Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c19.47

c19.47

A miniature painting typical of the art during Jahangir’s reign is shown on Plate XLIX, and depicts an incident, recorded in the memoirs, which took place in the Mandakar garden near Agra in the year 1609. Towards the bottom left corner of the picture a young man is standing with hands crossed and showing every sign of being overcome with shame. He is Kaukab, the son of Qamar Khan, and has been discovered consorting with very undesirable people—in the actual words of the emperor, ‘blasphemous and impious’ companions. As the culprit’s father, and his grandfather Mir Abdul Latif, were Saifi Sayyids, and respected officials at the Mughal court, Kaukab’s fall from grace was all the more reprehensible. Near him will be noticed two strange figures wearing caps surmounted with horns and long ears who are described as ‘Abdul Latif, son of Naqib Khan and Sharif, his cousins, partners in that error’. Into the whole affair Jahangir, who is shown listening attentively with a very shocked expression, makes careful inquiries and finally passes judgement. It is clear from their countenances that all those present are much impressed by the proceedings, while one man immediately at the back of the emperor, with a look of tragedy on his face, is turning right away from the scene, as if the sight of it repelled him. This is the father of Kaukab, who, realizing his son is disgraced, turns his back on him and throws up his hands with a gesture of despair. The punishment for all three delinquents was imprisonment and a hundred lashes in the emperor’s presence, but even this did not act as a permanent deterrent to the chief offender Kaukab. For eight years afterwards he is again in the same trouble for having ‘put on a faqir’s dress and gone into the wilds’, so that he is evidently an incorrigible young man. However, on the second occasion Jahangir was more lenient and after a strict cross-examination he forgave him and allowed him to go his own way. Another remarkable picture executed to the order of Jahangir is the well-known one in the Bodleian Library commonly referred to as the ‘Dying Man’, and shown on Plate L. Other copies of this subject are known, but the one at Oxford is the best. It depicts one Inayat Khan, an ‘ intimate attendant ’ of the emperor lying on his death-bed some time in the year 1618, a full account of which is given in the memoirs.¹ The manner in which Jahangir minutely describes every detail of the symptoms of this victim to the opium habit, finishing up with a verse of poetry and an order to the ‘ painters to take his portrait ’, shows the workings of a somewhat morbid mind. Certainly the artist entrusted with the gruesome commission did his work most thoroughly, the glazed staring eyeballs and the emaciated body plainly indicate that the drug had done its worst, and, as the royal writer concludes his homily on the man and his sad condition, ‘ next day he travelled the road of non-existence ’.