2.4 Tippoo's Tiger: Frontispiece

A Review of the Origin, Progress and Result, of the Late Decisive War in Mysore with Notes by James Salmond; London, 1800 Bound volume 21.7 x 14.1 x 3 cm COL. MARK WOOD

he book includes, as a separate preface, the following 'Description of the Frontispiece' This drawing is taken from a piece of mechanism representing a royal tyger in the act of devouring a prostrate European. There are some barrels in imitation of an organ within the body of the tyger, and a row of keys of natural notes. The sounds produced by the organ are intended to resemble the cries of a person in distress, intermixed with the roar of a tyger. The machinery is so contrived, that while the organ is playing, the hand of the European is often lifted up to express his helpless and deplorable condition. The whole of this design is as large as life, and was executed by order of Tippoo Sultaun, who frequently amused himself with a sight of this emblematical triumph of the *Khoodadaud, over the English, Sircar** The piece of machinery was found in a room of the palace at Seringapatam appropriated for the reception of musical instruments, and hence called the Rag Mehal. The original wooden figure from which the drawing is taken will be forwarded, by the ships of this season, to the Chairman of the Court of Directors, to be presented to his Majesty. It is imagined that this characteristic emblem of the ferocious animosity of Tippoo Sultaun against the British Nation may not be thought undeserving of a place in the Tower of London. *Tippoo called his dominions the Sircare Khoodadaud, or God-given Sircar. N.B. The royal tyger was the emblem of Tippoo Sultaun's government, and the armorial bearing of his family. ** Sircar - Government. This is the earliest known image of Tippoo's Tiger, published shortly before it was dispatched by the Governor General, Lord Mornington, from India to the Court of Directors (of the East India Company) in London. Although there are contemporary references to the discovery of Tippoo's Tiger in the palace at Seringapatam in 1799, no descriptions or illustrations of it at Tipu's court have yet been found. The Music Gallery at the Entrance of the Mosque, Seringapatam, recorded in an aquatint after James Hunter (d.1792), would normally have been used by court musicians, making music to greet visitors or accompany ceremonies. Hunter's 'Mosque' is in fact the domed mausoleum at Gumbaz, where the elegant music gallery still stands at one end of the cypress avenue leading to the mausoleum.