Tipu's Tiger
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Tipu's Tiger or Tippu's Tiger is an eighteenth-century
automaton An automaton (; plural: automata or automatons) is a relatively self-operating machine, or control mechanism designed to automatically follow a sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions.Automaton – Definition and More ...
or mechanical toy created for
Tipu Sultan Tipu Sultan (born Sultan Fateh Ali Sahab Tipu, 1 December 1751 – 4 May 1799), also known as the Tiger of Mysore, was the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore based in South India. He was a pioneer of rocket artillery.Dalrymple, p. 243 He int ...
, the ruler of the
Kingdom of Mysore The Kingdom of Mysore was a realm in South India, southern India, traditionally believed to have been founded in 1399 in the vicinity of the modern city of Mysore. From 1799 until 1950, it was a princely state, until 1947 in a subsidiary allia ...
in India. The carved and painted wood casing represents a tiger mauling a near life-size European man. Mechanisms inside the tiger and the man's body make one hand of the man move, emit a wailing sound from his mouth and grunts from the tiger. In addition a flap on the side of the tiger folds down to reveal the keyboard of a small
pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ''ranks ...
with 18 notes. As a gift for Tipu the automaton makes use of his personal emblem of the tiger and expresses his hatred of his enemy, the British of the
East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...
. The tiger was taken from his
summer palace The Summer Palace () is a vast ensemble of lakes, gardens and palaces in Beijing. It was an imperial garden in the Qing dynasty. Inside includes Longevity Hill () Kunming Lake and Seventeen Hole Bridge. It covers an expanse of , three-quarter ...
when East India Company troops stormed Tipu's capital in 1799. The
Governor General Governor-general (plural ''governors-general''), or governor general (plural ''governors general''), is the title of an office-holder. In the context of governors-general and former British colonies, governors-general are appointed as viceroy t ...
, Lord Mornington sent the tiger to Britain initially intending it to be an exhibit in the
Tower of London The Tower of London, officially His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which is separa ...
. First exhibited to the London public in 1808 in
East India House East India House was the London headquarters of the East India Company, from which much of British India was governed until the British government took control of the Company's possessions in India in 1858. It was located in Leadenhall Street ...
, then the offices of the East India Company in London, it was later transferred to the
Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...
(V&A) in 1880 (accession number 2545(IS)). It now forms part of the permanent exhibit on the "Imperial courts of South India". From the moment it arrived in London to the present day, Tipu's Tiger has been a popular attraction to the public.


Background

Tipu Tiger was originally made for
Tipu Sultan Tipu Sultan (born Sultan Fateh Ali Sahab Tipu, 1 December 1751 – 4 May 1799), also known as the Tiger of Mysore, was the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore based in South India. He was a pioneer of rocket artillery.Dalrymple, p. 243 He int ...
(also referred to as Tippoo Saib, Tippoo Sultan and other epithets in nineteenth-century literature) in the Kingdom of Mysore (today in the Indian state of
Karnataka Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...
) around 1795.
Tipu Sultan Tipu Sultan (born Sultan Fateh Ali Sahab Tipu, 1 December 1751 – 4 May 1799), also known as the Tiger of Mysore, was the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore based in South India. He was a pioneer of rocket artillery.Dalrymple, p. 243 He int ...
used the tiger systematically as his emblem, employing tiger motifs on his weapons, on the uniforms of his soldiers, and on the decoration of his palaces. His throne rested upon a probably similar life-size wooden tiger, covered in gold; like other valuable treasures it was broken up for the highly organised
prize fund Prize money refers in particular to naval prize money, usually arising in naval warfare, but also in other circumstances. It was a monetary reward paid in accordance with the prize law of a belligerent state to the crew of a ship belonging to t ...
shared out between the British army. Tipu had inherited power from his father
Hyder Ali Hyder Ali ( حیدر علی, ''Haidarālī''; 1720 – 7 December 1782) was the Sultan and ''de facto'' ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore in southern India. Born as Hyder Ali, he distinguished himself as a soldier, eventually drawing the att ...
, a Muslim soldier who had risen to become ''dalwai'' or commander-in-chief under the ruling Hindu
Wodeyar dynasty The Wadiyar dynasty (formerly spelt Wodeyer or Odeyer, also referred to as the Wadiyars of Mysore), is a late-medieval/ early-modern South Indian Hindu royal family of former kings of Mysore from the Urs clan originally based in Mysore city. ...
, but from 1760 was in effect the ruler of the kingdom. Hyder, after initially trying to ally with the British against the
Maratha The Marathi people (Marathi: मराठी लोक) or Marathis are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who are indigenous to Maharashtra in western India. They natively speak Marathi, an Indo-Aryan language. Maharashtra was formed as a M ...
s, had later become their firm enemy, as they represented the most effective obstacle to his expansion of his kingdom, and Tipu grew up with violently anti-British feelings. The tiger formed part of a specific group of large
caricature A caricature is a rendered image showing the features of its subject in a simplified or exaggerated way through sketching, pencil strokes, or other artistic drawings (compare to: cartoon). Caricatures can be either insulting or complimentary, a ...
images commissioned by Tipu showing European, often specifically British, figures being attacked by tigers or elephants, or being executed, tortured and humiliated and attacked in other ways. Many of these were painted by Tipu's orders on the external walls of houses in the main streets of Tipu's capital,
Seringapatam Srirangapatna is a town and headquarters of one of the seven Taluks of Mandya district, in the Indian State of Karnataka. It gets its name from the Ranganthaswamy temple consecrated at around 984 CE. Later, under the British rule the city wa ...
. Tipu was in " close co-operation" with the French, who were at war with Britain and still had a presence in South India, and some of the French craftsmen who visited Tipu's court probably contributed to the internal works of the tiger. It has been proposed that the design was inspired by the death in 1792 of a son of General Sir Hector Munro, who had commanded a division during
Sir Eyre Coote Lieutenant-General Sir Eyre Coote, KB (1726 – 28 April 1783) was a British soldier and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1768 to 1780. He is best known for his many years of service with the British Army in India. His victory ...
's victory at the
Battle of Porto Novo The Battle of Porto Novo was fought on 1 July 1781 between forces of the Kingdom of Mysore and British East India Company in the place called Porto Novo (now known as Parangipettai) on the Indian subcontinent, during the Second Anglo-Mysore War. ...
(
Parangipettai Parangipettai, historically called Porto Novo ("New Port" in Portuguese), is a panchayat town in Cuddalore district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Parangipettai is located on the north bank of the mouth of the Vellar River at a distance of ...
) in 1781 when
Hyder Ali Hyder Ali ( حیدر علی, ''Haidarālī''; 1720 – 7 December 1782) was the Sultan and ''de facto'' ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore in southern India. Born as Hyder Ali, he distinguished himself as a soldier, eventually drawing the att ...
, Tipu Sultan's father, was defeated with a loss of 10,000 men during the
Second Anglo-Mysore War The Second Anglo-Mysore War was a conflict between the Kingdom of Mysore and the British East India Company from 1780 to 1784. At the time, Mysore was a key French ally in India, and the conflict between Britain against the French and Dutch in ...
. Hector Sutherland Munro, a 17-year-old East India Company Cadet on his way to Madras, was attacked and killed by a tiger on 22 December 1792 while hunting with several companions on Saugor Island in the
Bay of Bengal The Bay of Bengal is the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean, bounded on the west and northwest by India, on the north by Bangladesh, and on the east by Myanmar and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India. Its southern limit is a line between ...
(still one of the last refuges of the
Bengal tiger The Bengal tiger is a population of the ''Panthera tigris tigris'' subspecies. It ranks among the biggest wild cats alive today. It is considered to belong to the world's charismatic megafauna. The tiger is estimated to have been present in ...
). However a similar scene was depicted on a silver mount on a gun made for Tipu and dated 1787–88, five years before the incident. The
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
, who own the
Staffordshire figure Staffordshire figures are a type of popular pottery figurine made in England from the 18th century onward. Most Staffordshire figures made from 1740 to 1900 were produced by small potteries and makers' marks are generally absent. Most Victorian f ...
group illustrated, suggest that the continuing popularity of the subject into the 1820s was due to Tipu's automaton being on display in London.


Description

Tipu's Tiger is notable as an example of early musical automata from India, and also for the fact that it was especially constructed for Tipu Sultan. With overall dimensions for the object of high and long, the man at least is close to life-size. The painted wooden shell forming both figures likely draws upon South Indian traditions of Hindu religious sculpture. It is typically about half an inch thick, and now much reinforced on the inside following bomb damage in World War II. There are many openings at the head end, formed to match the pattern of the inner part of the painted tiger stripes, which allow the sounds from the pipes within to be heard better, and the tiger is "obviously male". The top part of the tiger's body can be lifted off to inspect the mechanics by removing four screws. The construction of the human figure is similar but the wood is much thicker. Examination and analysis by the V&A conservation department has determined that much of the current paint has been restored or overpainted. The human figure is clearly in European costume, but authorities differ as to whether it represents a soldier or civilian; the current text on the V&A website avoids specifying, other than describing the figure as "European". The operation of a crank handle powers several different mechanisms inside Tipu's Tiger. A set of bellows expels air through a pipe inside the man's throat, with its opening at his mouth. This produces a wailing sound, simulating the cries of distress of the victim. A mechanical link causes the man's left arm to rise and fall. This action alters the pitch of the 'wail pipe'. Another mechanism inside the tiger's head expels air through a single pipe with two tones. This produces a "regular grunting sound" simulating the roar of the tiger. Concealed behind a flap in the tiger's flank is the small ivory keyboard of a two-stop pipe organ in the tiger's body, allowing tunes to be played. The style of both shell and workings, and analysis of the metal content of the original brass pipes of the organ (many have been replaced), indicates that the tiger was of local manufacture. The presence of French artisans and French army engineers within Tipu's court has led many historians to suggest there was French input into the mechanism of this automaton.


History

Tipu's Tiger was part of the extensive plunder from Tipu's palace captured in the fall of Seringapatam, in which Tipu died, on 4 May 1799, at the culmination of the
Fourth Anglo-Mysore War The Fourth Anglo-Mysore War was a conflict in South India between the Kingdom of Mysore against the British East India Company and the Hyderabad Deccan in 1798–99. This was the final conflict of the four Anglo-Mysore Wars. The British captured ...
. An '' aide-de-camp'' to the Governor General of the East India Company,
Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley Richard Colley Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, (20 June 1760 – 26 September 1842) was an Anglo-Irish politician and colonial administrator. He was styled as Viscount Wellesley until 1781, when he succeeded his father as 2nd Earl of M ...
, wrote a memorandum describing the discovery of the object: The earliest published drawing of Tippoo's Tyger was the frontispiece for the book "A Review of the Origin, Progress and Result, of the Late Decisive War in Mysore with Notes" by James Salmond, published in London in 1800. It preceded the move of the exhibit from India to England and had a separate preface titled "Description of the Frontispiece" which said:As quoted in Unlike Tipu's throne, which also featured a large tiger, and many other treasures in the palace, the materials of Tipu's Tiger had no intrinsic value, which together with its striking iconography is what preserved it and brought it back to England essentially intact. The Governors of the East India Company had at first intended to present the tiger to the Crown, with a view to it being displayed in the
Tower of London The Tower of London, officially His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which is separa ...
, but then decided but to keep it for the company. After some time in store, during which period the first of many "misguided and wholly unjustified endeavours at "improving" the piece" from a musical point of view may have taken place, it was displayed in the reading-room of the
East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...
Museum and Library at
East India House East India House was the London headquarters of the East India Company, from which much of British India was governed until the British government took control of the Company's possessions in India in 1858. It was located in Leadenhall Street ...
in Leadenhall Street, London from July 1808. It rapidly became a very popular exhibit, and the crank-handle controlling the wailing and grunting could apparently be freely turned by the public. The French author
Gustave Flaubert Gustave Flaubert ( , , ; 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880) was a French novelist. Highly influential, he has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flauber ...
visited London in 1851 to see the
Great Exhibition The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition (in reference to the temporary The Crystal Palace, structure in which it was held), was an International Exhib ...
, writes
Julian Barnes Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946) is an English writer. He won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 with ''The Sense of an Ending'', having been shortlisted three times previously with '' Flaubert's Parrot'', ''England, England'', and '' Art ...
, but finding nothing of interest in
The Crystal Palace The Crystal Palace was a cast iron and plate glass structure, originally built in Hyde Park, London, Hyde Park, London, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. The exhibition took place from 1 May to 15 October 1851, and more than 14,000 exhibit ...
, visited the East India Company Museum where he was greatly enamoured by Tipu's Tiger. By 1843 it was reported that "The machine or organ ... is getting much out of repair, and does not altogether realize the expectation of the visitor". Eventually the crank-handle disappeared, to the great relief of students using the reading-room in which the tiger was displayed, and '' The Athenaeum'' later reported that When the East India Company was taken over by the Crown in 1858, the tiger was stored in
Fife House, Whitehall Fife House was a building in Whitehall, London. It was the home of politicians including Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, Prime Minister from 1812 to 1827. The house was demolished in 1869. History The house later known as Fife House was b ...
until 1868, when it moved down the road to the new
India Office The India Office was a British government department established in London in 1858 to oversee the administration, through a Viceroy and other officials, of the Provinces of India. These territories comprised most of the modern-day nations of I ...
, which occupied part of the building still used by today's
Foreign and Commonwealth Office The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, department of the Government of the United Kingdom. Equivalent to other countries' Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ministries of fore ...
. In 1874 it was moved to the India Museum in
South Kensington South Kensington, nicknamed Little Paris, is a district just west of Central London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Historically it settled on part of the scattered Middlesex village of Brompton. Its name was supplanted with ...
, which was in 1879 dissolved, with the collection distributed between other museums; the V&A records the tiger as acquired in 1880. During World War II the tiger was badly damaged by a German bomb which brought down the roof above it, breaking the wooden casing into several hundred pieces, which were carefully pieced together after the war, so that by 1947 it was back on display. In 1955 it was exhibited in New York at the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
through the summer and spring. In recent times, Tipu's Tiger has formed an essential part of museum exhibitions exploring the historical interface between Eastern and Western civilisation, colonialism, ethnic histories and other subjects, one such being held at the Victoria and Albert Museum itself in autumn 2004 titled "Encounters:the meeting of Asia and Europe, 1500–1800". In 1995, 'The Tiger and the Thistle' bi-centennial exhibition was held in Scotland on the topic of "Tipu Sultan and the Scots". The organ was considered too fragile to travel to Scotland for the exhibition. Instead, a full-sized replica made of fibre glass and painted by Derek Freeborn, was exhibited in its place. The replica itself also had an earlier Scottish association, having been made in 1986 for 'The Enterprising Scot' exhibition, which was held to commemorate the October 1985 merger of the
Royal Scottish Museum The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland, was formed in 2006 with the merger of the new Museum of Scotland, with collections relating to Scottish antiquities, culture and history, and the adjacent Royal Scottish Museum (opened in ...
and the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland to form a new entity - the
National Museum of Scotland The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland, was formed in 2006 with the merger of the new Museum of Scotland, with collections relating to Scottish antiquities, culture and history, and the adjacent Royal Scottish Museum (opened in ...
. Today Tipu's Tiger is arguably the best-known single work in the Victoria and Albert Museum as far as the general public is concerned. It is a "must-see" highlight for school-children's visits to the Victoria and Albert Museum, and functions as an iconic representation of the museum, replicated in various forms of memorabilia in the museum shops including
postcard A postcard or post card is a piece of thick paper or thin cardboard, typically rectangular, intended for writing and mailing without an envelope. Non-rectangular shapes may also be used but are rare. There are novelty exceptions, such as wood ...
s, model kits and stuffed toys. Visitors can no longer operate the mechanism since the device is now kept in a glass case. A small model of this toy is exhibited in Tipu Sultan's wooden palace in Bangalore. Although other items associated with Tipu, including his sword, have recently been purchased and brought back to India by billionaire
Vijay Mallya Vijay Vittal Mallya (born 18 December 1955) is an Indian businessman, former politician and fugitive. He is the subject of an extradition effort by the Indian Government to return him from the UK to face charges of financial crimes in India. T ...
, Tipu's Tiger has not itself been the subject of an official repatriation request, presumably due to the ambiguity underlying Tipu's image in the eyes of Indians; his being an object of loathing in the eyes of some Indians while considered a hero by others.


Symbolism

Tipu Sultan identified himself with tigers; his personal epithet was 'The Tiger of Mysore,' his soldiers were dressed in 'tyger' jackets, his personal symbol invoked a tiger's face through clever use of calligraphy and the tiger motif is visible on his throne, and other objects in his personal possession, including Tipu's Tiger. Accordingly, as per Joseph Sramek, for Tipu the tiger striking down the European in the organ represented his symbolic triumph over the British. The British hunted tigers, not just to emulate the
Mughals The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...
and other local elites in this "royal" sport, but also as a symbolic defeat of Tipu Sultan and any other ruler who stood in the path of British domination. The tiger motif was used in the "Seringapatam medal" which was awarded to those who participated in the 1799 campaign, where the British lion was depicted as overcoming a prostrate tiger, the tiger being the dynastic symbol of Tipu's line. The Seringapatam medal was issued in gold for the highest dignitaries who were associated with the campaign as well as select officers on general duty, silver for other dignitaries, field officers and other staff officers, in copper-
bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids such ...
for the non-commissioned officers and in
tin Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from la, stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a silvery-coloured metal. Tin is soft enough to be cut with little force and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, t ...
for the privates. On the reverse it had a frieze of the storming of the fort while the obverse showed, in the words of a nineteenth-century tome on medals, "the BRITISH LION subduing the TIGER, the emblem of the late Tippoo Sultan's government, with the period when it was effected and the following words 'ASAD ULLAH GHALIB', signifying the Lion of God is the conqueror, or the conquering Lion of God." In this manner, the iconography of this automaton was adopted and overturned by the British. When Tipu's Tiger was displayed in London in the nineteenth century, British viewers of the time "characterised the tiger as a trophy and symbolic justification of British colonial rule". Tipu's Tiger along with other trophies such as Tipu's sword, the throne of
Ranjit Singh Ranjit Singh (13 November 1780 – 27 June 1839), popularly known as Sher-e-Punjab or "Lion of Punjab", was the first Maharaja of the Sikh Empire, which ruled the northwest Indian subcontinent in the early half of the 19th century. He s ...
,
Tantya Tope Tantia Tope (also spelled Tatya Tope, : ̪aːt̪ʲa ʈoːpe 6 January 1814 – 18 April 1859) was a general in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and one of its notable leaders. Despite lacking formal military training, Tantia Tope is widely consi ...
's ''
kurta A ''kurta'' is a loose collarless shirt or tunic worn in many regions of South Asia, (subscription required) Quote: "A loose shirt or tunic worn by men and women." Quote: "Kurta: a loose shirt without a collar, worn by women and men from South ...
'' and Nana Saheb's betel-box which was made of brass, were all displayed as "memorabilia of the Mutiny". In one interpretation, the display of Tipu's Tiger in South Kensington, served to remind the visitor of the ''
noblesse oblige ''Noblesse oblige'' (; ; literally “nobility obliges”) is a French expression from a time when French (more specifically, Anglo-Norman) was the language of the English nobility, and retains in English the meaning that nobility extends beyo ...
'' of the British Empire to bring civilisation to the barbaric lands of which Tipu was king. Tipu's Tiger is also notable as a literal image of a tiger killing a European, an important symbol in England at the time, and from about 1820 the "Death of Munro" became one of the scenes in the repertoire of
Staffordshire pottery The Staffordshire Potteries is the industrial area encompassing the six towns Burslem, Fenton, Hanley, Longton, Stoke and Tunstall, which is now the city of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. North Staffordshire became a centre of ce ...
figurines. Tiger-hunting in the
British Raj The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was himsel ...
, is also considered to represent not just the political subjugation of India, but in addition, the triumph over India's environment. The iconography persisted and during the
rebellion of 1857 The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the fo ...
,
Punch Punch commonly refers to: * Punch (combat), a strike made using the hand closed into a fist * Punch (drink), a wide assortment of drinks, non-alcoholic or alcoholic, generally containing fruit or fruit juice Punch may also refer to: Places * Pun ...
ran a political cartoon showing the Indian rebels as a tiger, attacking a victim in an identical pose to Tipu's Tiger, being defeated by the British forces shown by the larger figure of a lion. It has been suggested that Tipu's Tiger also contributed indirectly to the development of a popular early-20th-century stereotype of China as the "Sleeping Lion". A recent study describes how this popular stereotype actually drew on Chinese reports about the tiger Motives for collection of articles, such as Tipu's Tiger, are seen by literary historian Barrett Kalter as having a social and cultural context. The collection of Western and Indian art by Tipu Sultan is seen by Kalter as motivated by the need to display his wealth and legitimise his authority over his subjects who were predominantly Hindu and did not share his religion, viz. Islam. In the case of the East India Company, collection of documents, artefacts and ''objet's d'art''  from India helped develop the idea of a subjugated Indian populace in the minds of the British people, the thought being that the possession of such objects of a culture represented understanding of, dominance over, and mastery of that culture.


As a musical instrument

In a detailed study published in 1987 of the tiger's musical and noise-making functions, Arthur W.J.G. Ord-Hume concluded that since coming to Britain, "the instrument has been ruthlessly reworked, and in doing so much of its original operating principles have been destroyed". There are two ranks of pipes in the organ (as opposed to the wailing and grunting functions), each "comprising eighteen notes,
hich Ij ( fa, ايج, also Romanized as Īj; also known as Hich and Īch) is a village in Golabar Rural District, in the Central District of Ijrud County, Zanjan Province, Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also ...
are nominally of 4ft pitch and are
unison In music, unison is two or more musical parts that sound either the same pitch or pitches separated by intervals of one or more octaves, usually at the same time. ''Rhythmic unison'' is another term for homorhythm. Definition Unison or per ...
s - i.e. corresponding pipes in each register make sounds of the same musical pitch. This is an unusual layout for a pipe organ although while selecting the two stops together results in more sound ... there is also detectable a slight beat between the pipes so creating a celeste effect. ... it is considered likely that as so much work has been done ... this characteristic may be more an accident of tuning than an intentional feature". The tiger's grunt is made by a single pipe in the tiger's head and the man's wail by a single pipe emerging at his mouth and connected to separate
bellows A bellows or pair of bellows is a device constructed to furnish a strong blast of air. The simplest type consists of a flexible bag comprising a pair of rigid boards with handles joined by flexible leather sides enclosing an approximately airtigh ...
located in the man's chest, where they can be accessed by unbolting and lifting off the tiger. The grunt operates by cogs gradually raising the weighted "grunt-pipe" until it reaches a point where it slips down "to fall against its fixed lower-board or reservoir, discharging the air to form the grunting sound" Today all the sound-making functions rely on the crank-handle to power them, though Ord-Hume believes this was not originally the case. Works on the noise-making functions included those made over several decades by the famous organ-building firm
Henry Willis & Sons Henry Willis & Sons is a British firm of pipe organ builders founded in 1845. Although most of their installations have been in the UK, examples can be found in other countries. Five generations of the Willis family served as principals of th ...
, and Henry Willis III, who worked on the tiger in the 1950s, contributed an account to a monograph by Mildred Archer of the V&A. Ord-Hume is generally ready to exempt Willis work from his scathing comments on other drastic restorations, which "vandalism" is assumed to be by unknown earlier organ-builders. There was a detailed account of the sound-making functions in ''
The Penny Magazine ''The Penny Magazine'' was an illustrated British magazine aimed at the working class, published every Saturday from 31 March 1832 to 31 October 1845. Charles Knight created it for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in response to ...
'' in 1835, whose anonymous author evidently understood "things mechanical and organs in particular". From this and Ord-Hume's own investigations, he concluded that the original operation of the man's "wail" had been intermittent, with a wail only being produced after every dozen or so grunts from the tiger above, but that at some date after 1835 the mechanism had been altered to make the wail continuous, and that the bellows for the wail had been replaced with smaller and weaker ones, and the operation of the moving arm altered. Puzzling features of the present instrument include the placing of the handle, which when turned is likely to obstruct a player of the keyboard. Ord-Hume, using the 1835 account, concludes that originally the handle (which is a nineteenth-century British replacement, probably of a French original) only operated the grunt and wail, while the organ was operated by pulling a string or cord to work the original bellows, now replaced. The keyboard, which is largely original, is "unique in construction", with "square ivory buttons" with round
lathe A lathe () is a machine tool that rotates a workpiece about an axis of rotation to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, deformation, facing, and turning, with tools that are applied to the workpiece to c ...
-turned tops instead of conventional keys. Though the mechanical functioning of each button is "practical and convenient" they are spaced such that "it is almost impossible to stretch the hand to play an octave". The buttons are marked with small black spots, differently placed but forming no apparent pattern in relation to the notes produced and corresponding to no known system of marking keys. The two stop control knobs for the organ are located, "rather confusingly", a little below the tiger's testicles. The instrument is now rarely played, but there is a V&A video of a recent performance.''Conservation in Action - Playing Tippoo's Tiger Part 2''
an
''Part 1'', with the top of the tiger removed
Vimeo.com, accessed 17 July 2011


Derivative works

Tipu's Tiger has provided inspiration to poets, sculptors, artists and others from the nineteenth century to the present day. The poet
John Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculo ...
saw Tipu's Tiger at the museum in Leadenhall Street and worked it into his satirical verse of 1819, ''The Cap and Bells''. In the poem, a soothsayer visits the court of the Emperor Elfinan. He hears a strange noise and thinks the Emperor is snoring.. Dead website, retrieved throug
The Wayback Machine
/ref> ::"Replied the page: "that little buzzing noise…. ::Comes from a play-thing of the Emperor’s choice, ::From a Man-Tiger-Organ, prettiest of his toys" The French poet,
Auguste Barbier Henri Auguste Barbier (29 April 1805 – 13 February 1882) was a French dramatist and poet. Barbier was born in Paris, France. He was inspired by the July Revolution and poured forth a series of eager, vigorous poems, denouncing the evils of the ...
, described the tiger and its workings and meditated on its meaning in his poem, ''Le Joujou du Sultan'' (The Plaything of the Sultan) published in 1837. More recently, the American
Modernist Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
poet,
Marianne Moore Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit. Early life Moore was born in Kirkwood ...
wrote in her 1967 poem ''Tippoo's Tiger'' about the workings of the automaton, though in fact the tail was never movable: ::"The infidel claimed Tipu's helmet and cuirasse ::and a vast toy - a curious automaton ::a man killed by a tiger; with organ pipes inside ::from which blood-curdling cries merged with inhuman groans. ::The tiger moved its tail as the man moved his arm." ''Die Seele'' (The Souls), a work by painter
Jan Balet Jan Balet (20 July 1913 in Bremen – 31 January 2009 in Estavayer le Lac, Switzerland), was a German/US-American painter, graphic artist and illustrator. Affected by the style naive art he worked particularly as a graphic artist and a ...
(1913–2009), shows an angel trumpeting over a flower garden while a tiger devours a uniformed French soldier. The Indian painter
M. F. Husain Maqbool Fida Husain (17 September 1915 – 9 June 2011) was an Indian artist known for executing bold, vibrantly coloured narrative paintings in a modified Cubist style. He was one of the most celebrated and internationally recognised Ind ...
painted Tipu's Tiger in his characteristic style in 1986 titling the work as "Tipu Sultan's Tiger". The sculptor
Dhruva Mistry Dhruva Mistry (born 1 January 1957) is an Indian sculpture, sculptor. Biography Mistry was born on 1 January 1957, Kanjari, central Gujarat in India and studied Sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. University of Baroda in 1974-1981 ...
, when a student at the
Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...
, adjacent to the Victoria and Albert Museum, frequently passed Tipu's Tiger in its glass case and was inspired to make a fibre-glass and plastic sculpture ''Tipu'' in 1986. The sculpture ''Rabbit eating Astronaut'' (2004) by the artist Bill Reid is a humorous ''homage'' to the tiger, the rabbit "chomping" when its tail is cranked round.Illustrated Stronge, p.89
beebomb.com here


See also

* Cat organ &
Piganino The Piganino is a conjectural musical instrument using a keyboard as to produce sound from pigs by poking them. Satirical use includes further terms as in german: Schweineorgel (pig organ), french: l’orgue à cochons, and "Hog Harmonium", (a p ...


Notes


References

* * * * *


Videos of the tiger in performance


Video
of
David Dimbleby David Dimbleby (born 28 October 1938) is an English journalist and former presenter of current affairs and political programmes, best known for having presented the BBC topical debate programme ''Question Time''. He is the son of broadcaster R ...
playing the grunt and wail only. * V&A video of a recent performance of the organ fro
Vimeo.com: ''Conservation in Action - Playing Tipu's Tiger Part 2''
an
''Part 1''
with the top of the tiger removed.


External links

{{commons category
Accession page for Tipu's Tiger on Victoria & Albert Museum website




* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20070103085604/http://www.nationalgalleries.org/tipu/tiger.htm Tiger - Decorative motif & symbol of Tipu Sultan
Tipu biography & Mysore history

Death of Munrow c. 1814
* Discussion by
Janina Ramirez Janina Sara Maria Ramirez (; ' Maleczek; born 7 July 1980), sometimes credited as Nina Ramirez, is a British art historian, cultural historian, and TV presenter. She specialises in interpreting symbols and examining works of art within their hi ...
and Sona Datta of
Peabody Essex Museum The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts, US, is a successor to the East India Marine Society, established in 1799. It combines the collections of the former Peabody Museum of Salem (which acquired the Society's collection) and the ...

Art Detective Podcast, 17 Mar 2017
Individual pipe organs Tipu Sultan Asian objects in the Victoria and Albert Museum Tigers in art Historical robots Zoomusicology Indian art 18th century in India Robots of India 18th-century robots Automata (mechanical) Tigers in popular culture Anti-British sentiment India–United Kingdom relations