Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c13.8

c13.8

The existence of the school of painting, for it specialized in this form of expression, only recently brought to light in one of the most desolate portions of Asia, needs some explanation. The cities of the Tarim Basin lay athwart the overland route connecting the Far East with the rest of the then known world. This highway, as a means of communication, has now lost its significance, but in the first millennium of the Christian era much of the traffic of the occident with the orient passed through this portion of Turkestan. Not only merchants with caravans of negotiable commodities, but pilgrims and embassies, courts and officials, travellers and priests, journeyed to and fro over this broad thoroughfare. But what made that section of the route which centred around the Tarim river of some consequence, and led to considerable human activity in that region, was that here lay the most important junction of the whole highway. Here two great arteries met, the main one which ran east and west joining with a branch which came up from the south through the passes of the Hindu Kush from India. For several centuries during the first millennium of the Christian era one of the pulses of the orient throbbed in the busy towns of the Tarim Basin, where commerce and agriculture flourished and the trades and occupations depending on them throve. But in these living cities the material needs of man were not the only consideration. Here, owing to the cosmopolitan nature of its population, men of many creeds forgathered, and to minister to these a number of religious establishments were maintained, some of them lavishly endowed. Monasteries and temples were founded; and one feature of these buildings was the rich mural painting with which many of them were embellished. But the main interest of these wall decorations lies in the fact that they depict so many divergent creeds, and, accordingly, elements from as many different arts. Here are pictures of Chinese character, provincialized it is true, but showing a connexion with those of the T'ang period. With these may be seen motives taken direct from Grecian sources, Christian art brought by the Manichaeans, who carried their tenets into this distant field. Sasanid features may also be distinguished, showing the artistic influence of ancient Persia extended well beyond its borders. And side by side with these are paintings whose origin was in the distant south, reflecting the frescoes of Ajanta, the Buddhism of India. The spade of the excavator has revealed traces of other religious and artistic movements, all of which show that this comparatively small expanse of country, now swallowed up by desert sand, was the meeting place of many of the cultures of the East and West. That it was no insignificant outpost, at least so far as painting was concerned, is proved by its relations with the art of China. In the seventh century Khotan, south of the Tarim Basin, contributed two very famous artists to the Chinese schools of the Sui and T‘ang dynasties, the Wei-ch‘ih, father and son, whose names occupy a high place in the early annals of painting in the Far East. This development of art in Turkestan, which drew its inspiration from so many different sources, was, however, more of the nature of an ‘artistic exchange’ than a definite school of painting. It was not what it produced itself, so much as its effect on the countries around it, that gives it importance in the history of art in Asia. And something of its composite character, carried along the great eastern trade-route, eventually found its way into the artistic schemes of the Arabs, when these early followers of the Prophet began to build up their own civilization on the low-lying banks of the Tigris.