English: A Nanakpanthi with one shoe and half a moustache: watercolour etching from 'A Collection of Two Hundred and Fifty Coloured Etchings Descriptive of the Manners, Customs and Dress of the Hindoos' by François Balthazar Solvyns, Calcutta, 1799. Inscribed with the caption: "A NAUNUCK PUNTHY."

Possibly a misidentified depiction of an Udasi belonging to the Bakhshishan sub-sect, more specifically the Suthrashahi sub-sub-sect.

Image source: [1]

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Source description:

Publication/Creation: [Calcutta] : [François Balthazar Solvyns], [1799]

Physical description: 1 print : etching, with watercolour.

Series: Manners, customs, and dresses of the Hindoos

Contributors: Solvyns, Balt. (Balthazar), 1760-1824.

Lettering: A naunuck, punthy

References note: Travel in aquatint and lithography 1770-1860 from the library of J.R. Abbey, San Francisco 1991, vol. 2, 421.147

Reference: Wellcome Collection 30712i

Creator/production credits: François Balthazar Solvyns, a Belgian artist, spent many years in Calcutta, producing drawings of the local people and their customs, showing different castes and street sellers. Solvyns employed local Indian artists to apply watercolour to his series "Manners, customs, and dresses of the Hindoos"

Type/Technique: Etchings

Languages: English

Reference: 30712i

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Description(s) from original publication by artist (taken from: [2]):

Calcutta: Section VII, Number 8. A Nanuk-Punthy,--a sectary formed by Nanuk, and are remarkable for wearing one shoe only and shaving one mustache,--he is represented setting in Durnah, a religious fraud, an account of which is given in the 3d volume of the Asiatic Researches, in Article 22, on some extraordinary Facts, Customs, and Practices of the Hindoos.

Paris: Volume II, Section 4, Number 6. NANUK-PUNTHY.

The Faquirs who go by the name of Nanuk-Punthys are very different, and much more peaceable than those of which we have just been speaking. Their outward appearance offers something striking, not to be met with among any of the other Faquirs; which is caused by their wearing only one whisker and one shoe. The origin of so strange a custom still remains unknown to me, notwithstanding all my endeavours to discover it. Every Faquir of this class has his turban covered with a sort of network of wire, of which also he wears a kind of cord as a collar round his neck. To the left side of the turban, above the ear, are fastened two little bells of silver. The Nanuk-Punthy carries besides in each hand a stick which he is continually striking together, reciting at the same time, with a most extraordinary volubility of tongue, a Durnah or text of the Hindoo legend. There is a pretty ample description of this Durnah or text in the third volume of the Memoirs of the Society of Calcutta. These Faquirs are persuaded that this pious trick gives them an incontestable claim upon the charity and beneficence of all those upon whom they intrude their endless declamations; to which, as often as they are disappointed, curses and reproaches succeed with equal volubility. They pretend to have a warrant for this in the precepts of their sect; and we must remember that the Hindoos feel more hurt by reviling language than by any other sort of ill treatment.

Some of the Nanuck-Punthys choose the markets and public places for the theatre of their perpetual harangues: others go from house to house, from shop to shop, striking their sticks together and pouring forth their declamations, untired and incessant, excess in the well filled intervals of scolding. This is their trade, the profession they have embraced for life. They are in other respects quiet in their demeanour, and are even treated with some degree of respect, especially among the Sics and the Mahrattas.