What’s New
One thing that’s new (or was new) is this very page, which aims to give notice of additions and notable changes to the website, especially errata. New entries are put first, and dated.
Specimens
Specimens, year and purpose here unknown. Such productions, if indeed done under British authority, would give more evidence, if more were needed, that native authority over its own postal system was largely cosmetic in the later period. The overprint itself, which is slightly soluble in water, is evidently red-by-rule, although the obvious exception is made for red stamps, for which the overprint is black. The 2a red is on a common type of coarse yellow toned wove; the others however are on a thin, very smoothly polished semi-pelure of a kind that we have not been aware of. The shades, however, are not at all anomalous. We do not know whether the ¼a and the other three values of the black officials are attested. The item at the bottom, from the Lunn Collection, a 1a grey-brown oilcolor on wove paper, is a non-postal from the lower strip of the first Kashmir plate. The same overprint in red on a ⅛a black New Rectangular can be seen on Plate 11 in Staal. It was reported by Séfi & Mortimer as being unique and taken by those authors to be a late “proof.” Jan 2012.
The Elusive L-3/8
At long last we have espied the British Sialkot City Mail Agency obliterator L-3/8, chronicled by Anthony Bard under number BSC5. The central line, L-3 is for Sialkot proper, the disbursing office, and the 8 in the lower set of (two, not three) bars signifies the City branch. Bard notes that all mail from Jammu was routed via Sialkot City between November 1877 and February 1878, though not all was thus marked. The detail shown above was indeed at Sialkot City on 31 January 1878, passed through Sialkot on 1 February 1878, and proceeded to Hoshiarpur the next day. Nov 2011.
Calendar Conversion
The samvat page has been modified so that the month baisākh functions as the first month of the Hindu calendar, in place of ćait. That is to say, a shift from a lunisolar convention to the purely solar convention that was the rule in Jammu, Kashmir, Punjab, Nepal, and other postal practice. The rationale appears on the Samvat page ►. Jun 2011.