A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c19.s6: Section VII. Enamelled Tiles
A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c19.s6
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Section VII. Enamelled Tiles
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The practice of decorating wall surface with coloured enamelled bricks or tiles was of very ancient date in Persia, and derived ultimately from Babylonia. The Lion and Archer friezes from Susa now in the Louvre, and well reproduced by Perrot and Chipiez, are the best examples of the art as practised in Achaemenian times.³ But the style of those friezes is not imitated in any extant Indian work. The Indo-Muhammadan enamelled or glazed tiles were copied from a much later development of the art in Persia, where the ancient technique apparently was never wholly forgotten. This later Persian work shows traces of Chinese influence.
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³ Perrot and Chipiez, *Hist. of Art in Persia*, London, 1892, p. 420 and plates. Persian and Indian tiles are not strong enough for use in pavements.
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M. Migeon believes that the Muhammadan use of enamelled tiles in numerous Persian buildings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was derived from Khorasān. From that province it seems to have spread to Samarkand, where we find coloured tile facings on the tomb of Tīmūr at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Coloured tiles had become known in India at an earlier date, certainly in the first quarter of the fourteenth and possibly in the thirteenth century, but the Tīmūrid tradition of the Mughal emperors made them still more fashionable. The Indian work, although sometimes very good, is not admitted by experts to equal the best Persian in either the beauty of the colours or the brilliancy of the enamel.⁴
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⁴ Migeon, *Manuel d'art musulman*, t. ii, pp. 295, 296.
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The tomb of Bahā-ul-hakk at Multān, built between A. D. 1264 and 1286, still retains, or retained in 1882 when Cunningham wrote, 'some fairly preserved specimens of diaper ornament in glazed tiles,' which may or may not be contemporaneous with the building in its original form. The tomb was extensively rebuilt in the seventeenth century, and Mr. Marshall is of opinion that most of the tile-work belongs to that age.
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The tomb of Bahā-ul-hakk's grandson, Rukn-ud-dīn (A. D. 1320), a well-designed octagonal domed building of brick, in the same city, has its whole exterior
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'elaborately ornamented with glazed tile panels and string courses and battlements. The only colours used are dark blue, azure, and white; but these are contrasted with the deep red of the finely polished bricks, and the result is both effective and pleasing. These mosaics are not, like those of later days, mere plain surfaces, but the patterns are raised from half an inch to two inches above the background. This mode of construction must have been very troublesome, but its increased effect is undeniable, as it unites all the beauty of variety of colour with the light and shade of a raised pattern.'
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The tile from Bahā-ul-hakk's tomb figured by Cunningham exhibits the 'key pattern' in white on a dark blue ground; that from Rukn-ud-dīn's tomb has a white ground with interlacing circles in dark blue, the interspaces being partly filled by six-petalled stars and polygonal blocks in pale azure.¹
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¹ Cunningham, *A. S. Rep.*, vol. v, pp. 131-3, Pl. XXXIX. At Sitpur in the Muzaffargarh District, where similar tile decoration occurs, the colours include yellow. The Sitpur tombs date from the fifteenth century.
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The Indo-Muhammadan use of glazed or enamelled tiles undoubtedly was imported from Persia and Turkistan in the forms of art practised in those countries from the thirteenth century onwards. But ages earlier more ancient foreign conquerors seem to have brought with them into India an old variety of the art. The excavations at Kanishka's *stūpa* at Peshāwar have revealed the surprising fact that
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'at some point higher up the walls [than certain reliefs] there appears to have been a band of enamelled tiles, with an inscription in Kharoshthī letters boldly incised upon it. Many of the tiles belonging to this band have been found on the western side of the monument, and it is likely that more may turn up in the yet unexcavated débris. These tiles, which are covered with a pale blue vitreous enamel, are the first of their kind, I may notice, that have yet been discovered in India.'²
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² Marshall, *J. R. A. S.*, 1909, p. 1057.
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Kanishka's workmen (*cir.* A. D. 100) presumably imitated Turkistan tiles, but there is, of course, a bare possibility that the art may have been invented independently in India.
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Two of the mosques at Gaur in Bengal (*ante*, 400), the Tāntipāra and Lotan (Lattan), erected between A.D. 1475 and 1480, are decorated with true encaustic tiles. Those of the Lotan mosque are the best preserved. A collection of earlier glazed tiles from Gaur in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, is described as having 'a marked Hindu character, quite distinct from the blue, and diapered, and banded tiles which are distinctive of Mahommadan manufacture elsewhere in India, before the florid designs of the Mogul period came into vogue.'¹ It is possible that the art, however introduced originally, may have been known to the Hindus of Bengal in an imperfect form before the Muhammadan conquest.
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¹ Birdwood, *Industrial Arts of India*, p. 322. These objects are rather enamelled bricks or terra-cotta than tiles. The body is similar to that of red bricks, moulded on the edges or sides into relief patterns, which are covered with a poor vitreous dip, forming a ground of opaque dark blue, upon which patterns in opaque white—either enamel or clay—have been laid. The patterns include Muhammadan (Saracenic) and Hindu forms, and may be referred to the eleventh or twelfth century (Furnival, *Leadless Decorative Tiles*, p. 118, Figs. 72–5).
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PLATE CVIII. Minaret of Wazīr Khān's Mosque. (Plate XXVIII of *J. Ind. Art*, vol. x.)
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The palace of Rāja Mān Singh at Gwālīor, built at the beginning of the sixteenth century, 'was once profusely decorated with glazed tiles of various colours,' as noticed by Bābar, who recorded in his *Memoirs*: 'The outside of the walls they have inlaid with green painted tiles. All around they have inlaid the walls with figures of plantain trees made of painted tiles.' Cunningham, writing in 1871, states that
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'the plantain [i. e. banana] trees mentioned by Bābar still exist. They are of the natural size, but the leaves made of bright green glazed tiles are very regularly disposed on each side of the yellow stems, and the effect is consequently too stiff and formal. The diamond patterns in blue tile, and the long narrow lines of the same colour, are, however, both effective and pleasing.'²
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² Cunningham, *A. S. Rep.*, vol. i, pp. 347–9.
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I have not seen these curious and unique tiles or any illustrations of them. The design is purely Hindu, and it is difficult to say whether or not the manufacture of such tiles was learned from the Muhammadans or was previously known to the Hindus of Central India. But the probability is that the art was imported.
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We now pass on to the more highly developed and artistic use of glazed tiles after the Persian manner on the walls and domes of Mughal buildings. Most of the Mughal tiling is of the kind called *Kāshī* or *Chīnī*, composed of pieces cut out from a painted sheet and laid as mosaic. The larger part dates from the seventeenth century, with a range of colours considerably more extensive than that employed on the early Panjāb tiles already noticed.³ Such *Kāshī* tile casing, sparingly employed on the tombs of Shēr Shah and Humāyūn, came largely into favour in the reigns of Jahāngīr and Shahjahān (1605–58), and continued to be used in Aurangzēb's time. The art is now extinct.
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³ Opinions differ as to the mode of manufacture. Mr. J. L. Kipling thought that the designs were painted on large sheets, which were cut up into tiles *before* firing (*J. Ind. Art*, vol. ii, pp. 17, 18); but Mr. F. H. Andrews, after making experiments, believes that the shaped pieces were cut *after* glazing and firing (Ibid., vol. x, pp. 27–30).
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The most remarkable series of tile pictures in the world is the huge band on the walls of the Lahore Fort, extending from the Elephant Gate (*Hāthī Pōl*) to the north-eastern tower of Jahāngīr's quadrangle for a length of 497 yards, with a height of 17 yards. Nearly the whole of this enormous surface is faced with painted tiles representing elephant fights, a game of polo, and other scenes. Dr. Vogel has obtained tracings of 116 panels, of which many select examples have been repro- PLATE CIX. Chīnī-kā-Rauza. (Pl. XXV, E. W. Smith, *Colour Decoration, Agra*.)
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duced on a reduced scale in colour.¹ One is here given (Pl. CX) by permission of the Government of India.
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¹ *Progress Rep. A. S., Panjāb Circle*, 1901–2, par. 13; *J. I. A. I.*, 1911.
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The most beautiful example of *Kāshī* tile-work on a large scale is universally recognized to be the mosque built in 1634 at Lahore by the governor, Wazīr Khān. The building is a well-designed domed structure with four handsome minarets, constructed of small thin bricks. The exterior is panelled, the panels and minarets being veneered with *Kāshī* tile-work of great brilliancy, still in fairly good preservation. The minaret figured in Plate CVIII gives a good idea of the effect.
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Passing by several interesting buildings exhibiting more or less decoration in coloured tiles, we come next to the tomb near Agra known as the Chīnī-kā-Rauza, which has had the advantage of being exhaustively described and illustrated by the late Mr. E. W. Smith in a volume mainly devoted to it. The building, a large octagonal domed tomb of uncertain date, supposed to have been built early in the reign of Aurangzēb, in memory of Afzal Khān, a poet who died in 1639, was originally covered on the outside from top to bottom with mosaic in *Kāshī* tiling of various colours, worked up into numerous patterns so as to form one unbroken flat surface. It is now much dilapidated. The tiles, ⅝ of an inch thick, are bedded in a layer of fine plaster an inch thick, which was laid on a stratum of coarser plaster two inches in thickness. The principal colours include blues, greens, orange, vermilion, lake, &c., in a variety of delicate shades with a metallic lustre, the unavoidable slight irregularities of the surface producing wonderful play of light. One illustration may be given to show the style (Plate CIX).²
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² For a long list of Indian buildings decorated with tiles, prepared by Mr. C. Stanley Clarke, see Furnival, *Leadless Decorative Tiles*, pp. 121–6. The subject is continued to p. 132.
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The tomb also exhibits some painted internal decoration in excellent taste.
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Mr. Marshall describes as follows a third type of Indian tile decoration:—
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‘A third kind of tiles is found on buildings of the eighteenth century, such as the mosque of Muhammad Amīn at Lahore (beginning eighteenth century) and the mosque of Zakariya Khan near Lahore. The founder of the latter was a viceroy of the Punjab from A. D. 1717 to 1738. It is strange to find the same type combined with *Kāshī* work on the tomb of Asaf Khan at Shahdara as early as A. D. 1634. The tiles of this class are square. They form, consequently, not a tile-mosaic as the two earlier types, in which each separate piece has its own shape and colour, but are similar to the tiles known in Europe, from where presumably they were introduced into India. The colours are faint as compared to [*sic*] those of the *Kāshī* tiles, pale green, blue and yellow being the most prominent. In one case, the tomb of Sharf-un-nissa, known as the cypress tomb (*Sarvvālī maqbara*), not far from Bēgampura near Lahore, we find, besides *Kāshī* work on the lower part of the walls, square blue and white tiles of a type well known in the west of Europe. This building also would seem to belong to the eighteenth century.
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‘It would be interesting to know whether there exists any connexion between the use of such tiles in the Punjab and the visit of an ambassade of the Dutch East India Company to Lahore in A. D. 1712. It should be noted that at present square white and blue tiles are fabricated in great number at Multān, which are now com-
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Fig. A. Glazed earthenware tile from Panjāb, seventeenth cent.; 9¼″ sq.; green ground: No. 941–1873, &c., Ind. Sec., V. and A. Museum.
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Fig. B. Enamelled earthenware tile from Delhi; ? sixteenth cent.; 11″ × 10¾″ sq.; dark blue, red, black, and green on yellow ground; humped bull and flowers: No. 303–90, Ind. Sec., V. and A. Museum.
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Fig. C. Enamelled earthenware tile from Lahore; seventeenth cent.; antelopes and flowers on yellow ground; 8¾″ × 8¼″ sq.: No. 1–98, Ind. Sec., V. and A. Museum.
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monly used to decorate graves with, but are entirely different from the tiles found in the ancient buildings mentioned above, that is to say, the early type of the Rukn-i-Alam.'¹
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¹ Furnivall, *op. cit.*, App. C.
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Inasmuch as Mr. Marshall himself notes that square tiles of the type he describes occur on Āsaf Khān's tomb at Shahdara dating from 1634, I do not see what the Dutch embassy of 1712 can have to do with them.
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In Plates CXI, CXII reproductions are given from photographs specially taken of six artistic square tiles in the Entrance Hall of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Indian Section, all believed to date from either the sixteenth or seventeenth century, and not previously published.
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Fig. A, Plate CXI, showing the complete figure of a young woman seated on her heels, with part of another woman offering her a fruit, appears to be unique, and is supposed to date from the seventeenth century. The drawing is good, and the general aspect suggests European influence, of which there was plenty in those times.
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The broken tile from Delhi (Fig. B) presents a humped bull and flowers in brilliant colours. The fragments of a hunting scene on two perfect tiles (Plate CXI, Fig. C, Plate CXII, Fig. A) from Lahore are vividly designed and, I think, rightly referred to the seventeenth century, when such pictures of Persian origin were much in fashion. The floral devices on the Lahore tiles (Plate CXII, Figs. B, C) are pretty and well coloured.
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The modern tile-work of Sind and Multān is described in various books dealing with the industrial arts. The oldest Sind tiles on the Dabgir mosque and Mīrza Jānī Bēg's mosque at Tatta, dating from about A. D. 1509, exhibit only two colours, a deep rich blue and a pale turquoise blue, on a white ground, and so resemble the early Multān tiles. Multān used to be reckoned as in Sind, not in the Panjāb, as it is now. The most artistic tile panel from Sind is one from the Jāmi Masjid, Khudabad, near Dadu, built A. D. 1710, which represents a tall lily or tuberose in a stiff, symmetrical style.²
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² Cousens, H., *Portfolio of Sind Tiles*, Griggs, 1906.