Twin Cobra Overprints and Snake cancellations of Gwalior

Today (12.2.2022) I started to put together the Sun Snakes- Twin Cobra Overprints and Snake cancellations of Gwalior - exhibition pages.

After the successful French “Paris Etoile” collection, I wanted to make another exhibition collection of other interesting spostmark subject, in which I would hopefully have some personal connection. The answer was found in India.

I founded India’s first official wine magazine 12 years ago - at that time I embarked on an “exploration trip” to India and its culture. I arranged several events and tastings in India and made new friends, many of whom have also visited me in Finland. I wanted to find a topic for the exhibition collection in India and went through all the materials I found about India’s postmarks and ended up choosing the “Twin Cobra” overprints and Snakes cancellations in the state of Gwalior.

Gwalior was a large and important state in Central India. Under the Postal Convention of 1885, Gwalior and several other Indian States agreed to give up running their own postal systems, and use British Indian stamps overprinted with the name of the State. One of the upsides to the Convention was that the State stamps could then be valid for postage anywhere in India, not just within the State.

You'll notice that the name Gwalior appears in both English and Hindi. Gwalior was the only one of the Convention States to be allowed to use its own language in the overprints. In fact, on its Official stamps, it (almost) never used English at all.

 The two cobras and Sun motif was common in Gwalior. It refers to the legend that the founder of the ruling dynasty of Gwalior, when an infant, was left in the sun. Two cobras, recognizing the child's importance, came and spread their hoods to shade and protect him. You may just be able to make out the two cobras again near the top of the Lashkar postmark. (Lashkar was the main town in Gwalior.)

My intention is to build an exhibition collection of 3-4 frames, depend on how well I will find the suitable materials. One of the biggest challenges is that the Indian government has decided that no one in India should sell anything outside India related to its culture that is more than 100 years old, in this case correspondence. I will use A4 exhibition pages for this exhibition collection and I will add them here as soon as I’ll get pages done.

I will gladly take all available assistance in building this collection, so if you or your friends have letters or information on this subject, please get in touch.

The 5-frames collection is now ready for exhibitions (4.9.2022).

On first appearance, It received Large Silver Medal (9.9.2022)