Table of Contents

Introduction: The Picturesqueness of Ancient and Noble Races • 1. Durbar: Ceremonies Fit For a Ruler • 2. The Jewels in their Crowns: Heirs, Heirs Apparent and Heirlooms • 3. By Elephant, Horse or Rolls Royce: The Maharajas at Play • 4. Diwan-i-Khas and Diwan-i-Am: The Fortresses and Palaces of the Maharajas

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A spectacular collection of images of Princely India, chronicling the extraordinary wealth of the Maharajas and their families

About the Author

Andrew Robinson has written more than 25 books on the arts and sciences. They include Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts, India: A Short History and Earthshock, which won the Association of Earth Science Editors Outstanding Publication Award, plus Earth-Shattering Events . A regular contributor to such magazines as Current World Archaeology, History Today, The Lancet, Nature and Science, he has also been literary editor of The Times Higher Education Supplement and a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge.

Sumio Uchiyama is well known in Japan as a portrait photographer of cinema stars. He travelled throughout the Indian subcontinent in his search for Maharajas who maintain a traditional way of life

Reviews

Uchiyama, known for his pictures of Japanese movie stars, approaches his subject here in the same slavish manner to document, in full color, the riches of Indian maharajas, from the thrones they sit on to the Rollses they ride in. Though well reproduced, his photographs are resoundingly trite. Since Uchiyama offers no opinion on princely pomp, pomp looks exactly as it always does: diamond nose rings dangle from aristocratic nostrils, elephants preside over nocturnal ceremonies, and gold leaf-encrusted palaces loom timelessly. Only occasionally does the photographer find a telling image, as in the shots of turbanned patriarchs gloating over their splendid automobiles. Robinson's ( The Coasts of India ) text, too, covers familiar groundsurveying royal ceremonies, jewels, princely recreation and palaceswithout telling a full story. (Nov.)