar, Ranjit Singh also wore white and sometimes green too.

Daya Singh Rahitnama mentions 4 khalsa colours

Blue

Yellow 

White 

Green

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19 hours ago, californiasardar1 said:

That sounds plausible

It's not like the other things they were doing were in line with Sikhi

I'm really trying to get away from sort of neo-puritan modern notions of 'Sikhism' and transposing them onto the past. But regarding the topic of colours under discussion, I think fashions and styles of prominent people would dictate too, so any preferred color (or even style?) adopted by a powerful figure would be emulated by many other subordinates, in the same way people like to adopt the style and look of celebrities even today. 

Asides from the dark blue, which has antecedents from dasmesh pita's time, I'm not sure if there were any sort of rigid preferred colours for Sikhs? I know that red may have been prohibited for a while, but that was probably in reaction to Bandai Singhs? If we look at this purportedly contemporary painting of SatGuru Tegh Bahadhur ji, we can see that they had no problem wearing red (if the image is what is claimed):

Sikh_Art_Kapany_Collection-pdf-1-onp0p8wox6qjhn3etxouxupzhtmfhjm8y8hkunru2o.jpg.35d1901277df271731f8542dec829448.jpg

Plus you know Panjabis!  (not saying all Sikhs are Panjabi btw!!) They like bright, garish colours to cringe worthy levels.....

Here's some paintings by my favorite European painter of that era August Schoeft, who spent some time in the independent Sikh kingdom (and as his art testifies) had a very acute sense of detail. I think this reflects the ground level situation much better than just textual sources?

1742907064_schoeftranjitharmandir.png.ecd94de7223288ab6c8c97c471d6d0c3.png

 

In the above we see gyanis/granthis seem to have preferred white? Nihungs/Akalis are in blue as expected, the others including M. Ranjit Singh (seated on the large red  pillow) are wearing a mixture of colours, including red.

The following reflects the situation regarding dress amongst the elites, as we can see, it looks like a free for all:

1094464384_schoeftdarbar.png.62932ae6e0155176caf620b0c624d125.png

Here's a representation of the above from a contemporary (or near contemporary) Sikh perspective (artist Bishan Singh) - note the variety of bright colours: 

The court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh By Bishan Singh : punjabi

This one shows a wider community around Amritsar (you can see Harmandir Sahib in the back right):

Taxi driver's £40 car boot find turns out to be £75,000 Sikh miniature |  Sikh Museum Initiative

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