Dear
Ed. I
read your thoughts with great interest and they seem absolutely
logical and in it self stringent. In any exploration of uncharted
terrain, the most important thing is first of all to get the ball
rolling and your thoughts are certainly the best way to do it. I am
sure that in the future more will come to light to confirm the
conceptual accuracy of your theory or to make small adjustments to
render it even more precise. If
you allow – here my small contribution with regard to the mail
originated not from privileged relatives of courtiers but by ordinary
people. I have two letters suggesting that even the ordinary postal
service – next to the Half Anna government courier service – has
also offered a full postal service to the hunting camp and at normal
post rates. Common people therefore had the choice between two
possibilities of sending their petitions to the Government:
or
Since
true postal letters (which were delivered directly to the hunting
camp) are rather rare, it seems that the population has preferred the
first and for those more confortable option of the government courier
service although at the risk that their letters will not be
considered urgent and will left waiting in the Kathmandu palace until
the return of the Prime Minister from the hunting camp.
Feb
1914 – 4 Paisa letter canceled in Kathmandu with crescent
type postmark and delivered by ordinary postal service to the hunting
camp (SAWARI CAMP) via the Post Office of Birganj.
* * *
It
was even possible to send registered
letters
to the hunting camp by the ordinary postal service (even with "ACKNOWLEDGMENT SERVICE")
Feb
1939 – Local Registered Cover from Birganj to the
near located hunting camp with
“ACKNOWLEDGMENT
SERVICE”. Cancellation
and delivery postmark from the same day.
* * *
All
this said,
dear
Ed, I
think your assumption that the half-anna systhem was a pure
government service is absolutely correct with
the further addition that in parallel even the ordinary post
organization has done a similar service.
Therefore,
it may be convenient to speak of "camp mail" dividing into
two categories:
Thanks
again to You
for getting the ball rolling,...
________________________
Herbert Mailänder
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