Master Art

This bronze fish is probably a section from a ceremonial standard, with a projecting socket for a pole underneath and similar above, the latter with screw thread. The body is engraved with scales and low-set circular eyes, and the mouth has thick "lips" tightly closed.

As Jagdish Mittal writes, nine royal ensigns, one of which represented a fish, were carried before the Mughal emperor in the imperial retinue, and similar standards, set on the point of a spear, most probably had a role in ceremonies in the Deccan also. For one of the three metal fish emblems in the Jagdish and Kamla Mittal Museum of Indian Art, Hyderabad, see Stuart Cary Welch (ed.): India, Art and Culture 1300-1900, P. 323f.


Stock no.: A3913