Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c13.7

c13.7

The earliest chapters of Persian painting are mainly records of destruction. The history of Central Asia is a repetition of hordes of invaders sweeping from east to west, or west to east, leaving desolation and devastation in their train. The first result of these great martial migrations was to destroy the civilization of the countries invaded, to sack and burn their cities, to decimate their people, and to obliterate their handiwork. Then, if conditions were favourable and circumstances permitted, there was erected on the ashes of the old a new civilization, expressive in its arts and sciences of the mentality of the conquerors, their religion, and their mode of life. Such was the Arab invasion of Persia in the seventh century of the Christian era. Bearing the victorious pennant of the Prophet, these early Muslims swept down on the ‘seven cities’ of the Sasanids, taking them by storm, carrying off their rich contents, and leaving behind nothing but ruin and decay. Of that powerful dynasty, of its architecture and its arts, practically nothing has survived, except that great lonely arch on the Tigris at Ctesiphon, as a record of its pride. So completely has the art of Persia of this period vanished that it is only here and there that its motifs can be identified. But reminiscences of it are to be traced in the painting of the Persians at a later date, in the flying ribbon-like draperies, probably also in the figures with wings, and certainly in the winged horse, dragons, and fabulous creatures occasionally seen in the designs of the mediaeval East and West. These particular motifs, however, were those used mainly in the arts of Western Persia, as they were practised in the now ruined cities of Mesopotamia. The art of the Arab conquerors which developed later on the banks of the Tigris, while it took something from the Sasanid civilization it had destroyed, probably owed much more to another school of painting, which developed in Central Asia about this time. To understand this it is necessary for us, for the time being, to transfer our attention from the Tigris and Euphrates, on the western limits of ancient Persia, to the territory beyond its far eastern boundaries on the confines of the Chinese empire. Here in Eastern Turkestan, in a tract of country referred to as the Tarim Basin, from the third to the ninth century A. D. a state of civilization was maintained, and an artistic culture generated, which was to influence in no slight degree the arts of the whole East.