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Credit
An embassy of the Nawab of Oudh (Awadh), led by his minister Haider Beg Khan, passing Patna on its way to Lord Cornwallis, the new Governor-General of India, in Calcutta in 1786. Mezzotint by R. Earlom, 1800, after J. Zoffany, 1796. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Several different elements are brought together in the composition. In the centre, an elephant has run amok, has seized its former driver and is holding him in its trunk. In the left background is a large granary built at the suggestion of Warren Hastings after a famine in 1783-1784. In the foreground and the left middleground are many Indian people, which seem to be derived from the genre of paintings and drawings of Indian human types as defined by occupation, caste, religion etc. They include four fakirs. Numerous drawings by Zoffany in this genre were listed in his studio sale in 1811 (Forrester, loc. cit.). Zoffany portrays himself on horseback on the right. Haider Beg does not appear to be shown, but an elephant seen from behind on the left is labelled "Hyderbeck's swarie" in a separate key: "swarie" is not further defined, but the implication seems to be that Haider Beg is in that area of the picture
Patna, where the scene is represented as having taken place, is roughly equidistant between Lucknow, where the embassy presumably started, and Calcutta, its destination: the distance beteen Patna and either of the other cities is about 450-600 kilometres
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