Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c14.29

c14.29

But with Akbar began a new régime. He would have none of this. He detected the futility of it, and early saw that a return to the land of his forefathers was impossible. His instincts told him that Farghana, and all that it meant to him, was for ever lost to his line, and that any hope of occupying the throne of the Timurids was but an empty dream. And so it behoved him to snap once and for all the link that held him to his Central Asian home, and to accept the fact that his destiny lay in the plains of Hindustan. Having realized this, his next step was to evolve an administrative policy the fundamental principles of which were to utilize to the utmost the natural resources of his empire and the indigenous institutions of its people. Where, in his opinion, these were deficient, his method was to strengthen or supplement them by elements borrowed from other sources, mainly from Persia. This, in brief, was Akbar’s constitutional doctrine, and in the same way as he applied it to the reconstruction of the country, so he utilized it in his organization of the literary, artistic, and industrial activities of its people. As soon, therefore, as he had brought his empire into a state of peace, he began to take up the subject of its intellectual well-being. The manner in which he set about this was characteristic of the man. He had heard of the great cities of the Oxus, of Bukhara, and Samarqand, which his Timurid ancestors had built and embellished so that they were the most splendid in the East. And he knew that their architectural magnificence was only an outward sign of the wonders that lay within; that they contained libraries and colleges, mosques and council-halls, with meeting-places and workshops for the accommodation of all the wise men and skilled artificers who were attracted thither by the patronage extended to them by their imperial founders. Akbar saw that if he desired to encourage literature and the arts within his own dominions, he too must plan and build an imperial capital with all the requisite conveniences for discussion, study, and handicrafts that such a scheme demanded. Summoning all the architectural and engineering talent in his rapidly expanding territories, a plan was outlined; and, in 1569, orders were issued for its materialization. So came into being the city of Fathpur Sikri, which to this day, although empty and deserted, stands forth as a monument to the enterprise and artistic genius of its founder. And even before this great work was finished, when its palaces and mosques, library and mint, baths and schools, aqueducts and causeways, were still under construction; while its unfinished walls echoed to the monotonous chant of the oriental labourer, Akbar began his work of reviving all forms of learning under the shadow of this triumph of his master-builders’ skill. Here he gradually drew together a concourse of talent—writers, poets, historians, and philosophers, who debated and lectured, studied and wrote, very often under their imperial patron’s own personal supervision. Here took place those religious discussions ultimately to give birth to that climax of unorthodoxy, the Divine Faith, which caused so much dissension among the officials of the State. Here also came the first Christian mission to the court of the ‘Great Mughal’—Father Aquaviva and his fellow priests, dusty and travel-stained with their long journey from Goa, but buoyed up with a fervent hope, and bringing with them books and pictures of the West. To this Mecca of learning flocked accomplished men from all parts of the Orient, so that as time progressed and the array of scholarship increased, the royal salon was likened to the famous ‘round table’ of Sultan Mahmud; and it is recorded that Eastern literature enjoyed a brief though brilliant ‘Indian summer’ within the marble pavilions of Akbar’s sumptuous capital.