Painting

Two men walk across a landscape, dressed in white loincloths, white turban bands and black and white shawls. They carry forked sticks. The painting is typical of works done in the Punjab, the region now divided between India and Pakistan, in the 1840s. The men are cultivators, and probably Jats, who widely converted to Sikhism. Their cut hair suggests that these men were Hindus, as conventional portraiture of the time makes a clear distinction between Sikh men with their uncut hair gathered into a topknot underneath their turban, and Hindus or Muslims, whose cut hair is usually shown underneath any head covering.