Stamps of Jammu & Kashmir 1866-1894

The facility nowadays for sharing images and inspirations is swiftly sharpening this story for more players, and changing the received story for everyone. Real discovery in this odd little philatelic niche is still open to all comers. But where on earth are we?

This unlikely “unit” on the map (some 550 miles across) between Afghanistan and Tibet is our main stamping ground. The map, not really meant to be legible, shows the broad administrative situation in the mid-1890s when the postal arrangements of the region were formalized under British authority. Our story pertains to the preceding three decades when Kashmir and Jammu, forming provinces of a combined State within that unit, issued its own stamps. Poonch is in there too, and also issued its own stamps for part of the same period. Map: D. Appleton Co. NY, 1890s.

Srinagar, nestled in the Kashmir valley, was the summer capital of the combined State. The scan above, from Winthrop Boggs’ 1941 philatelic article, is of Srinagar’s Third City Bridge, the Fati Kadal, which crosses the Jhelum River.
   Jammu (the town) was the winter capital of the combined State. Jammu's river is the Tavi. The two provinces are separated by the western-most stretch of the Himalayas known as the Pirpanjal. Snow often blocked the postal runner lines on its high passes. Still, J&K philately sits uncomfortably under the purview of Himalayan philately, for most of the postal activity of the period looked south to the hot plains of the Punjab and beyond.

The Watercolor Decade 1866-76

Collectors who are familiar with the finely-wrought stamp engravings of Europe & colonies of the time, or of the Americas, can find themselves at a loss when first dealing with smucky handstamps. Truth to tell, these stamps remain alarming even to those who devote themselves to no other. In all, nine implements were used for the production of the watercolors: Three are circulars, three are rectangular single-dies, and three are ‘composite’ plates, which in our context means that two different denominations are accomodated on a single implement.

Watercolors drip in high humidity. A number of these must be lost to us every year through unwitting attempts to soak hinge remnants or paper from their backs. As compensation of a kind, short perforations and sullied gum are never a concern. The single stroke in the center of the stamp shown above means ¼ rupee ~ 4 annas. This assignment was controversial in certain circles for more than a century, for others maintained that this was a one-anna stamp. The correction was made to the Gibbons catalogue only in the 1980s. Scott had it right decades earlier on account of the influence on the American scene by Winthrop Boggs & Harrison Haverbeck, names that recur. Details about this system of numbering are given in this on-site link†.

The dating of internal covers of the watercolor period is hampered by the fact that cancellation was done with three dateless seals or with pen-cancellation. One relies on manuscript notation in Persian or Urdu. Early external covers, i.e., those that crossed the State borders, reveal their secrets more readily, sporting as they will the more talkative British India markings.

The Kashmir Seal: A brick-red circular marking means cancelled at Srinagar, 1866-77. The same implement was used with black in the 1877-79 period.

Two Jammu Seals: The first cancelling implement at Jammu was a circular seal used with magenta pigment in the 1866-68 period, and with black in the 1868-70 period. It was superseded by the so-called “black square” seal with truncated corners, making for a kind of octagon. The implement was first used non-postally in 1858 at an iron mine, i.e., years before the advent of the State stamps. It was finally retired in late 1879.

The Transitional Year

Beginning in the late spring of 1877, lively spates of paper and pigment experiments, mostly in oilcolors on native or new European laid paper, were carried out with the original implements at Jammu. It was a time of evident floundering, and for J&K philately makes for an interesting (i.e., poorly understood) year. Some of this production may have been in experimental anticipation of the new regime of printing plates that were to appear the following spring.

Many of the oilcolor transitionals are delightfully awful, but at least they don’t drip.

non-postal material

There is a large quantity of disparate material, ranging from early to late, unique to common, comely to scary, and valued to disparaged, that was evidently produced with the original implements, perhaps under official sanction, but which never saw postal use so far as is known. The tradition divides this material into two broad classes:

I. Oilcolors on native or wove papers (“reprints”)
II. Everything else (proofs, paper & pigment trials, ...)

It is a handy division, but it carries theoretical risk. A reprint, strictly speaking, refers to an item produced for the stamp market only after its printing implement has been retired from regular postal service. In our context that would mean after about May 1878 when the New Rectangular plates superseded the old implements. The problem is that we simply do not possess checkable dates for non-postal material, particularly for the sensitive transitional period. Some ‘reprints’ are extremely rare, a characteristic that one does not normally associate with the class or its usual purpose. Virtually all suspected reprints are indeed guilty as charged, but (as in law) potential exceptions must come under special scrutiny.

Watercolor on thick wove, Lunn Collection

Members of class II are invariably rare, but may or may not enjoy special esteem in the market. The early watercolor proofs on native paper, which are unique, certainly do. Later watercolors on any non-native paper and oilcolors on European laid papers are generally assumed to be experimental printings of one kind or another from the 1877-78 transition period. The scan above is a watercolor of accurate design on a thick wove paper. Assuming it is not a good forgery of something that did not quite exist, it is an alarming afront to the conventionally reared.

In our own fussings we have been driven to the less commited term “non-postal” for any item not known to have seen postal service. Bold or timid forays into further speculation can be launched from the safety of that platform. A number of rules-of-thumb of uncertain origin & validity have been used to separate native-paper originals from kindred items deemed reprints. “No reprints in slate-blue oil,” and “No reprints on European laid paper” are examples, but both dicta are under erosion.

The New Rectangulars 1878-94

The Old Period ended in May 1878 with the introduction of new plates and new State postal markings, which now bear despatch & dating information. Six new plates were to come into use. These new stamps make for some admittedly pedestrian fare compared with the extravagant & eccentric productions of the preceding period, but it is subtle and has a way of growing on those who stay with it.

Even though the New Rectangulars material is in general much more accessible to collectors, there is a good deal yet to learn of the period. Apart from a postmark† chronology, and some comments about plate-states†, the New Rectangulars period is hardly treated on this website.

The item on the left was printed at Jammu in a shade very similar to that of certain late transitional circulars, and is on the same type of European laid paper. Indeed some of the new “inks” seem to be just slightly thinned-out oilcolor. The second specimen, true to the new-is-always-worse theory in stamps, was printed from the same (repaired) plate in an orange hue on thin wove paper at Srinagar. Notice the impression of a repairing screwhead in the floral margin. The plates may have been rebedded to a new base after their removal to Srinagar, perhaps April 1881 according to the received lore.

After 1883 different denominations could be told apart by color. Progress in the printing techniques was sometimes not greatly in evidence! The failure above was caused by turmeric mixed in the pigment; the failure below was ... something else:

The ½a plate alone was rebedded not with screws but with rivets in the plate margin. Four basic “states” for this plate are distinguished based on the configuration of the here-today gone-tomorrow rivet-head impressions. This printing in pink was done in the very late period, just prior to the closing of the State offices in 1894.

Postal History

Postal history is the soul of the subject, and history it certainly is in any sense of the term. One of the preoccupations of J&K philately concerns the complicated interplay of the State postal system with that of British India. Matching British postage normally had to accompany State stamps on mail between J&K and India. There was a separate “Maharaja’s Post” to a few towns in the Punjab; letters thus borne avoided British postage, though perhaps at the price of some security. Other covers known as “jawabs,” which were mostly destined to Amritsar in the Punjab, are often found without British postage. That some of these covers did carry British postage is one of our (many) unsolved puzzles.

Dignified head faces wild waters. The detail shown above is from a letter that took the most popular route of all: Srinagar to Jammu and onward via Sialkot to Amritsar, the latter two offices being in the British Punjab. The city of Amritsar, apart from being a notable religious site, was an important commercial junction for the fabric trades. One will find many a Kashmir cover destined to the station at Katra Ahluwalia in Amritsar’s woolens district.

Sialkot & Amritsar, both in the Punjab, are about 75 miles apart. Relays of runners would take less than half a day to traverse the road (plus several bridges) between them. The Jammu-Sialkot rail link (a 30-minute trip) did not exist for most of our postal period, though the main stretch between Lahore and Gujarat (and up to Jhelum) had already been constructed during the 1870s.

The Jammu-Sialkot railroad link became defunct at the time of Partition in 1947. The India-Pakistan border also interrupts the line between Amritsar and Lahore, and so too the old runner’s line that connected Sialkot and Amritsar. Those of us who prefer to dwell in the 19th century find this new-fangled hypermodern geometry a little hard to imagine. The map detail is from an 1890s ‘Constable.’

Sialkot operated what was in effect an extraterritorial office for Jammu for some of our period. A postage due seal and a ‘duplex’ (scan left) have come down to us from this operation. The inscription on the datestamp portion is in the Dogrî script and reads Syalkot at the top, followed by one of the Hindu months in the Samvat system (here reading the month asû, but no year.) Curiously, a number of prominent collectors of the past did not care to learn Dogri letters, and for many decades the Sialkot duplex was thought to have been employed by Jammu. This misconception (which was not exactly wrong in any case) was not a damaging one, for the marking is very scarce, attested perhaps on only a couple of dozen covers. The strike shown above was done from the original implement in 1981 by Frits Staal and B.P. Sharma. Do read their account of that wonderful summer adventure in their “Five Fruitful Days in Srinagar” in Staal’s text, The Stamps of Jammu & Kashmir, a must.

A cross-border letter not bearing British postage was charged double at the receiving end, half for the missing postage and half as a penalty or administrative charge. Seals such as the one shown here (there are a number of varieties) would be used when a ½a British stamp was missing. When the ¼a State postcard found its way across the border it was treated as if it were a letter on account of its large size. If without ½a in British postage, the card incurred the full 1a levy. Foreign residents in Kashmir enjoyed in principle a “half-postage privilege” on State postage for mail crossing the border with adequate British postage. It would then be on the ¼a State card, for example, that the 1/8a New Rectangular ‘mustard muddies’ (as seen upscreen) would be used, though they are scarcely seen in this usage.

Whatever the official rates may have been for overseas mail, an alarming disparity of sums is seen in practice. Discrepant frankings are of interest to some collectors. In normal usage, the early 1868 overseas rate was State postage of one anna coupled with British postage of six annas (plus discretionary four-anna registration.) Later mailings abroad often show State postage of 1a coupled with the UPU-rate British postage of only 4 annas 6 pies. Examples of total postage we have seen so far for overseas duty are: 4a, 4¼a, 5a, 5½a, 7a, 7a 8p, 8a, 9a, 9a 8p, 11a, and 13a, excluding postcards.

Philatelic Militaria. Another class of British postal stationery pertain to the OHMS envelopes and associated material. Anthony Bard is an authority on such matters, including the Captain A.E. Sandbach correspondence that extended from around 1880 to 1893, which includes mail from Gilgit, Chilas, and Hunza. Bard reports that the 1890s materials bear no State stamps, since mail from the Gilgit Agency at that time was given a special exemption by the Maharajah.

Convention Essays. Kashmir had been invited to join the Postal Convention. Arrangements fell through in the end, but this 1883/84 essay of the proposed overprint exists on a number of the Victorias, here the 3a orange wmkd star. ‘Kashmir’ is rendered at the top in nagari, and to the lower right are the Kashmir arms as seen also on the State postcard. The idea behind this configuration was to avoid overprinting the head. This image was taken from the Billig Handbook, Vol III, p 265.

Below: More images of these rarities from the Harmers 2004 auction Lot KB364a. Even without the overprint some of these Victorias are not known in postal use in Kashmir, such as the 9p mauve and the 1a 6p sepia below, as well as the 3a orange shown above. It is reported that there are 13 in all, of which 12 are accounted for here:

Unusual Destinations. Kashmir mail destined abroad to locations other than the British Isles are very scarce. Covers to Germany, France, and USA in particular are commanding very high prices these days. The following letter needed precisely one month (10 Feb to 10 Mar 1889) to travel from Bombay to New York via London. This is also the latest use of the embossment in blue that we have seen (noting that the green started to supersede the blue six years earlier in 1883.) It would be interesting to see a list of all the rare destinations that are currently extant. Any Ladakhs to Alaska?

Reading Covers

Fortunately, not all covers are as transparent as the preceding. The modern covers collector will definitely need to decipher a certain amount of Dogrî, Persian & Urdû script for learning dates and destinations. But having no real knowledge of the languages is no bar to espying matters of philatelic note. Familiar old covers gradually give up more of their secrets and the puzzles left lurking in manuscript—there will always be puzzles!—become potential sources of new discovery.

Above: A nondescript-looking cover, but a rarity that originated at Yarkand, an oasis town near the edge of the Tarim Basin in Chinese Turkestan. The letter had to traverse the 18,000' Karakoram pass. Caravans suffered sad loss of animals through hardship, ill-treatment & natural hazards. Banditry also infested the high passes. The literature speaks of the Yarkand-to-India passage taking about two months—this in a period when postal delivery was elsewhere well-nigh instantaneous by our modern standards.

Details from two Karakoram covers: On the left (taken from the preceding scan) is az maqâm Yârkand ~ from station at Yarkand. The date on the cover in Persian is 20 safar 1308 ~ 5 October 1890. The stamps were affixed on 12 November at Leh where the letter entered the J&K postal system, and then it pressed onward to Hoshiarpur in India by 29 November, a total of 55 hard days and 1 anna. The example on the right (with Yarkand spelt Yarqand) is a detail from another such sleeper that we saw on the internet before we knew about Yarkand and so missed bidding on it. This one is dated in the Samvat system 9 sâvan [1946] ~ 23 July 1889, and took 69 days and a 1a red to reach its destination, again Hoshiarpur. The curious Yarkand-Hoshiarpur connection is perhaps a subject for investigation. In any case, the trendy crowd does Karakoram Philately now, and it behooves every Kashmir collector to rummage his Leh covers for more Yarqands or other exotic stations to the north.

Forgery

The nature of the J&K material has invited its share of skulduggery. Some of the most damaging to the field was caused early by corruption in the State Post Office itself. Probably the most common type of spurious material comes under the class known as “missing-die” forgeries. On this site, these are discussed with the individual stamps themselves on the Oilcolor pages. The prospective collector must learn to recognize these items from fifty paces by day one. Seldom is the day that eBay is not proffering a few of these at bad prices.

It is fortunate that a few basic cues eliminate vast amounts of bogus and non-postal matter. The field is not nearly so difficult in this respect as is sometimes intimated. Still, what were once widely accepted to be the rare first issues of the State (the ‘Die I’) were accepted eventually as forgeries. It is reported that £50 prices were paid in the 19th-century for specimens, obviously a kingly sum for a stamp in those days. Today they are rarer still and of rather indeterminate value:

The 4a indigo and ½a sap green ‘Die I’ watercolor forgeries. That such were ‘rough sketch’ essays for the first issue is unlikely. For one thing, the Persian betrays features that look slavishly copied from the issued stamps, yet by someone who seemed to have had little sense about what he was copying. The known carver of the first issue, Ruhat Ju, was a master seal-maker. Their nature was revealed in 1899 by David Parkes Masson (old ‘DP’), a figure who bestrides our subject.

An example of a New Rectangulars postal forgery in watercolor, first described by Masson as the “Big D” type. It occurs on different papers during the seven or eight months prior to the spring of 1891.

Were it not for Masson’s retrieval, preservation, and analysis of a healthy fraction of the material that remains to us, J&K stampdom would be impoverished indeed. It is much to his credit, especially given philatelic practice of his day, that he did not soak off or cut stamps away from their covers. The red notations seen on many a cover, alas, are his. It is not inconceivable that other revelations like the Die I saga lurk today, promising some rollicking amusement to our kind. Not so amusing is the prospect of ever more—and ever more able—new forgery. The middle price range (in the logarithmic sense) is the chief worry, for it represents the type of item most dangerous to the ambitious beginner. Only several hundred authentic copies of some of these middling issues are likely in existence now, clearly an extraordinarily low number by the standards of popular collecting areas. The higher-priced material (>£600) in the catalogue is now rare indeed, ranging from possibly non-existent in certain cases to at most a couple of dozen copies. Some of the lower-priced items are equally rare.

Caution: A disappointing feature of the late period concerns purely philatelic items concocted expressly for the collectors’ market. These usually bear authentic markings on authentic stamps, so experience is needed for separating legitimate mailings from the ersatz. The preceding is a block of the 1/8a making for a rather spectacular 1-anna “usage.” The stamps are tied with the authentic Srinagar 3-ring dated 27 September. September datings in particular are known in much spurious use. Most dealers are unaware of the problem, and overly-high prices are often paid by the unwary.

This registration cachet is a common feature of the fakery just mentioned. There is kindred dreck, such as registration and parcel cancellations on postcards, and small letters purportedly needing up to 64 annas postage!

A lovely monstrosity. A poor watercolor imitation of the lower 8-anna pane of the New Rectangulars composite plate. A full illustration of its eight subjects can be seen in Staal p 173. The constant error in the Dogri inscription in subject #7 of the authentic printing had been unwittingly corrected in the forgery!

Defacement Proofs and Reprints

In February 1898, all of the printing implements save the Kashmir ½a single die were officially mutilated with deep gashes to the metal. Some ten impressions were made of each, thus making for rarified auction fare today. Modern impressions from the defaced implements have also been made:

The wounded implements came to rest at the Sri Pratap Singh Museum in Srinagar. Impressions of these were made by Messrs. B. Sharma and F. Staal in August 1981 with black and/or purple ink on white paper. An example of the latter from the Jammu composite plate is shown above. Five such reprints were produced from this implement (none in black in this case.) Reference: Staal pp 148-59.

Winthrop Boggs provides this photo of a “typical Kashmir post office”. Maybe it is one of the many chaukis, the kind of postal runners’ depot that eventually dotted the main routes. The Stamp Specialist, Blue Book, p 57 (1941).

Spook Tale. Certain New Rectangular ½a blacks appear & disappear from the stocks of collectors on certain anniversaries (typically late autumn when the wind is high) and invariably without an owner’s awareness. The story behind these disappearances and invasions remains mysterious.

Appendix A: Catalogue Changes

The Stanley Gibbons listing of Jammu-Kashmir is monitored internationally by most informed collectors and dealers. What follows are the catalogue number and issue-date reassignments that were made in the 2003 & 2004 editions:

The item on the left is 90a, the unique vertical tête-bêche printing of the ¼a grey-black Kashmir watercolor. The cover on the right is 132a, the ½a orange Leh bisect. It was an external cover Leh to Amballa dated 27 April [1883] and is one of two now reported in this denomination. It augments the 1a orange bisect hitherto listed in the catalogue. The new 127a is another Leh bisect cover, namely the 1a red that augments the ½a red hitherto listed. Item 99b is a semi-tête-bêche of the 4a emerald-green Kashmir watercolor, where “semi-” means that one stamp in a pair is printed sideways with respect to the other.

Appendix B: British Usage in Kashmir

The last column in the table below is an indication of relative frequency of some of the British material—as seen on J&K material. ‘Plentiful’ means more abundant than ‘common’. The table includes the five envelopes & four postcards. Watermarking as follows: 1854 arms, 1856-64 unwmkd, 1865-78 elephant head, Empire 1883-91 star. This material has been adapted somewhat from Séfi & Mortimer and is no doubt still wanting correction. Those authors’ accounting of the British adhesives used on Kashmir covers can be found through this on-site link†.

Appendix C: Terminology

Terminology seen in the literature sometimes means different things to different collectors. How we are using certain terms on this site, and specific to the J&K context, is given here:

Proofs are preliminary productions executed from an approved plate or die before an issue has first been made available for postal use. Unique proofs from several of the implements were found in the notebook of the engraver Rahat Ju. Proofs need not be produced in the same colors or on the same papers of the issued stamps. If they happen to be indistinguishable from the issued stamps, only their documented provenance can provide them with that status. So-called “proof strips” in oilcolors from the two Kashmir plates were produced at unknown times, but definitely long after the advent dates of the plates. Whatever else they might be (reprints or pigment trials) they are not “proofs” in the restricted sense used here.

Essays are those productions that have come down to us from the early design stage of a stamp when such designs differ in marked ways from those of the issued stamp (redrawn fleurons or spandrels, say.) For J&K the only example ever extant is the unique unfinished essay of the Kashmir ½a single die. The term is also used by default when intended or proposed stamps are unadopted in any form for postal use, such as the stillborn Convention State overprints. Had the latter actually found postal use in the form we find them, these extant specimens would be known instead as ‘proofs’ if their status as pre-issue productions were sufficiently well documented.

Reprints are productions from original plates & dies executed after these implements have been retired from postal service. For the Old Period implements, the dividing date is May 1878. Those items produced in their own distinctive colors & papers obviously form a subclass apart. It is possible that some reprinting from the early implements was done for testing paper or pigments for New Rectangulars within the latter’s period, and are therefore also ‘trials’. We are not aware of any reprinting of the New Rectangular plates, i.e., printings done between the closing of the State posts in 1894 and their official defacement in 1898. Stocks already stored in the State Treasury were said to be large (on the order of 10,000 specimens of certain denominations if all colors are counted together.) Whenever this large stock may have been actually printed, the great bulk of this material essentially functioned like reprint stock when it was later released en masse to dealers and collectors.

Trials are unissued productions made with an original implement during its tenure of postal service (otherwise they would be deemed proofs if earlier or reprints if later.) Some of these experimental printings may have found rare or sporadic use as postage (this is J&K after all) and thus such material found entry to the catalogues.

Error is a term that we have not used in our own descriptions; the closest we dare is “color anomaly” and the like. Double impressions, backprints, offsets, etc. are here called “production anomalies.” Tête-bêches and semi-tête-bêches (the latter means one stamp is printed sideways in a pair) are also gathered under the latter heading.

Unissued is a term that we avoid in our own descriptions, not always successfully, for it certainly has its uses. It is a term either too general (what with essays, proofs, trials, and reprints all being examples) or too specific in the direction of “prepared for use.” The latter is uncomfortably speculative in the murky J&K context. There are also inconsistent distinctions made in the literature as to which of ‘unissued’ and ‘prepared for use’ may or may not find attestation in postal use. The “unissued” ¼a New Rectangular plate, which was officially defaced with the legitimate implements in 1898, is admittedly a challenge to nomenclature, not least because its story has been lost. We simply call it the ‘12-plate’ for no other plate has that many subjects. Personally, we take its productions to be in a class kindred to the so-called Missing-Die forgeries, the implements for which were also sought for official defacement.

Forgery, fakery, philatelic artifice.... Our terminology is unsystematic, casual and erratic. J&K sports many diverse examples of skulduggery and intrigue, and may even offer a few special takes of its own. We will encounter authentic & faked cancels on both forged & authentic stamps. Some authentic stamps cancelled with legitimate implements were purely philatelic concoctions that may or may not have proceeded properly through the post.

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