Kupuldhara Tulao, Benares

1834

Later hand-coloured lithograph on paper

Print Size: 8.25 x 11 in (21 x 27.6 cm)
Sheet Size: 9 x 12 in (22.5 x 30.5 cm)
With Mount: 15.25 x 18.5 in (38.5 x 46.8 cm)

Kupuldhara Tulao, Benares, is a small tank located to the north-west of the town and is one of the numerous resting places in the Panch-Kosi Yatra pilgrimage route.

This print is plate 2 from the third part of James Prinsep’s Benares Illustrated.

James Prinsep (20 August 1799 – 22 April 1840)
Prinsep was a brilliant architect, palaeographer, and numismatist (cf. Abbey Travel, 607). If ever there has been an unsung genius, it is James Prinsep. Born in 1799, he had a short life of only forty years, dying in 1840. Despite his diverse interests and significant contributions in various fields, we can confidently declare him as one of the greatest geniuses in human history. Thus, he was at the same time a physicist, a chemist, an anthropologist, a geologist, a meteorologist, a numismatist, an epigraphist, a town planner, a cartographer, and an architect (and one may not have exhausted the list). His interpretation of the Brahmi script was how India and the rest of the world learned about the great Mauryan Emperor Asoka. This would have put him in the same category as Champollion and Rawlinson as intellectual history's greats. When one considers that James deciphered not one, but two ancient scripts—Brahmi and Kharosthi—revealing the existence of a whole line of Indo-Scythian kings, one is filled with awe for the man.

He worked at the mint at Benares from 1820 to 1830, after which he moved to Calcutta, where he remained until his death. He was one of the many sons of an indigo merchant, who was himself assaymaster at Benares for many years, where he advised on the construction of the new mint, a church, a bridge, and the improvement of the drainage of the city into the Ganges. He was also instrumental in reforming the system of Indian weights and measures, but his “greatest achievement was to decipher the hitherto unreadable scripts of the most ancient of Indian inscriptions... In 1822 he had applied his talents in draughtsmanship to a thorough survey of Benares... [and] a series of exquisite watercolours of the monuments and festivals of Benares was sent to London in 1829 to be lithographed. These were published in Calcutta and London between 1830 and 1834 as Benares Illustrated” (ODNB).

Of this plate, James Prinseps writes, 'This is one of the numerous resting places in the panch-kosee jatra, or peregrination of the via sacra, which encircles the consecrated ground of the holy city and is supposed to measure five coss or ten miles in length. It is merely a small tank to the north-west of the town, beyond the Burna Nala, provided with a dhurm sala, or lodge for pilgrims, attached to a temple in the usual style of architecture, dedicated to the communication of one of the feats of Shiva when he designed to visit his favourite city... The annual nahan, or bathing at this spot, continues for the whole month of Kartik...’. (Source: British Library Board)

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