Jawâb Covers

“But strange things may be generally accounted for if their cause
be fairly searched out.”—Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1818)

A distinctive notation, usually dated, is found on a number of prominent J&K covers. Such “jawabs,” as we call them, harbor a number of murky features that ask to be resolved. Whatever their status turns out to be, they bear on our understanding of some of the early postal practice. Our thanks to Wolfgang Hellrigl for alerting us to this special class of marking, and for providing a number of scans of rare material that exhibit them, including photocopies of covers ex Mix. The speculations that follow, however, belong entirely to our own fevered fancies.

Almost all of the covers in question were destined to a depot at Katra Ahluwalia, Amritsar. Two rare sightings were destined to Hoshiarpur and Multan. The most active period for J&K was 1866-68, though sporadic examples are seen over several decades. The earliest sightings for J&K are on a number of the pre-stamp franked covers. We have also seen the notation on a non-Kashmir Amritsar cover mailed in January 1860, and it will certainly come earlier to judge by its already frozen and idiosyncratic formation. The latest so far is a cover to Jammu via Punch from an unknown origin in India, June 1894.

Here is the notation as it typically appears, identifiable by the word jawâb that leads the lower line. The upper lines here read 13 zelqa'de [1283] ~ 30 March 1866. The British arrival cds was for a day or two before. This detail from the first known J&K cover was kindly provided by Anthony Bard.

The word jawâb has the primary sense of ‘response’ or ‘anything answering or accountable to another’. It has such extended meanings as ‘counterpart, return, double, discharge, dismissal, official reply, compensation,’ etc. For stamps, these hold an unfortunate plenitude of potential interpretations. The dictionary proceeds to define jawâbî as a “kind of bill of exchange, which is not paid till notice is received of the bill’s having been taken up.”

Above: These are the most explicit versions we have so far encountered. The final is often quite like the familiar shuds, and which is indeed in the receiving/paid line of work.

Whatever its technical status, the jawab notation sometimes gives us our only dating of significant covers. The notation remained surprisingly uniform under different hands (the two preceding examples notwithstanding) and over a stretch of decades, serving indeed much as if it had been mechanically produced. Postal or no, its datings are as reliably present as those of many a datestamp. At first we thought it was a manuscript postmark for the extra-territorial State Office at Amritsar (which unlike Sialkot had left us no other) but increasingly we feel it is not a marking of the Maharajah’s dâk at all.

Some Details, Some Questions

The detail below, again with full and unambiguous pointing on the jawâb, is from one of the two known ‘myrtle covers’, and provides also a hitherto unreported dating for the stamp. It confirms the oft-assumed assignment of this issue to autumn 1867:

The date 2 rajab [1284] ~ 30 Oct 1867 is found in the lower line. Running along the top is an additional portion containing numerals. Detail Lot 253, Blue Sale.

The top line of the notation, though not always present, is evidently intrinsic to the proceedings. When not sporting a curious number string, it is dated in one or another of the usual calendars, including the Western calendar. That date is always earlier than that of the jawab part, usually by a day or two, though sometimes by considerably more (as the next two examples will show graphically.) Let us call this section Part A, and the jawab section proper Part B.

Here are examples containing both parts. On the left: Part A is 25 rabî ol-avval [1284] ~ 27 July 1867, while the jawab B section underneath has 8 rabî os-sâni ~ 9 August 1867. Detail from cover ex Mix. On the right: Part A is 26 zelhejje 1282 ~ 12 May 1866, while Part B is 9 jûn in English transcription, a full month later. Detail from a piece in the Jaiswal collection. The despatch dates for both covers are not known. What is the lead-in word on Part A on all these examples?

In spite of a sometimes considerable lapse of time between the two dates, the two sections invariably look as if they were done with the same implement by a single writer at one time. How might one account for such double-dating at one go? Both dates are for times after the letter arrived at its destination.

As to the uninterpreted numeral strings, only a 1 or a 2 appears in the leftmost slot. The second element is sometimes written like the Arabic letter 'ain, which in other contexts is short for 'adad ~ Number ‘No.’ We transcribe the codes as noncommitally as possible. Here 2•23 for the left example and 2•15 for the right. Inspection of more than a dozen such examples reveals no obvious correlation of these numbers with dating. The second detail shows the more common form form for the second element, which is usually under-dotted.

Above: The ‘other myrtle’ on cover; jawabs do come with pedigree. This illustration is taken from the Dawson auction catalogue, 1967. Such is the formality of the notation that the little twiddle mark under the seam of the envelope is often found.

Above: English months are popular. From the left, 13 aprîl, 16 sitambar, 15 jûn. Examples using the samvat calendar are rare; an example from the ‘franks’ period is seen in Lot #11 Blue Sale.

Above: A late and perhaps telling example, 14 navambar 1877. The cover bears a Kashmir ½a blue bisected to serve the visitors’ rate. Collection Jaiswal.

Weary of jawabs? Here is a little staircase of freebies on a wonderful choice of envelope paper. It was the absence of British postage that has allowed most of these covers to be misconstrued as internal covers in the past (e.g. Haverbeck Lots 1391, 1427, 1428.) Figure 17 in Staal provides an example of another type often erroneously deemed local: Without British postage and without explicit jawab notation, that cover too found its way to murky doings at Katra Ahluwalia.

The Boggs & Eames Mystery Covers

Above, a jawab cover shown in Boggs’ 1941 article. The circular on the right is the ½a black cut-round and cancelled at Srinagar likely in early April or possibly late March 1866. The requisite matching ½a in British postage was cancelled at Sialkot. In these respects this cover (Haverbeck Lot 1239) matches an essentially identical cover (Haverbeck Lot 1229) posted a week earlier, and thus not particularly notable in itself apart from its very early date.

But the critical difference between the two covers is that the Boggs cover sports a second, and very rare, circular that the other did not have, a ½a dull blue. This added stamp, probably applied at Jammu, is cut square and pen-cancelled with jawab doings. Why was it added? Who would pay for it en route? Boggs mistakenly took the stamp for the 1-anna denomination in his auction and article descriptions (a natural mistake because no early ½a blues of any kind were generally recognized at the time.)

The Eames’ Cover: That the second stamp on the Boggs cover was attached at Jammu is suggested by another curious two-venue affair reported for June of the same year by Tim Eames in his Blue Watercolours article (India Post 29 02 1995.) This cover also carried a rare ½a blue circular. In fact he reports it as an anomalous grey-blue, so it could quite possibly be the same shade as Boggs’ dull blue. More helpfully this time, the added stamp was cancelled with the Jammu magenta. The other circular was again a ½a grey-black cancelled with the usual brick-red seal at Srinagar. We suspect that Eames’ cover is an Amritsar jawâb. Do both of these covers really represent paid resendings? It seems a little odd.

Other of the most notable early classic covers (i.e., those bearing stamps in anomalous colors such as the Kashmir 4a myrtle and the Kashmir 1a ultramarine) are involved in the untold jawab story. We have just seen it in a rare ½a grey-blue circular, but it also occurs for the similarly rare 1a grey-black circular, as if in a kind of purposeful color switching from the standard practice. Both circulars as well as the Kashmir 1a are sometimes described as being errors, but could it be that a distinction was being inaugurated experimentally for the specific jawab function? If there was an attempt at a division of labor, it was not sharp: The rare Kashmir ½a single die, for example, is mostly seen in jawab duty during the period of the plate ½a in black, though the latter is also found doing jawab duty.

Summary

A number of entwined matters confront us at once: (1) the wording of the two-part notation; (2) double-datings written after arrival; (3) the nature of the code strings; (4) the use of English months and the apparent avoidance of samvat months; (5) the missing British postage, sometimes; (6) odd covers, oddly colored stamps, the Boggs’ puzzle; (7) the existence of the notation prior to the use of adhesives; (8) the existence of the notation on non-State covers; (9) the duration of the phenomenon, strongly peaked in a short high period coupled with the fact of sporadic appearances outside that range over several decades.

Appendix I: Some Covers

This section displays a growing selection of such as might add something to the story, including an interesting item from the Jaiswal collection, for which we are grateful. All of these covers, save the last, are Amritsar-bound and most are without British postage. This material is largely from the Hellrigl archive.

The earliest sighting of an Amritsar jawab that we can report so far is from January 1860, albeit not on a Kashmir item: An illustration of the cover is provided by Martin Hosselmann in Fig. 5 in the follow-up piece on the Bombay Receiving Houses by Cliff Gregory, India Post 39 54 (2005). One finds dar qasba Amritsar Katra Ahluwalia in the upper left corner, with the jawab notation itself in the center amidst the English. The text dealing with this cover does so as if it were labelled Fig. 4.

The earliest reported examples of jawab covers for J&K are the Jammu Frank Lots 9-12 in the Harmer’s Blue Sale. The detail shown here from Lot 12 has a ½a British India on the reverse.

† A half-rate visitors’ cover for June 1867. The jawab dating (on back) is 15 jûn in English transcription, i.e., a week after the arrival at Amritsar on 9 June. Hellrigl collection. The red dagger means that the scan is clickable to reveal the reverse; it will work if the JavaScript function has not been disabled.

Another specimen related to the preceding item is shown in Fig. 3 of Anthony Bard’s article, “Visitors’ Letters from Kashmir, 1860-1866,” SG Stamp Monthly p 52, March 1982. It antedates the first item above by a year and a week, yet reveals very much the same scenario (same writer with French hand, same addressee, same postage, same half-rate privilege, same jawab notation for the same month.) The arrival cds at Amritsar for 2 June 1866 was again followed a week later by the jawab notation, this time reading 9 jûn in transcription from English. The differences are as would be expected given the difference of the year.

Despatch date: 27 ramazân [12]83 ~ 2 February 1867. Part B: 4 shavvâl [1283] ~ 9 February 1867, the same as the Umritsur arrival cds. Two annas in State stamps are matched by two annas in British postage, which were cancelled at the Sialkot City mail agency. Yet the cover carries an INSUFFICIENT seal. Ex Mix.

Amritsar jawab 17 zelqa'de [1283] ~ 23 March 1867. This ‘do tola’ cover bears appropriate 1a + 1a in postage. Those stamps, however, are each marked châhar âna ~ 4 annas. There is another curious notation on this stamp side: what is the string that reads “23 and 24 and 25”? Something tells us that this cover was headed to Amritsar, and there is no British postage on the reverse. Bets? Collection Jaiswal.

Srinagar to Amritsar dated 15 zelhejje 1283 ~ 20 April 1867 (Haverbeck Lot 1427) The jawab dating is 28 zelhejje ~ 3 May 1867. These stamps are the Kashmir 1a ultramarine! Ex Mix.

By Jove, this could make the cover of Punch. Haverbeck Lot 1661: an 1894 registered mailing to Jammu from India (no origin given) via Kahuta and Punch. The Kahuta exchange office served for Punch in much the way the Sialkot office did for Jammu. The Punch stamps are 1a and 4a officials in black and were matched with 5a in British postage. So we have some 34 years of jawabs.

Appendix II: A Speculation

Something of an inspiration has come to us from a recent Scrooge McDuck comic book, a good duck tale about the treasury of the Knights Templar. (See, I didn’t say dâk tale.) In actual history, the Knights used a system for transferring money safely over distances, usually across guarded borders in a way that avoided bribes, taxes, and other theft.

The basic scheme, which has been an entrenched institution in many Asian countries for a very long time, comes in a variety of versions that vary greatly in secrecy and intent, and goes by many names by different groups. For the Chinese, there is the fei qian ~ ‘without money’. For the chaps working the Jammu-Punjab border it was known as hawâla or hundî. The hawaladar or hundiwala receives cash in one location, while his counterpart at the other site later dispenses the cash to a recipient, minus a fee. Runners of the mail conveyed the amount to be paid and by what date. The sender provides the recipient with a code number or other signal for obtaining the cash on the day agreed to. Katra Ahluwalia was an important textile hub, especially for Kashmir, and may well have been one of the important nodes (read pool of cash) in this ersatz banking system.

Such markings as these are seen occasionally on the envelope flaps of jawab covers, as if in a symbolic sealing of the envelope. Pray, do these spell hawâla? Seems so.

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