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A fine collection of over a 150 colour plates of
drawings of Indian birds is compiled into a book called ‘The
Game Birds of India’. Truly one of the beneficial spin-offs of
the British rule in India.
The emergence of the
British as the paramount power in India resulted in a few
unexpectedly beneficial consequences for the country. Several civil
and military officers in the employ, first of the East India Company
and after 1857 of the British Crown, began to devote themselves
enthusiastically to scientific investigation, inter alia, of the
natural history of India. While beautiful pictures of some birds and
animals were indeed drawn by Indian miniature painters, notably Ustad
Mansur early in the 17th century, they did not follow any
regular pattern. Select Englishmen set about making a systematic
study of the country’s fauna, and throughout the 19th
century books and illustrations of Indian birds and animals kept on
adding to available knowledge.
One of the finest and
most comprehensive works on birds of India was The Game Birds of
India, Burmah and Ceylon by allan Octavian Hume and
Captain C.H.T. Marshall which appeared in three volumes between 1879
and 1881. Hume, a British administrator and one of the
founding-fathers of the Indian National Congress, was also a keen
ornithologist. He not only wrote the entire text of The Game
Birds, but also planned the production of the drawings of birds
by Indian artists on commission or by talented British amateur
artists interested in ornithology. At his suggestion, Marshall spent
about one year to have these drawings prepared by reputed British
artists of bird life like Stanley Wilson, E. Neale, W. Foster and
A.W. Strutt.
Despite the provision of
precise particulars of the colours of soft parts to the artists, some
inaccuracies of depiction still occurred in the plates, particularly
as so many different artists were involved in the pictorial project.
The net result nevertheless was a set of eminently engaging plates of
Indian birds unexcelled so far. Their merit is affirmed by the
inclusion of over one hundred of them to illustrate the book Indian
Sporting Birds by ornithologist Frank Finn some 35 years later.
The Game Birds,
illustrated with 152 colour plates and published in Calcutta by
the authors themselves, was well received both in India and Britain.
The first volume contained 46 plates portraying birds like the Great
Indian Bustard, Grouse, Pheasant and the Jungle Fowl. The second had
48 plates depicting different kinds of Partridge and Quail. The
third was the largest with 54 plates, mostly of water birds like
Crane, Goose, Duck and Teal. Four plates at the end of the volume
were illustrations of eggs.
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