Mundy Shaheb-er Golpo [The Tale of Mundy Sahib]
Description
Mundy Shaheb-er Golpo [The Tale of Mundy Sahib] is taken from the journals of Peter Mundy, who was an East India Company factor and the son of a pilchard merchant from Penryn, Cornwall. He arrived in Surat on 30 September 1628, and was sent to Agra in November 1630, where he remained until 17 December 1631. He then proceeded to Puttana on the borders of Bengal, and went back to Agra and Surat before returning to Dover on 9 September 1634. He undertook further voyages to India, China, and Japan in April 1636. The manuscripts of his prolific journals are held in the Bodleian Library and the British Library. They include Mundy’s own drawings and tracings of some of his routes.
Among the many stories that Mundy tells, our selection focuses on his account of travelling through Gujarat and Malwa during the notorious Gujarat famine of 1630-32. The scroll painters of Naya responded empathetically to Mundy’s own background of shortage and economic struggle with the decline of the pilchard fisheries in Cornwall, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In their narrative, Mundy’s early life in Penryn appears prominently, as it reminded the artists in Naya (located close to coastal areas in Bengal) of the constant travails of their local communities of fishermen. On the other hand, the graphic artist regards Mundy’s narrative with a more satirical eye. The items in this collection demonstrate the processes by which the narrative was researched, analysed, and reworked, to create the final outputs of the scroll and graphic narratives. The collection contains source materials that were created and shared, videos and photographs of the painting, writing, and ideation in progress, interviews with the artists, performance videos, and images and texts of the graphic and scroll narratives that were finally created.
Among the many stories that Mundy tells, our selection focuses on his account of travelling through Gujarat and Malwa during the notorious Gujarat famine of 1630-32. The scroll painters of Naya responded empathetically to Mundy’s own background of shortage and economic struggle with the decline of the pilchard fisheries in Cornwall, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In their narrative, Mundy’s early life in Penryn appears prominently, as it reminded the artists in Naya (located close to coastal areas in Bengal) of the constant travails of their local communities of fishermen. On the other hand, the graphic artist regards Mundy’s narrative with a more satirical eye. The items in this collection demonstrate the processes by which the narrative was researched, analysed, and reworked, to create the final outputs of the scroll and graphic narratives. The collection contains source materials that were created and shared, videos and photographs of the painting, writing, and ideation in progress, interviews with the artists, performance videos, and images and texts of the graphic and scroll narratives that were finally created.
Creator
Chitrakar, Dukhushyam
Chitrakar, Jahanara
Chitrakar, Khaleda
Chitrakar, Lutfa
Chitrakar, Rabbani
Chitrakar, Rahim
Chitrakar, Rahman
Chitrakar, Ushiara
Mukherjee, Sekhar
Source
Richard Carnac Temple (ed), The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia, Vol.2: Travels in Asia 1628-34 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1914)
Publisher
University of Exeter
Date
2019-12
Contributor
Brock, Dan
Dutta, Shrutakirti
Fereday, Graham
Gupta, Abhijit
Halder, Bhagirath
Holding, Richard
Long, Lily
Mbedzi, Tumisang
Mondal, Sujit
Mukherjee, Ayesha
Spence, Connor
Tupman, Charlotte
Rights
CC BY-NC
Language
Bengali
English
Identifier
ce561824733c37b5e9bb99675f6c8034.jpg
Coverage
Gujarat, India; 1630-32
Penryn, Cornwall, UK; c.1600-1630
Relation
The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia, Vol.2: Travels in Asia 1628-34 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1914), Famine and Dearth in India and Britain, 1550-1800.
Ayesha Mukherjee, "Famine Chorography: Peter Mundy and The Gujarat Famine, 1630-32", in A Cultural History of Famine: Food Security and the Environment in India and Britain, ed. Ayesha Mukherjee (London: Routledge, 2019)
Catalogue entry, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, MS.Rawl.A315.
Map 1, Famine and Dearth in India and Britain, 1550-1800.
Map 2, Old Maps Online.
Map 3, Old Maps Online.
Photographs of Penryn, private collection.