The Sacred Cows of Bundi

These attractively designed and beautifully colored stamps are favorites among collectors. The colors range from the strong and brilliant to a wide spread of subtle shades. The story behind the design is well known: the Maharaja of Bundi successfully fought a Mughal army and protected cows in his state from slaughter. The stamps were issued for more than twenty-seven years and there are so many varieties that many collectors can afford a good showing although no one is likely to acquire all of them as singles, let alone in the form in which they were issued: in sheets of four.

All these stamps were produced from four clichés which could be taken apart and reset in any order. The letters in the top panel (reading Raj Bundi, "Bundi State") and the denominations in the bottom panels could also be replaced. The resulting permutations led to the creation of almost sixty different settings which, with the passage of time, developed flaws that in the absence of dated covers have helped to establish a chronology. The identification of the settings was begun by Burgess and Sturton in 1958 and continued in the 1986 handbook by R.J.Benns.

The Official stamps add further variety because there were three overprints. These are sometimes combined on the same sheet and are frequently found inverted, sideways or double, especially in the case of the Hindi overprint (SG Type O1). All or most of these latter varieties are philatelic.

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