Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c13.3

c13.3

The designation ‘Mughal’ is the usual one employed by European writers when referring to this dynasty and the empire it governed. It is another form of ‘Mongol’, a name which, in the thirteenth century, had made itself known, as well as feared, from China to the Adriatic. This designation for the empire in India is, however, not literally correct, as the original ancestors of the Mughal emperors were more Turks than Mongols. They were directly descended from Timur, who was a Central Asian Turk; and were only remotely connected, through a female, with Chinghiz Khan, the Mongol ‘scourge of Asia’. The Mughal dynasty in India was therefore Timurid in origin; and the heritage that Babur brought with him to the land of his conquest was that which, under Timur and his descendants, attained such lustre on the banks of the Oxus. But while Babur was little more than a youth the house of Timur had already begun to totter, and the end of the fifteenth century saw the transfer of royal power from Transoxiana to the cities of Persia proper, where the Safavid kings, with their capital at Tabriz, held their court amidst much splendour and artistic wealth. While it was the blood and traditions of the Timurids that the Mughals brought with them to India, it was the contemporary civilization of Persia from which they were to draw much of their inspiration in learning and in art. Correctly to appreciate the influences which were to have such a marked effect on the pictorial art of India, a sketch of the evolution of Persian painting will be first outlined; and this will be followed by a brief description of the state of painting in India leading up to the time when the art of the two races came into contact.