Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c15.44

c15.44

Towards the end of his life the light of his happiness was dimmed, mainly through ill health, but he also had domestic and political troubles. In a final effort to secure peace of body and of mind he journeyed again to his beloved Kashmir, that ‘garden of eternal spring’, as he called it. For some happy weeks he feasted his eyes on its many delights, but his strength was failing. His unrestrained and convivial habits at length told on his splendid constitution, and he died on his way out of the valley in the year 1627 at the age of fifty-eight. With his passing the soul of Mughal painting also departed; its outward form remained for a time, in gold and lavish vestments it lived on under other kings, but its real spirit died with Jahangir. Artist and nature-worshipper to the end, his last words were characteristic of the man. ‘Let my tomb lie open to the winds of heaven, so that the rain and dew may fall on it,’ and there, in an old-world garden near Lahore, he sleeps under a white marble sarcophagus decorated with sprays of flowers inlaid in precious stones—lapis and cornelian, amethyst and turquoise. Above is the blue sky, and at night the stars; while outside, amid the cool splash of fountains, are bowers of roses, glad with the song of birds. The tall white marble minarets across the Ravi river signal from afar this last resting-place of a king—a fitting mausoleum, exquisite in design—but Jahangir’s greatest monument is not his tomb at Shahdara, beautiful though this may be. It is that school of painting which so perfectly reflected his artistic nature and which, imbued with his spirit, was stimulated to its finest achievements.