This aquatint by William Hodges is based on his own 1781 drawing, made at Ghazipur. Shujah ud-Daulah, who was the Nawab of Oudh from 1754 to 1775, assigned the governship of Ghazipur to Faiz Ali Khan. At the time of Hodges' visit, several edifices erected by Faiz Ali Khan still remained.

A painting by William Hodges of the the Tomb of the Emperor Sher Shah at Sasaram in Bihar, dated 1786. Sasaram served as the capital for the Suri dynasty between 1530 and 1540 before the move to Delhi for the remaining five years of Suri rule.

The red stone tomb of Sher Shah Sur was designed by the architect Aliwal Khan and built between 1540 and 1545. It is octagonal in plan and is topped by an impressive dome of 22 metres in span surrounded by ornamental domed kiosks.

It stands at the centre of a lake on a square stone plinth with domed kiosks at each of its corners. The plinth has stone banks and stepped moorings on all sides and is connected to the mainland by a wide stone bridge.

Hodges had visited the site in 1783 and had remarked in his Travels, "I could not be struck by the grandeur of this monument, rising from the center of a large square lake, each side bounded by masonry...".

This picture shows the riverside palace of Faiz Ali Shah at Ghazipur. Hodges went to Ghazipur in 1781 and saw this and many other buildings erected under Ali Shah's patronage. He had been chosen as governor of Ghazipur by Shuja ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Oudh from 1754 to 1775.

The village of Sakrigali is situated on the Ganges and lies at the base of the Rajmahal Hills. The top of the first promontory, which forms the boundary between Bengal and Bihar, is known as the Pass of Sakrigali. Hodges stopped there during his tour of India in 1781 and 1782.

Hodges saw the temples at Deogarh in 1782. He wrote that "the Pagodas at Deogur ... are in the earliest stage of Hindoo Buildings, simply Pyramids, by pieling stone on stone, without any light whatever within, but what comes from a small Door scarcely five feet high." He used this view together with the view of the 'Great Pagoda at Tanjore', to contrast what he saw as the early and the later stages of Indian architecture.

It shows a ghat (landing) next to the river Yamuna at Etawah. Located in the modern state of Uttar Pradesh, Etawah is at the top of a high bank of the river, which is cut by a series of ravines caused by the heavy seasonal rainfall.

The town was important to the Mughal emperors, but at the time of Hodges' visit, it was under the control of the Nawabs of Oudh. In 1801 the British East India Company laid claim to it. Hodges found Etawah "large, but very wretched, having but two tolerable houses in it".

A view of the Gate of the Tomb of the Emperor Akbar at Secundra.

In 1781 Hodges was sent by his patron, Warren Hastings, to witness the siege of Bijaigarh by Major Popham. Hodges made sketches while he was there. At this time, Indian rebel Raja Chait Singh had wrested control of the fort from the British. Popham's siege was a success, although Chait Singh managed to escape to Gwalior.

Hodges went to Murshidabad in 1781. Named after Nawab Murshid Kuli Khan, Murshidabad became the capital of Bengal in 1705. This view shows the Katra Mosque, which was built in 1724 by Murshid Kuli Khan.

With its two huge octagonal minarets, it is said that this mosque was modelled after the Great Mosque at Mecca.

Built around 1354 by Firoz Shah Tugluq, Firozabad is today regarded as the eighth of the 12 cities of Delhi. At the time of Hodges' visit in the 1780s, it was little more than a village. Hodges' friend and fellow artist, William Princep describes this view as follows: "The principal building is a tomb, of very modern construction; and that to the right of the tomb is a building from whence the Mollahs, i.e. Mahometan Priests, read and explain passages of the Kohran to the People."

In 1783 Hodges went to Jaunpur and sketched the mosques built by the kings of the Sharqi dynasty in the 15th century. This picture shows the entrance gateway to the Atala Mosque, which was built in 1408, making it the earliest of all the Sharqi buildings at Jaunpur. The arched entrance to the Atala mosque is over 22 metres high. Along with the arch of the Friday Mosque at Jaunpur, it is the highest in India.

Rajmahal, a small town on the west bank of the Ganges, had at various times been the capital of the eastern provinces the Mughal Empire. It had particularly flourished in the 17th century under the governorship of Shah Sujah, the third son of the Mughal Emperor, Shah Jahan. Hodges considered this mosque to be of considerable historical interest to the British, because, "on the night succeeding the battle of Odooa-Nullah the whole of the British part of the army, after the pursuit of the enemy's forces, were lodged in this building".

Hodges went to Murshidabad in 1781, and it is likely that during this visit he came upon this cluster of monuments on the city's outskirts. They had been erected in memory of women who had performed the act of Sati, which Hodges described as "a well-known custom amongst the Hindoos, that the women, upon the death of their husbands, burn themselves on the funeral pile of the deceased". It is questionable whether the act of Sati was as "well-known" as Hodges believed. He claimed to have witnessed a Sati in October 1781 while in Varanasi, and although he was clearly fascinated by what he saw, he also expressed horror and outrage at the practice.

When Hodges was in India in the 1780s, Bengal was a flourishing kingdom. Calcutta and Murshidabad were its major cities and British life was focused around these two urban centres. The countryside, however, remained the backbone of Bengali life and customs. Hodges wrote that this plate "is intended to show the manners of the common people as the others are for their cultivated arts and their historical events".

In 1782 Hodges travelled into the Rajmahal Hills on the invitation of Augustus Cleveland, the revenue collector of the district, who was his good friend and patron. Hodges visited the area then known as Jungleterry, a rich green area south of Bhagalpur, describing the hills as "masses of stone piled one on another with large trees growing out of the crevices".