Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c11.4

c11.4

THE art of painting in India has become known through its two principal developments—the Buddhist frescoes of the first centuries of the Christian era and the later mediaeval miniatures. Owing to the inaccessibility of the former the student of these unique examples of Indian pictorial art is usually unable to see them *in situ*, and so is dependent for his knowledge on reproductions; but in his researches in the latter art, he is confronted with no such disabilities, as numbers of the original pictures are available for his inspection in many of the larger libraries, and in most collections of Indian art. It is with the miniature painting of India in one of its aspects that this work proposes to deal. As a form of expression the art has resolved itself into two phases, which for convenience may be referred to as schools. These are the Rājput, which is the Hindu form of the art, and the Mughal, which is the Muhammadan; both schools, however, owed their origin to the artistic incentive of a Muhammadan dynasty, that of the Mughals. The Mughal emperors came to India from Central Asia, and were the descendants of the Amir Timur—Tamerlane. They began to establish an empire in Northern India—Hindustan—towards the middle of the sixteenth century, attaining to the height of their power during the seventeenth century. Then their dominions included almost the whole of the Indian peninsula, and the empire of the ‘Great Mogul’ had the reputation of being one of the mightiest in the East. In the first half of the eighteenth century their authority weakened under a succession of effete sovereigns, and, towards the end of that century, the dynasty and the empire which it ruled, as a political factor, had to all intents and purposes ceased to exist. As the art of the miniature painter, in its Mughal aspect, was dependent entirely on the ruling power for its support, the history of the school follows the same course as that of the Mughal dynasty, flourishing when it flourished and declining when it declined. The initial step in its development was taken by the Emperor Humayun, when he retained in his service two artists from Persia, but the actual foundation of the school was laid by the constructive genius of his famous son, Akbar the Great, in the course of his long reign which extended from A.D. 1556 to 1605. Under the aesthetic Jahangir, with his intelligent patronage, it reached its meridian, which was maintained in a slightly less degree during the magnificent reign of Shah Jahan, the builder of the Taj Mahal. The decline of the art began with Aurangzeb, who occupied the throne from A.D. 1658 to 1707, and from whose puritanical zeal the painters received little encouragement. Its death-knell was rung by the feeble emperors who followed; immersed in domestic strife and political dissension, they did not attempt to stem the tide of its decay.