Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c18.2

Language: English

c18.2.1

On many of the illustrations in the manuscripts here referred to, there are inscriptions which are written with the object of identifying the pictures with the artists who are presumed to have painted them. From these it is possible to prepare a list of over a hundred artists who worked in the school organized by Akbar. But before any description of the pictures or the painters can be attempted a digression seems necessary in order that the meaning, and specially the authenticity, of these inscriptions may be discussed. In the first place, although they give their names, none of them is in the writing of the artist himself. They were subsequently added by the clerks or *munshis*, employed either at the court of Akbar or in the office of the imperial library. In most cases the artists were Hindus, and so were not likely to be acquainted with the Persian script in which they are invariably written. A few exceptions occur, but they are rare. As an example the very minute inscriptions executed with a brush, which are on the picture reproduced on Plate XI, so fine as to be invisible in the photograph, may be by the hand of the artist, who would be a Muhammadan. Being illiterate, he spelt the Hindu name of Raja Todar Mall phonetically, and as if he were a Muhammadan. Occasionally, where the name is microscopically inscribed on some detail of the picture, it may have been written by the artist himself, as for instance the miniature (fol.

c18.2.2

21 b) by Muhammad Khan in the album of Dara Shikoh in the India Office Library. Plate XXIX is a picture by a Hindu artist, and an inscription in Hindi characters, also not discernible in the reproduction, which contains the name of Hunhar, may be in the handwriting of the painter. But it is clear that all the illustrations in the Akbari books were originally issued by the artists, the majority of whom were Hindus, unsigned, and the names which they now bear were written later by Muhammadan and very often by Persian clerks. Unfortunately the reliability of all these inscriptions is open to question, especially when they are subjected to a close scrutiny. In the case of a number of pictures, notably in the British Museum *Dārābnāma*, frequent corrections in the artists’ names are visible, and it is evident that the work of labelling was not carefully done. On many of the paintings the artists’ names have been wrongly written, and afterwards others substituted when the mistake was discovered. The clerk concerned thought that his faults might be mitigated by deleting his first incorrect inscription with a smear of gold paint, and then writing across it another name. There was evidently considerable uncertainty in the office responsible for this work as to which artist painted which picture.

c18.2.3

To test the accuracy of the scribes, the obvious procedure would be to compare a number of pictures bearing the same name but in different manuscripts in order to see whether they were similar in style or workmanship. There is, however, a somewhat unusual complication in any attempt at classification on these terms, as it was the custom for several painters to collaborate on one picture, so that it is rare to find any miniature which is entirely the work of one artist. As an example, although pictures with an inscription including the name of the famous Akbari artist Daswanth are not uncommon, there is no specimen of his painting which is the sole product of his own hand. In all his designs some portion of the work, either the drawing or the painting, was entrusted to other exponents, whose names, included with Daswanth’s, are written on the margin. That such a method of partnership was common is proved by the Emperor Jahangir’s comment quoted in Chapter III, in which, if his statement is to be literally accepted, even the features in a portrait may be the work of more than one artist. The system, which strikes the occidental as a somewhat unusual one, seems to have been derived from Persia, where it is observable in a few pictures of the Safavid school, although it was left to the early Mughal artists to elaborate the practice.

c18.2.4

In the majority of Akbari pictures two artists only have combined, the one making the *tarrah*¹ or sketch, and the other doing the *‘aml*, work, or painting. On occasion, however, there may also have been a third who did the *chihra-numā* or portraiture, and, very rarely, a fourth who supplied the *surat* or figure-drawing. In a few pictures the inscription also states that one of the artists undertook the *rang-āmezi*, or colouring. In these circumstances it is easy to understand that the clerk who wrote the inscriptions was sometimes uncertain to whom the various parts of the work were to be apportioned. The difficulties in any comparison between the different pictures, certain parts of which are presumed to be the work of one artist, when his collaborators have not been the same, will likewise become intelligible.