Jaipur 1947 – Jaipur Observatory
Jaipur was a former Princely state in
northern India that released its own stamps until 1949.
Subsequently it became part of the much larger state of
Rajasthan, and its capital, also called Jaipur, is now the
capital of all Rajasthan. One of Jaipur city’s greatest
tourist attractions is the Jantar Mantar observatory, a set of
stone instruments for timekeeping and measuring the positions
of celestial bodies, built by Maharaja Jai Singh II around
1730. The most imposing is the Samrat Jantar, said to be the
largest sundial in the world, built to tell local time to
within seconds. The Samrat Jantar consists of a triangular
wall, aligned north–south and rising to a summit some 27
m high, with its slope parallel to the Earth’s axis. The
wall casts its shadow onto a curved surface from which the time
can be read off. Surprisingly, this imposing instrument is not
the one shown on the Jaipur stamp; rather, the stamp shows a
smaller sundial about a fifth the size at the same site. Jai
Singh built four other observatories, at Delhi, Mathura, Ujjain
and Varanasi, but the one at Jaipur was the greatest of all.
The Jaipur observatory was restored in 1901 and declared a
national monument in 1948. The stamp commemorates the Silver
Jubilee of the accession to the throne of Maharaja Man Singh
II, who is the person depicted.
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