Under the popular museum series ‘Exhibit of the Month’ of the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya (IGRMS), a traditional object is displayed for a whole month. The exhibit for the month of August is ‘Surang Diya: A Rolling lamp’. This exhibition is being mounted by museum assistant Rajesh Gautam.
Surang Diya was generally utilised during the transportation in tunnel. It is operated by rolling on the floor. As it rolled on the floor, the lamp lighted up the darkness of the tunnels and revealed the unseen hidden dangers. This same skill has promoted its use in all places similar to tunnel. Secondly, this lamp was used as normal lamp hanging in both outside and inside of the home.
History of the Mughals reveals its small sophisticated use as a ball by Mughal Queens in their Hamamkhana for dim light during water sports. In some other places its use has been seen as night lamp by putting a decorated thin metal sheet on the outer cover of the lamp.
Surang diya is entirely made of iron and it appears as a cage like structure. The exterior cage-shaped structure of the Surang Diya displayed in the exhibition is composed of 27 thin iron bar. The extreme outer portion is protected by two cage-like hemispherical parts made of thin iron bars formed into a ball.