In Company Style: Illustrations from James Skinner’s Kitāb-i tashrīḥ al-aqvām (1825)

In Company Style: Illustrations from James Skinner’s _Kitāb-i tashrīḥ al-aqvām_ (1825) The only English text in the manuscript is on one of the opening leafs, where someone has added a looping pencil inscription below the neat columns of Persian text. It records a gift: “History of the origin and distinguishing marks of the different Castes of India, compiled by Lt. Skinner, CB, whose gift it is to the present possessor, JW.” The book itself looks more like a restrained version of the painting and calligraphy albums produced at the height of Mughal splendor than any contemporary European book.

Lieutenant Colonel James Skinner (1778–1841), its compiler, was an enigmatic figure of the early British Raj, responsible for helping expand its dominions even as he was excluded from its inner sanctum. The son of a Scottish East India Company officer and (he claimed) a kidnapped Bhojpuri noblewoman, he was initially excluded from EIC service on account of his race but was brought back into the fold following the successes of his irregular cavalry, Skinner’s Horse, in the service of the Mughal Empire. Yet Skinner, who spoke Persian better than he did English, was also an enthusiastic participant in late Mughal intellectual and artistic culture, as the _Tashrīḥ al-aqvām_ shows.

There are 120 paintings here, interspersed in the Persian text composed by Skinner though likely in the hand of a professional scribe. The English title given in the inscription provides a sense of its classificatory ethos, and the growing British interest in the Vedic caste system. Yet _al-aqvām_, in classical Persian, refers more broadly to “ethnicity”; the captions on the images obscure this potential distinction.

As his _Memoirs_makes clear, Skinner was often leaned on as a “native informer” by arriving British commanders, likely because, despite his British education and loyalties, his race continually excluded him from full belonging. One could see the _Tashrīḥ al-aqvām_ as an instantiation of that informant role; the inscription, commemorating a gift to the British officer J. Watkins, reinforces that impression.

Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. An 1830 portrait_-_BL_(IOS)_Add._27254#/media/File:James_Skinner_CB_(1778_%E2%80%93_1841)_,_19th_century.jpg) of Skinner in _Tazkirat al-umara_ (“Biographies of the Nobles”), a biographical dictionary he commissioned of the princely families of the Punjab, Rajasthan, and Haryana, shows him in British uniform, sitting in a lacquered chair with his spurred ankles crossed, looking steadily but slightly quizzically out at the viewer. The cartouche beneath contains the title given to him, as a recognition for his service in the war against the Maratha Empire, by the Mughal emperor Akbar Shah II (r. 1806–1837): _Nasir al-dawlah, Kirnil Jams Iskinar, Bahadur, Ghalib Jang_ (Defender of the State, Colonel James Skinner, Lord, Victorious in War).

Both his clothing and his chair distinguish him from the indigenous nobility depicted in the rest of the _Tazkirat_, who wear traditional clothing and are more often than not sitting on the ground, bolstered by cushions. The message is clear: Skinner might well have been the son of a Bhojpuri woman and celebrated by the Mughal emperor, but he was a Company man, through and through. In his _Memoirs_, written after his death by the Scottish travel writer James Baillie Fraser (1783–1856), only three laconic pages are dedicated to his life before joining the military.