Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c21.17.1

c21.17.1

There is one other feature in the picture, taken from European art, which, although referred to in a previous chapter, is of sufficient importance to merit a more detailed description. This is the golden nimbus adorning the head of the Mughal sovereign. In itself it is a comparatively minor detail, but the manner in which it eventually found a place in the Indian miniature is of considerable interest. The story of the travels of this symbol, from Asia to Europe and again back to India, from the earliest times until it appears in the Mughal miniature, is a long and involved one. Here, however, the bare outlines will suffice. The origin of the nimbus is traced to the early Persians, with whom in its embryonic form of a celestial aureole of fire it appears as the *hvareno* of Mazdaism. In its usually accepted shape, however, as a circular disk, it is first seen in the Graeco-Buddhist sculpture of the north-western frontier of India, anciently known as Gandhara, about the beginning of the Christian era. Buddhism having thus appropriated the saintly circle, it was carried with the art of that creed to all the distant countries which accepted the doctrine of the Great Teacher. In India a later and Hinduized form of Buddhism, the *Mahāyāna*, then took over the symbol, from which it was only a step to the Brahmanical art of mediaeval times, so that it appears in the sculptures of that country from then onwards, as an attribute of many of the Indian divinities.