Five vintage books to buy at an online bid

As 50 rare and out-of-print books go for an online bid, Hassan M Kamal picks five cool buys

Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana

Iqbal: Poet of the East
Estimated at Rs 2,75,000 to Rs 3,25,000
It has 72 works (39 tipped-in colour plates, 24 photogravures, eight calligraphic plates and one etching), created by artist AR Chugtai, especially for the book, and are not found elsewhere.

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Each image (like the one on the right) was created after the 1950s and tries to capture the imagination of poet Muhammad Iqbal in his quatrains (rubaiyats).

The book was published at a cost of Rs 3 lakh. While the plates were created in UK, the text was printed in Pakistan. It was sold at a prohibitive price of Rs 1,500/$ 315/131 pounds.

Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana
Estimated at Rs 18,000 to Rs 22,000
Published in 1982, this is a cloth-mounted edition of the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana, and contains 270 pages of which, there are 28 colour plates and 179 black and white photographic plates.

It was published by Sanskriti Pratishthan and  Mulk Raj Anand.

Women of India
Estimated at Rs 50,000 to Rs 60,000


Edited by Otto Rothfeld, the cloth-bound 236-page, deluxe edition of the book features 48 colour illustrations by MB Dhurandhar.

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Estimated at Rs 90,000 to Rs 1,10,000


Published in 1930, the 16-page ribbon-bound original copy of Edward Fitzgerald’s booklet contains 12 colour plates by Asit Kumar Haldar.

The Armies of India
Estimated at Rs 50,000 to Rs 60,000


This is an assigned and numbered deluxe copy, published in 1911, featuring 72 full-page colour illustrations, recording the physical types and uniforms of the soldiers in India under the British rule.

Also, watch out for:
>> Constitution of India, signed by its framers
>> The Story of My Experiments with Truth, first edition by Mahatma Gandhi
>> The Chintz: The Calico Museum of Textile (Limited Edition of two volumes)
>> A Passage to India
>> Chhavi: Vol 1 and 2 by Bharat Kala Bhavan

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