Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c20.50

c20.50

There are several pictures of Miyan Tansen Kalawant, the most gifted musician at the court of the Mughals, but for the best portrait of this genius it is necessary to refer to the illustration on Plate XXXI. Among the instrumentalists seen in the picture there is one of whom the artist has taken special pains to make a very careful likeness. An enlargement of the whole group of musicians has been made on Plate LXII, as the clean-shaven elderly man playing the sitār in the centre has been identified as Tansen, of whom Abu’l Fazl declared that ‘a singer like him has not been in India for the last thousand years’. Competition to retain him as one of the stars of the court was keen among the Indian princes, but Akbar’s might prevailed, and the Raja of Rewa was compelled to surrender him to his overlord. He was a Hindu, and began his career at Gwalior, where a famous school of music had been founded by the Raja Man Singh Tomar (1486–1518). Afterwards he became a Muhammadan, and, as the portrait proves, lived to see service under Jahangir as well as Akbar. Besides being a musician, Tansen was also a versifier, but it was as a singer that he attained the greatest fame. To the present day his tomb in Muslim holy ground at Gwalior is visited by Indian musicians, who, by eating a few leaves of the *nīm* tree under whose shadow he lies, hope to attain for themselves something of the sweetness of that voice which for three centuries has been stilled. In his portrait the artist has risen to great heights in the effort to depict the singer in his most attractive mood. Tansen had his failings, they are recorded as those of his temperament, but the painter has presented us with the refined thoughtful features and earnest pose of a true artist, one who loved his art and lived for it alone.