1925 India Maharaja Sajjan Singh Ratlam Royal Mourning Letter Prince of Wales IN

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1925 India Maharaja Sajjan Singh Ratlam Royal Mourning Letter Prince of Wales IN:
$975.00

For your consideration is an exceptional original Vikram Samvat 1982 / 19251926 illuminated royal mourning letter from H.H. Maharaja Colonel Sir Sajjan Singh Bahadur of Ratlam, KCSI, KCVO, A.D.C. to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, to H.H. Maharaj Rana Sir Bhawani Singh Bahadur of Jhalawar, KCSI, at Jhalrapatan. Measuring approximately 9.0 by 25.25 inches, the manuscript is entirely handwritten in Devanagari on ceremonial Indian paper and embellished throughout with repeated dark metallic square and diamond-shaped appliqus. It opens with the auspicious invocation (r), a conventional formula invoking prosperity and divine favor, and preserves the elaborate honorific style appropriate to direct correspondence between ruling princes.

The document identifies Maharaja Sir Sajjan Singh of Ratlam (18801947) with the contemporary style Colonel Sir Sajjan Singhji Bahadur, KCSI, KCVO, A.D.C. to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. Here A.D.C. means Aide-de-Camp, a prestigious military and ceremonial appointment as a personal royal attendant to the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII, during his 19211922 tour of India. The intended recipient is Maharaj Rana Sir Bhawani Singh of Jhalawar (18741929), whose court at Jhalrapatan is named directly in the address. The written date Samvat 1982 securely places the letter in 19251926 CE.

The substantive message is a formal royal death notification. In close sense translation, Sajjan Singh sends respectful salutations and announces that a Jadeja Maharani connected with the ruling house of Jamnagar/Nawanagar has gone to the divine realm, a courtly euphemism for death. The letter further states that the prescribed mourning observance, or mausar, is to be held on Magha Vadi 7, Tuesday, and requests Bhawani Singhs attendance. The deceased woman is identified dynastically as a Jadeja Maharani of Jamnagar, but the surviving text does not provide a securely recoverable personal given name, so the dynastic identification is the most precise defensible description.

The manuscript survives in attractive original condition with extensive historic horizontal folds, a narrow marginal reinforcement, minor age-related creasing and handling wear, and light transfer marks. The verso is substantially blank, with no substantive secondary text or seal. The combination of Sajjan Singhs full royal and imperial titulature, his genuine Aide-de-Camp appointment to the Prince of Wales, Bhawani Singhs Jhalrapatan address, the Jamnagar/Jadeja dynastic connection, the formal royal mourning subject, Samvat 1982 dating, and elaborate metallic ceremonial decoration makes this a particularly significant surviving example of inter-princely correspondence linking the ruling houses of Ratlam, Jhalawar, and Jamnagar/Nawanagar during the final decades of Princely India.