Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c16.44

c16.44

With the death of the Emperor Aurangzeb in 1707 the story of Mughal painting begins to draw to a close. This ruler devoted his great energies and the best of his life to extending the empire of the Mughals so as to comprise the whole of the sub-continent. But in so doing he lost sight of the fact that his want of toleration in the management of the internal affairs of his kingdom was at the same time seriously undermining its foundations. By his strength of character and personal authority only, he kept the kingdom intact, and, when these supports were removed, the collapse came with dramatic suddenness. Several puppet kings followed him, one after another, at short intervals, but no stable government appears to have been possible, and court intrigues leading to the assassination of three of Aurangzeb’s successors is the story of the dynasty in the first half of the eighteenth century. Under these unsettled conditions the people could not be expected to carry on their occupations with any feeling of security, and the arts, including painting, suffered with the rest. Ultimately under the Emperor Muhammad Shah some semblance of authority was established and maintained until his decease in 1748. This date marks the passage of nearly a century since Aurangzeb began his reign. And, as the preceding century from A. D. 1550 to A. D. 1650 was a record of the life of the Mughal school, so the century from A. D. 1650 to A. D. 1750 is the story of its lingering death. One action of Muhammad Shah’s is significant of the changed attitude of the ruling power towards the art of painting. It is related that he gave away to the Maharaja Siwai Jai Singh of Jaipur Akbar’s own copy of the Persian version of the great Hindu epic, the *Mahabharata*. This sumptuous work, referred to by the Mughals as the *Razmnāma*, was fully illustrated by his Hindu artists, and was regarded as one of the most precious objects in the imperial library at Delhi. (See Plate XXXIII.) Whether parting with such a unique possession marked the beginning of the dispersal of the famous library, with its collection of illuminated manuscripts and pictures, is not clear, but it seems significant of the indifference of Muhammad Shah towards the artistic treasures of his predecessors. Gradually it becomes evident that the Mughal court at Delhi was fast losing its lustre, and, as other courts in the country began to shine more brightly, so its glory continued to fade. The artists, who, as we have seen, depended so much on wealthy patronage, soon realized this and began to desert the decaying capital for other and more flourishing centres of art. In 1732 the Governor of Oude, having asserted his independence, set up a separate dynasty at Lucknow, and there maintained a state which endeavoured to rival the imperial court at Delhi in its palmiest days. A similar revolt against the weakening Mughal power took place in the Deccan, and led to an independent rule being established at Hyderabad. The splendour which the two rising governments maintained attracted several groups of painters to both these provincial capitals, and the change of environment in each case led to a corresponding change in the style of their art. There is a distinctive character in the work of the Lucknow artists, and there is also a difference in that of the pictures produced in Hyderabad. So came into use the word qalam, which may be freely translated by the word ‘style’, and has led Indian connoisseurs to describe a miniature as being of the Delhi qalam, the Lucknow qalam, or the Deccani qalam, just as Italian painting resolved itself into the Florentine, Venetian, or Umbrian schools.