Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c14.37.1

c14.37.1

that Akbar’s liking for pictures was so pronounced that he was prepared to put aside his religious convictions in order to enjoy to the full his pleasure in the painter’s art. The authority for these opinions is Abu’l Fazl, and they are found in his article on ‘The Art of Painting’ in the *A’in-i-Akbari* or ‘Institutes of Akbar’, a book dealing with every aspect of the Great Mughal’s administration. Were it not for this notable chapter, written about the year 1590, we should know very little of the internal arrangements of Akbar’s scheme for the encouragement of pictorial art. But from this it is possible to visualize quite clearly his State school of painting. In the first place it was directly under his own personal control, as ‘the works of all painters were weekly laid before His Majesty by the daroghahs and the clerks; he then confers rewards according to excellence of workmanship, or increases the monthly salaries’. The efficiency of such a department can be imagined when its output was, at such frequent and regular intervals, supervised by the emperor himself, and the scale of remuneration of each individual worked out by the same high authority. The number of painters employed was fairly large, amounting to considerably over a hundred, and they were all accommodated in a large studio, suitable for their work, in Akbar’s newly built capital.