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A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c20: Chapter XIV. Indo-Persian or Mughal Painting

A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c20

Language
English

Contents

Chapter XIV. Indo-Persian or Mughal Painting

Section I. Origin, History, and Technique

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THE style of drawing and painting introduced into India by command of Akbar late in the sixteenth century, although essentially and avowedly foreign, was quickly made their own by Indian native artists, both Hindu and Muhammadan, who may be fairly credited with having improved on the foreign models in certain respects. Modern Persian connoisseurs, however, do not admit the alleged improvement, and are said to regard with contempt the productions of the Indian imitators.

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The art thus suddenly brought into India by the action of an enlightened despot came directly from Persia. But in origin it was not mainly Persian, that is to say, Iranian ; nor can its descent be traced from the art of Sassanian times. The style, as we know it, entered Persia from Transoxiana, now Russian Turkistan, which received the technique from China. The indigenous Iranian elements, which must exist in the earliest examples of the Persian 'miniaturist's' art, are matters of faith rather than of knowledge, having been obscured and overwhelmed by the dominant Chinese and Mongol character. When first introduced into India, the art was largely Mongol in both subject and treatment, with obvious marks of strong Chinese influence.

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The earliest Persian paintings, or so-called 'miniatures', in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, date from A. D. 1279–80, but pictures earlier than the fifteenth century are rare.¹ One of the most ancient illuminated manuscripts in Perso-Mongol style is the history in Persian of Chinghiz Khān and his family (*Jāmi’-ut-tawārīkh*), produced in the fourteenth century, and now in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society, London. Its numerous illustrations may be regarded as the best examples of the style in its early form. Chinese influence is apparent throughout, the figures being nearly pure Chinese; but the landscape is crudely conventional, and without any traces of that Chinese delight in the beauties of nature which prompted a critic of the Middle Kingdom to observe that 'only in landscape are depth and distance to be found, coupled with delights which never cease to please. Human figures, birds, insects, flowers, and plants belong more to "artisan art", and, although painted with exceeding skill, their beauties are exhausted at a glance.'² In the Royal Asiatic Society's manuscript landscape is not treated in this reverent spirit, being used merely as an accessory and background for figures. The colouring is not brilliant. Mr. Binyon remarks that

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¹ E. Blochet, 'Inventaire et description des manuscrits orientaux conservés à la Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris' (*Revue des Bibliothèques*, Paris, 1898–1900. The MS. indicated is 'Pers. 376', dated A. H. 678 = A. D. 1279–1280; see vol. for 1898, p. 135).

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² Giles, *An Introd. to the Hist. of Chinese Pictorial Art*, p. 108.

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‘it is noticeable that the farther back one goes, certain characteristics tend to assert themselves. Colour, which is the paramount quality in the later paintings, is often restricted to a few discreet touches of red and blue; the work is mainly in outline, and this outline in the finest specimens has a calligraphic sweep, a rhythmical beauty, which betrays an affinity to the art of China.’¹

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¹ Binyon, *Painting in the Far East* (1908), p. 152.

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The proper subject of this chapter, the Indo-Persian school, invites discussion at such length that we cannot linger over its remoter sources, and must pass on to bestow a few words upon the two masters more directly connected with Akbar’s innovation in India, namely, Bihzād of Herāt and his pupil Agā (Aqā) Mīrak of Tabrīz. Good examples of the work of both are to be seen in London. The professional ancestry of Bihzād, who was alive in 1524, and was praised by his contemporary, the gallant and artistic Bābar, is traced back, through Pīr Saīyid Ahmad of Tabrīz, and Ustād Jahāngīr of Bukhārā, to a dumb artist known as Ustād Gung, or ‘the dumb Master’.

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The art of Mīrak is adequately represented by a signed picture (Fol. 166) in the magnificent manuscript of the *Khamsa-i-Nizāmī* written between a. d. 1539 and 1542 for Shah Tahmāsp, king of Persia, by Shah Muhammad Nīshāpurī, the first calligraphist of his age (B. M. Or. 2625). The subject comprises hills and forest, with leopards, and other animals. The landscape is purely formal and conventional, after the Mongol manner, but many of the beasts are well drawn and true to nature.

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Bihzād (Kamāl-ud-dīn, a. d. 1487–1524), who enjoyed the favour of both Sultan Husain Baiqara and his successor, Shah Ismail, the founder of the Safavide dynasty of Persia (acc. a. d. 1500), marks the transition from the Mongoloid style of the Tīmūrid age to the more refined art patronized by the Safavide kings. He had numerous pupils, and so formed a school, the works of which, in Abūl Fazl’s opinion, were surpassed by those of Indian disciples. Seven of his drawings are preserved in the Imperial Library, Vienna; and six miniatures, ‘merveilleuses compositions de ce grand peintre’ (including one with his signature), which adorn a manuscript of the *Bostān* at Cairo, are from his brush.²

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² Huart, *Les Calligraphes et les Miniaturistes de l'Orient Musulman*, Paris, 1908, p. 331. Migeon, *Manuel d'art musulman*, t. ii, p. 40, Fig. 18, 19. In 1910 Mr. Kevorkian exhibited in London a MS. of poems by Saadi containing five miniatures by Bihzād.

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The British Museum possesses a specially interesting example of the work of Bihzād, one of the illustrations in the copy of the *Dārābnāmah*, a book of stories from the *Shāhnāmah*, formerly in the Royal Library at Lucknow, and supposed to have been prepared to Akbar’s order (B. M., Or. 4615; *Suppl. Cat.*, p. 385).³ This picture (Fol. 103, rev.) represents two men and a woman among conventional rock scenery, the foliage being treated with remarkable delicacy (Plate CXIII).

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³ This notable MS. contains a multitude of signed llustrations in various styles. Most of them are Mongoloid or Tīmūrid in character; the work of Mahēsh, a Hindu artist, being especially Mongol. The subjects include games of polo and sundry adventures. Six of the painters named in Abūl Fazl's list are among the signatories. The picture on fol. 34 is by Basāwan, and that on fol. 113 by Kesū (Kesava) Qahhār, the Muhammadan spelling

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The signature—'*Amal Bihzād wa iṣlāḥ Khwāja Abdul Samad*—means that the composition painted by Bihzād was corrected or touched up by Khwāja Abdul Samad, a favourite artist of Akbar's, and the teacher of Daswanth.

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The Khwāja, a native of Shīrāz, surnamed *Shīrīn-qalam*, or 'Sweet-pen', presumably on account of his skill as a calligraphist, had been an intimate friend of Humāyūn, and was known as a poet and accomplished artist before he attracted the attention of Akbar, who enrolled him in the official nobility, appointing him first to be Master of the Mint at Fathpur-Sīkrī, and subsequently to be Dīwān, or Revenue Commissioner of Multān. His name appears in the list of the adherents of the Divine Faith, the short-lived eclectic religion invented by Akbar.¹

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¹ *Āīn-i-Akbarī*, transl. Blochmann, pp. 107, 209; *Memoirs of Jahāngīr*, transl. Rogers and Beveridge (1909), p. 15. His son, Sharīf Khān, was appointed by Jahāngīr to the high dignity of Amīr-ul-umarā.

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In Persia and India, as in China, calligraphy was regarded as a fine art worthy of the most serious study, and masters of it enjoyed fame throughout Asia like that of great painters in Europe. They were careful to sign and date their works, which were eagerly collected by connoisseurs. Abūl Fazl gives a list of calligraphic experts, among whom in Akbar's time the most eminent was Muḥammad Husain of Kashmīr, who survived the emperor for six years. Many of the albums in the London collections containing 'miniatures' include hundreds of specimens of beautiful writing in various styles and of different periods, which often seem to have been more valued than the drawings and paintings associated with them. Abūl Fazl enumerates eight calligraphical systems as current during the sixteenth century in Irān (Persia), Turān (Turkistan), India, and Turkey, distinguished one from the other by differences in the relative proportion of straight and curved lines, ranging from the Kūfic with five-sixths of straight lines to the Nastalik, Akbar's favourite script, with nothing but curved strokes. The forms of the Arabic alphabet used for writing Persian, although not distinctly reminiscent of pictorial hieroglyphs, as the Chinese characters are, lend themselves readily to artistic treatment, and even Europeans may understand to some extent the high technical skill of the masters of the calligraphic art, and admire the beauty of their productions. But full enjoyment and appreciation are possible only to persons familiar with the character from infancy and sensitive to all the associated ideas. The subject is not of sufficient general interest to warrant detailed treatment in this work.²

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² The technicalities of the art are explained by Huart in *Les Calligraphes et les Miniaturistes de l'Orient Musulman*, Paris, 1908. He gives (p. 256) a list of Indian calligraphists in the eighteenth century, and also mentions Jawāhir Raqam, Aurangzēb's librarian, who died in 1683. The Department of Design, &c., at S. Kensington, possesses specimens of the work of Roshan Raqam, one of the artists named. Col. Hanna's two volumes of *Asiatic Drawings* at Petersfield contain specimens of calligraphy signed by the artists, and ranging from Mīr Ali, A.D. 1535 (=A.H. 942) to Muḥammad Murād, A.D. 1638 (=A.H. 1048). A long catalogue of calligraphists might be compiled from the collections in England, if anybody cared to take the trouble.

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'Among the general characteristics of Chinese painting the most striking, and the

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ای ملک مرا چنین گفتند که ترابند کردند و نیز درک قصر بردند تو اینجا چه میکنی و این مرد کیست اینجا نشسته است گفت مترس کاشتند ندانست که دوش بامدم و مرا از دست کوه آسیا بستند و بدین کوه آوردند شنود گفت ای ملک مرا دوش طرفه کاری فتاده تو د طلایه رفته بودی سمای گفت بگوی گفت چون بهمیان برسیدم بر برطاق محراب در ان وقت که باران می آمد و آوازی بشنودم که ای طاق کنبد فروشد ساعتی قرار گیر که در پایان تو داراب بسربارده شیر خفته است و جهاز ناصحرا و نجاز ست من عجب دارم و بیامدم جوانی را دیدم در زیر طاق خفته و اسبی بر زبر سر او ایستاده و آن جوانرا بیدار کردم و گفتم بیرون آئی تا بوبخنم که تو کیستی آن جوان برخاست و بیرون آمد در ساعت آن طاق فرود آمد و شنود چون من آن چنان بدیدم صحب داشتم آن جوانمرد را خواستم که نزدیک تو آرم تا بیگری که او کیست ترا کر فتبلودند و بند کردند و چون بد رشهر رسیدم من نیز نجو و آن جو انرا بگذاشتم ماند کار این مرا ملک بگوید که احوال او چگونه بوده است و ار ده شیر ر ا پسر کی بوده است سمای چون این سخن بشنید گفت ای بشنو او راست میگوی ایفرزند منست آن وقت که او از من جدا شد از بهر تاج و تخت و پادشاهی و را در تابوتی کرده در دریا فود گذاشتم کار رسی می را بگرفت و بزرگ کرد پس دست مرد و افتاد باز نزدیک من آمد بیا یا بتم کفش که این فرزند منست که ترسمدم که مر استوار نداند ندارد از بر خود بدر و کرد م چند گاه رفته بود و بادشاه یونان و ملکوت شده بود اکنون با ز آمد کار خود شوریده

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Plate CXIII. Illustration of the *Dārābnāmah*; by Bihzād and Abdul Samad. (B. M. Or. 4615, fol. 103 rev.)

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one which has prevailed most strongly throughout its long historical evolution, is the graphic quality of the painting; Chinese painters are, first of all, draughtsmen and calligraphists . . . The different legends all carry out the leading idea of the common origin and essential unity of writing and painting, and this unity is constantly insisted upon by Chinese critics of the two arts.'¹

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¹ Bushell, *Chinese Art*, ii. 207.

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The same idea dominated the Persian artists and their Indian imitators at Akbar's court. Abūl Fazl, accordingly, devotes Āīn 34 of his *Institutes of Akbar* to the discussion of the 'Arts of Writing and Painting', passing naturally from the account of calligraphic systems summarized above to the invaluable notice of the early history of Indo-Persian painting, which forms our only source of knowledge of the subject other than the information to be gleaned laboriously by minute study in detail of individual works. M. Huart sums up the close relations between calligraphy and Asiatic painting in the phrase:—'En Orient la miniature n'est que la servante de la calligraphie.' The phrase, however, is not applicable to the ancient Hindu schools of painting, which, except in so far as they may have been influenced by Chinese and Persian ideas, were independent of the scribe's art. None of the many varieties of the square Brahmī or Sanskrit script ever tempted the calligraphist to regard his manuscript as a picture, nor did anybody dream of collecting specimens of writing in that script merely for the sake of their beauty.

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A remarkable set of twenty-four large paintings on cotton, in Mongol style, preserved in the Indian Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, seems to have been produced in Kashmīr about the middle of the sixteenth century before Akbar took measures to encourage painting after the Persian manner. These cotton paintings, bought in Kashmīr for low prices by Sir Purdon Clarke, are said to have been illustrations of a manuscript book of stories which has not been preserved or identified. The subjects, comprising many battles and scenes of bloodshed, are often repulsive. No. 5 shows a man being thrown from a window and caught by a horseman below. The most pleasing and best preserved composition is No. 15, which represents a central garden plot with conventional banyan-trees and a highly decorated palace in the Persian style; cranes are seen flying above. The rocky scenery found in all, or almost all, the pictures is connected with Kashmīr in one case by the introduction of black bears, and with India in two cases by the insertion of banyan-trees. These works may be conjectured to have been executed in Kashmīr between A. D. 1540 and 1551, when that country was ably ruled by Bābar's cousin, Haidar Mirzā Dughlat, the accomplished author of the *Tārīkh-i-Rashīdī*. They may be compared with the two big pictures on paper—the largest Indo-Persian compositions known—measuring 2 feet 8 inches by 2 feet 2 inches, which formed part of the illustrations of the *Romance of Amīr Hamzah Sāhib Kirān*, probably from the brush of Mīr Saiyid Ali of Tabrīz, the illustrator of that work, as recorded by Abūl Fazl. Possibly the South Kensington pictures may be concerned with the same story. Quaint representations of fights with black bears are also found in the B. M. MS. Or.

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4615 of the *Dārābnāmah*, executed near the close of the sixteenth century by Akbar's artists.¹

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¹ Four of the cotton pictures are hung in the Entrance Hall of the Indian Section, Victoria and Albert Museum; the remaining twenty are in Room VI. My numbering of those in Room VI runs from the wall of Room VII. Most of them have been mutilated by cutting out heads.

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The history of Indian painting between the close of the Ajantā series in A. D. 642 and the importation of Persian art by Akbar about A. D. 1570, a period of more than nine centuries, is almost a blank, as has been shown in Chapter IX of this work.² But the art cannot have been extinct on Indian soil at any time, although practically no specimens of it have survived from the ages referred to. The rapidity with which the teaching of Abdul Samad and his Musalman colleagues was assimilated and then modified by scores of Hindu artists of various castes is in itself sufficient proof that the foreign teachers must have found trained indigenous scholars with whom to work. Men accustomed to draw and paint could easily learn new methods and a foreign style, but not even the despotic power of Akbar would have been able to create a numerous school of Hindu artists out of nothing.

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² The buildings at Fathpur-Sīkrī, two of which contain the remains of frescoes in Indo-Persian style, were begun in A. D. 1569.

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This inference, inevitable from a general survey of the facts, is established with certainty by the positive testimony of Abūl Fazl that Daswanth, who disputed with Basāwan the first place among the Hindu painters of Akbar's court, had 'devoted his whole life to the art, and used, from love to his profession, to draw and paint figures even on walls'. He was the son of a poor man, a member of the Kahār or palanquin-bearer caste; and when such a man, in spite of all social disadvantages, could become a professional artist, many others more favourably situated must have done the same. Daswanth's genius was rescued from obscurity by the royal favour. 'One day,' writes the courtly historian, 'the eye of His Majesty fell on him; his talent was discovered, and he himself handed over to the Khājah [*scil.* Abdul Samad]. In a short time he surpassed all painters and became the first master of the age. Unfortunately the light of his talents was dimmed by the shadow of madness; he committed suicide. He has left many masterpieces.' Abūl Fazl goes on to say that the work of Basāwan is so excellent that many connoisseurs preferred him to Daswanth.

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The Koran, following the Semitic principle formulated in the Mosaic Second Commandment, absolutely forbids Muslims to make the likeness of anything in heaven or on earth; and the prohibition has been and is strictly obeyed, with rare exceptions, in all countries and at all times, so far as the decoration of mosques and other buildings devoted to religious purposes is concerned.³ But, as explained in Chapter XII (p. 422), Muslims often have taken the liberty of disregarding the prohibition in secular matters. In book illustrations such liberty is commonly assumed. The Persians, adherents of the Shīa sect of Islam, always have been especially lax in their open disregard of the Koranic prohibition. The Mughal emperors of India looked to Irān for the graces of civilization, and it was natural that Akbar should desire to add the charms of Persian pictorial art to the amenities of his court. Regarding himself as Head of the Church and pontiff of a new religion, he cared little about the Prophet, and at a private party was heard by his Boswell to observe:—

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³ Two exceptional cases are cited by Migeon. The Khalif Abd-ul-Malik (A. D. 685-705) erected a mosque at Jerusalem decorated with images of the Prophet and paintings of heaven and hell. The Jumaï Mosque at Isfahan exhibits on the walls two paintings, one of Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet, and *another, perhaps* representing Fatima veiled (*Manuel d'art musulman*, t. ii, pp. 1, 56).

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‘There are many that hate painting, but such men I dislike. It appears to me as if a painter had quite peculiar means of recognizing God; for a painter in sketching anything that has life, and in devising its limbs one after the other, must come to feel that he cannot bestow individuality upon his work, and is thus forced to think of God, the Giver of life, and will thus increase in knowledge.’

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Whatever may be the value of this theological argument, it was good enough for Akbar, who, like all the members of his race, excepting, perhaps, Aurangzēb the Puritan, keenly enjoyed art, and prided himself on his skill as a connoisseur.

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He found no difficulty in gratifying his taste. Liberal pay and abundant honour drew crowds of artists, both foreigners and Indians, Muslims, and Hindus, to his magnificent court, where the more distinguished were enrolled as *mansabdārs*, or members of the official nobility, and assigned ample salaries. His system of government making no distinction between civil and military employ, or rather giving military titles to all official rank, the successful artists ranked as army officers of good standing, while their assistants and allies, gilders, binders, and the like, were enrolled either as members of the imperial bodyguard (*ahadī*), or as private soldiers, with pay ranging from fifteen to thirty rupees a month, sufficient for comfortable subsistence. The industry of all grades was stimulated by weekly inspections, at which His Majesty generously rewarded merit.

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Imperial libraries of large extent were formed at Agra, Delhi, and other places, stored with all that was best in Asiatic literature, both originals and Persian translations, the volumes being enshrined in the richest bindings, and adorned with miniatures regardless of expense.

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For example, the *Razmnāmah*, or Persian abridged translation of the *Mahābhārata*, with preface dated A. D. 1588, now at Jaipur, is said to have cost £40,000 sterling; and Colonel Hanna estimates that his copy of the *Rāmāyana*, now at Washington, must have cost quite half that sum.¹ The *Akbarnāmah*, from which 117 large paintings are preserved at South Kensington, was a similar work, and Abūl Fazl mentions many others.² According to the Spanish priest, Father Sebastian Manrique, who was at Agra in 1641, the imperial library at that city contained 24,000 volumes, valued by him at the astounding figure of 6,463,731 rupees, or £720,000 sterling, an average per volume of almost 270 rupees, equivalent then to about £30.³

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¹ Vol. iv of Hendley, *Memorials of the Jeypore Exhibition*, 1883, 4to, is solely devoted to reproductions from the *Razmnāmah*, of which two are in colour.

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² The *Āīn-i-Akbarī*, usually regarded as a separate work, was really part of the *Akbarnāmah*, or ‘History of Akbar’.

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³ Manrique, *Itinerario de las missiones que hizo el padre F. Sebastian Manrique*, Roma, 1649, p. 417. See *ante*, chap. xii, p. 417. Some of Manrique’s observations are summarized in English in Murray, *Historical Account of Discoveries and Travels in Asia*, 1820, vol. ii, pp. 96–119, and again, more briefly, in Oaten, *European Travellers in India*, 1909, pp. 97–102; but his work has never been translated from the Spanish, although it contains much matter not in the pages of other travellers. The note on the Agra library is now cited for the first time. Manrique estimated the imperial treasure of various kinds, including the library, at Agra alone, to be worth 348,226,386 rupees, more than 42 millions sterling. His precise figures may have been obtained from official records. The exchange is taken at 2*s*. 3*d* per rupee, the rate current in Shahjahān’s reign.

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The libraries thus formed were maintained and increased by Jahāngīr, Shahjahān, and Aurangzēb (1605–1707); and even the weak successors of the last Great Mogul were not indifferent to the delights of choice books and dainty pictures.¹ But the political convulsions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries destroyed the imperial libraries, with most of the similar collections formed by subordinate potentates like the Rohilla chief and the Nawāb-Vazīr of Oudh.² Fragments of these wonderful accumulations are now scattered over the world in private and public collections, and although constituting but a small fraction of the great mass once in existence, supply ample material for the history of Indo-Persian calligraphy and the sister art of the miniaturist. In a book like the present, covering a wide range of topics and a space of more than two thousand years, it is impossible to go into minute details about individual manuscripts, but I cannot refrain from noticing briefly the most pathetic bit of wreckage from a princely library which has come under my observation.

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¹ For instance, the splendid B.M. MS. Add. 20734 (*Pers. Catal.*, p. 259) was given to an English officer by Akbar II in 1815 as an official present. Mīr Muhammad, the artist from whom Manucci obtained the portraits of the imperial family which he brought to Venice before 1712, was in the service of Shah Ālam (Irvine, *Storia do Mogor*, vol. i, pp. liii–lvi).

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² B.M. MS. Add. 22470 belonged to Hāfiz Rahmat of Rohilkhand, and came into the possession of an English officer after Hastings’s Rohilla war, in the course of which the Bareilly library was plundered. Āsaf-ud-daulah, Nawāb-Vazīr of Oudh, secured most of the books for Lucknow, where they were again plundered and scattered in 1858. B.M. MS. Add. 18579 was illustrated for the last king of Bījāpur in the Deccan, whose capital was sacked by Aurangzēb in 1686. Most princes probably owned libraries of considerable value.

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When Shahjahān began to grow old, his four sons, each eager to secure for himself the succession to the throne, engaged in bitter, internecine strife. Aurangzēb, the third son, a master of craft and guile, won the prize, imprisoned his father, and assumed power in 1658. Dārā Shukoh, his eldest brother, doubly hateful as a rival and a heretic, was pursued to the death with unrelenting rigour. Driven into the deserts of Sind, he was foully betrayed, and, to augment his affliction, before reaching the house of his betrayer, ‘received by a foot messenger the sad intelligence of the death of that one of his wives whom he loved most, and who had accompanied him always during his misfortunes. He learnt that she had died of heat and thirst, not being able to find a drop of water in the country to assuage her thirst. The Prince was so affected by the news that he fell as though he were dead.’³

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³ Tavernier, *Travels*, transl. V. Ball, i. 350. The title *Dārā Shukoh* (or *Shikoh*) means ‘equal in splendour to Darius’. The common practice of calling the prince simply Dārā, *i. e.* Darius, is erroneous. His personal name, given in the signature on the album, was Muhammad, as is usual with Muslims.

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The memory of this sad tale is recalled by a beautiful little album recently purchased by the India Office Library, which bears the unhappy prince’s autograph inscription written across a splash of gold smeared over the delicately decorated flyleaf:—'This album was presented to his nearest and dearest friend, the Lady Nādirah Bēgam, by Prince Muhammad Dārā Shukoh, son of the Emperor Shahjahān, in the year 1051 (= A.D. 1641-2).'

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The illustration of manuscripts was only one form of Indo-Persian art, and that, as M. Blochet truly observes, was not always the most successful. The book illustrations, like those in the Clarke MS. of the *Akbarnāmah* at South Kensington, even when executed by Basāwan, Daswanth, and other famous artists, are generally inferior to Persian work. The highest achievements of the Indian draughtsmen and colourists were often attained in separate pictures of varying sizes, which were frequently bound in albums, like that given by Dārā Shukoh to his beloved wife. The British Museum collection includes many such albums, some of which, such as Hāfiz Rahmat's volume above noticed, constitute historical portrait galleries of the deepest interest. The fashion set by the court of Delhi and followed by all the feudatory courts and many individual nobles, was passed on to the wealthy English 'Nabobs' in the latter part of the eighteenth century, who gladly seized opportunities of procuring specimens and bringing them home. Certain pictures in B.M. MS. Add. 18801 were much admired by Sir Joshua Reynolds in July, 1777.

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Occasional memoranda of prices give some notion of the pecuniary value of such pictures. One of those specially noticed by Sir Joshua—a large sketch of Shahjahān holding court—is marked Rupees 200, equivalent in those days to at least £25 sterling. In the Johnson Collection at the India Office formed by Warren Hastings's banker, Richard Johnson, a drawing of Nawāb Shāyista Khān, a great noble of Aurangzēb's time (vol. xxii, fol. 5), is priced Rupees 170, and in another volume a number of more ordinary small portraits are priced at 25 rupees each. During the nineteenth century the taste for the work of the school was lost by both Europeans and Indians, and very few persons seemed to care what happened to the pictures, which were then procurable for nominal sums. Interest in them has now been revived, chiefly by reason of Mr. Havell's efforts and the publications of French scholars. According to Badāonī, Akbar's hostile critic, the courtiers' taste for illuminated books had been stimulated in his time by a certain amount of compulsion, and it was natural that, during the 'great anarchy' of the Marāthā period, when the influence of the Delhi court sank to nothing, the amount of liberal patronage by the minor native courts should diminish. Nevertheless, even during those stormy times much meritorious portrait work was produced, and some good portraiture was executed as late as the nineteenth century.

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When Bernier was writing to Colbert in 1669, early in the reign of Aurangzēb, who had the Puritan dislike for art, the position of artists had become much less favourable than that enjoyed by them in the days of Akbar, Jahāngīr, and Shahjahān. The observant French physician, a thoroughly trustworthy witness, described as follows the relations between artists and their patrons, or rather taskmasters, as seen by him:—

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'Can it excite wonder that under these circumstances [*scil.* of general misery] the arts do not flourish here as they would do under better government, or as

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they flourish in our happier France ? No artist can be expected to give his mind to his calling in the midst of a people who are either wretchedly poor, or who, if rich, assume an appearance of poverty, and who regard not the beauty and excellence, but the cheapness of an article ; a people whose grandees pay for a work of art considerably under its value, and according to their own caprice, and who do not hesitate to punish an importunate artist or tradesman with the *korrah*, that long and terrible whip hanging at every Omrah's [nobleman's] gate. Is it not enough to damp the ardour of any artist when he feels that he can never hope to attain to any distinction ? . . . The arts in the Indies would long ago have lost their beauty and delicacy if the monarch and principal Omrahs did not keep in their pay a number of artists who work in their houses, teach the children, and are stimulated to exertion by the hope of reward and the fear of the *korrah*. The protection afforded by powerful patrons to rich merchants and tradesmen who pay the workmen rather higher wages tends also to preserve the arts. I say "rather higher wages ", for it should not be inferred from the goodness of the manufactures that the workman is held in esteem, or arrives at a state of independence. Nothing but sheer necessity of blows from a cudgel keeps him employed.'

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In a subsequent passage the author describes the workshops attached to great houses :—

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'In one hall embroiderers are busily employed, superintended by a master. In another you see the goldsmiths, in a third, painters, &c.'¹

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¹ Bernier, *Travels*, transl. Constable, pp. 228, 258.

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Bernier's description of the servile position of artists, while applicable specially to the experts in the industrial arts, must have been generally true also for that of the professors of the fine art of painting. A tyrannical 'Omrah' and his henchmen would not have drawn nice distinctions between the artist who painted the miniatures and the embroiderers or carvers who executed the binding of a sumptuous manuscript. Indeed the binding is sometimes as much a work of art as the pictures are.²

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² B.M. MS. Add. 18579, a copy of the *Anwār-i-Suhaili* in a beautiful minute script, has a handsome stamped gilt binding, and there are other examples of rich early bindings in the Museum collection. See *Indian Art at Delhi*, p. 203, several papers in *J. I. A. I.*, and Migeon, *Manuel d'art musulman*, t. ii, p. 59.

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Wall-paintings, doubtless executed for the most part as 'Indian fresco' in the manner described in Chapter VIII (*ante*, p. 277), constituted the third branch of Indo-Persian pictorial art, and are known to have been numerous on the imperial residences. As might be expected, few specimens have survived the destruction and neglect from which the Mughal palaces have suffered so severely. The best preserved examples are those which decorated two buildings at Fathpur-Sīkrī near Agra, namely, Akbar's bedroom and the residence of his Hindu queen, who bore the title of 'Mariam-uz-zamān', the 'Mary of the Age'. Even these pictures, many of which were in tolerably good condition forty or fifty years ago, are now mere fragments, measures of conservation having been deferred too long. The remains are fully described and illustrated in the first volume of the late Mr. E. W. Smith's elaborate work on Akbar's palace-city.

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The subjects, like those of the book illustrations and album pictures, are extremely various, comprising winged angels, a Chinese figure supposed to be Buddha, a boating scene, hunting parties, a tournament, a battle, and elegant floral designs in Japanese taste. The most interesting fragment is the boating scene, reproduced in Plate CXIV.

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The pictures, executed about 1570 or a little later, in the early Indo-Persian style, without any shading, are the earliest known examples of the Indo-Persian school. The winged angels are a clear proof that European pictures were studied. One scene is called the ‘Annunciation’ by the local guides, who may be right in their identification. The purely Chinese form of the personage supposed to be Buddha is equally clear proof that Chinese models were imitated, and the foliage decorations have a Japanese look. Akbar’s taste in art, as in religion, was eclectic, and he delighted in foreign notions of all sorts.

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The small paintings on ivory, generally oval in shape, produced freely at Delhi for the benefit of tourists, are obviously imitations in form of the English miniatures made fashionable at native courts towards the close of the eighteenth century by John Smart, Ozias Humphreys, and other able artists who then came out to India to ‘shake the pagoda-tree’. The subjects of the modern Delhi miniatures, as a rule, are copied by a mechanical stencil process from older pictures or stock drawings, and thus have no claim to rank as works of original art. The execution of the better specimens is admirable, displaying to advantage the Indian qualities of patience, steadiness of hand, and firm drawing of line, but the lack of inspiration deprives these pretty trifles of artistic interest and reduces them to the level of mere curiosities and mementoes of travel. The style of the painting follows the tradition of the Indo-Persian school of the seventeenth century.

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Excepting the modern Delhi miniatures on ivory, the frescoes, the early paintings on cotton, and a few pictures on vellum, the Indo-Persian paintings are all executed on paper.¹ I do not know any Indian examples of painting on silk in the Chinese manner. The Indo-Persian, like other Asiatic artists, conceived every object as being bounded by firm lines, and consequently, his first step was the drawing of an outline. For the illustration of ordinary Persian books, according to M. Blochet, the outline drawn directly on the page in red or black chalk was filled in with colours at once. For more costly and elaborate volumes the process was more complicated, the illustrations being executed upon a separate sheet subsequently applied to the blank space left in the manuscript. That sheet was first covered with a layer of very fine plaster, mixed in a solution of gum arabic. The outline was then drawn upon the perfectly smooth surface thus obtained, and opaque body-colours, mixed with water, were laid on in successive layers, just as in oil-painting, but with the difference that mistakes could not be rectified. Jewels and ornaments were indicated by needle prickings in sheets of gold-leaf, or even by the insertion of pearls or diamond chips.² The work PLATE CXIV. Wall-painting: eight men in a boat; in Akbar's bedroom, Fathpur-Sīkrī. (E. W. Smith, *The Moghul Architecture of Fathpur-Sīkrī*, Pl. XIII.)

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¹ ^1 Col. Hanna’s Collection, now at Washington, U. S. A., included three examples on vellum, namely, No. 28, Jahāngīr standing on globe; No. 52, a Sultan of Turkey; and No. 86, Bābar.

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² ^2 Blochet, ‘Musalman MSS. and Miniatures as *illustrated in the Recent Exhibition at Paris*,’ *Burlington Magazine*, vol. ii, June to Aug. 1903.

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was all done by the Indian artists with fine squirrel-hair brushes, the most delicate strokes being executed with a brush of a single hair, an instrument requiring the utmost correctness of eye and steadiness of hand. The collections in London contain many examples of unfinished drawings and paintings, which, if examined critically by experts, would reveal fully the Indian methods of work, and show how far they agreed with or differed from the Persian methods described by M. Blochet.¹

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¹ Further technical details are given in the appendix to Havell's *Indian Sculpture and Painting*.

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The blue was ordinarily obtained from powdered lapis lazuli, imported from Badakshān, but indigo blues appear in early book illustrations of Hindu subjects. The reds used were cinnabar, vermilion, or cochineal.² The yellow was chrome, and other colours were made up by mixing these. Gold was freely used in the form of gold-leaf, and also as a wash of which the Indians had the secret.³ The Persians applied an admirably transparent varnish made of sandarac and linseed-oil, mixed as a paste and dissolved in either petroleum or highly rectified spirits of wine.⁴ Probably the Indians used all the Persian appliances with some additions and modifications, but the ascertainment of full details would require special expert study and hardly repay the trouble.

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² Before the discovery of cochineal in 1518, *kermes*, a pigment obtained from *Coccus Indicus*, an insect found in Persia, must have been used (*Burlington Magazine*, vol. iv, p. 144). Other authorities call the species *Coccus ilicis*.

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³ Recipe in Ozias Humphrey MSS. in B.M., No. 15962, first leaf. See also Moor, *Hindu Pantheon* (ed. 1810), p. 63 *n*.

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⁴ Blochet, *Burlington Magazine*, vol. ii, *ut supra*.

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The practice of beginning a picture by laying down a firmly-drawn outline led to a curious division of labour, the outline often being drawn by one man and the painting done by another. For example, in the Clarke MS. of the *Akbarnāmah* at South Kensington the picture (No. 89/117) of the execution of Adham Khān was drawn by Miskīn and painted by Shankar. Sometimes three artists collaborated in one work, and I have noticed one instance in which the collaborators numbered four, namely, the audience scene (1/117) in the Clarke MS. The outlines in that picture were drawn by Miskīn, the painting was done by Sarwan, the faces (*chihra-nāmī*) by an artist whose name is indistinct, and the figures (*ṣūrat*) by Mādho. It is not clear how such a complicated arrangement was worked. The method, whether only two artists or four collaborated, necessarily tended to reduce their art to the level of a skilled mechanical craft; and, as a matter of fact, the mechanical nature of much of the fine Indo-Persian work is its greatest defect.⁵

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⁵ The word طرح, *tarḥ*, or *ṭarraḥ*, primarily means 'foundation'; e.g. *tarḥ afgandan*, 'to lay a foundation,' *tarḥ-kash*, a 'plan-drawer' (Steingass, *Pers. Dict.*). The transition to the meaning 'outline' was easy, and the word always has that meaning in the signatures to the Indo-Persian drawings, as M. Blochet rightly perceived. Blochmann's erroneous rendering 'back-grounding' in his translation of the *Āīn-i-Akbarī* made the signatures unintelligible. 'Painting' or 'colouring', as distinguished from 'outline', is expressed by either the Arabic word عمل, *a'mal*, 'execution,' or the Persian term *rang-āmezī*, 'colouring.' When *a'mal* stands alone, it implies execution of the picture by a single artist. The term *rang-āmezī*, to signify 'colouring', is preferred in the Jaipur *Razmnāmah*.

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The early Indo-Persian book illustrations, such as those in the Clarke MS. of the *Akbarnāmah*, are wrought in excessively brilliant colours, chiefly red, yellow, and blue.

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They are avowed imitations of Persian work of the Tīmūrid school, and are not as good as the prototypes. The composition is usually overcrowded. The subjects, in accordance with Mongol taste, are frequently horrible and disgusting. Nothing could be more repulsive than the picture (48/117) in the Clarke MS. representing the execution ground, on which nine wretches are being torn to pieces by elephants, while two more, standing in the corner near the gallows, await their turn. Such a picture proves that, even under Akbar’s comparatively mild government, the administration of justice was associated with much sanguinary cruelty, common, unhappily, in most countries during that age.

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In Persia, at the close of the fifteenth century, the character of Tīmūrid art began to change, passing into the more delicate and sentimental style of the Safavide period in the sixteenth century. During the seventeenth century the refined Safavide style, with its lowered scale of colour, became familiar in India, where further local modifications were effected under the influence of Hindu tradition. The Indian artists ‘had a truer feeling for colour and more sober tonality’ than their Persian teachers, according to M. Blochet, who is disposed to think that the Indians sometimes carried the policy of softening colour to an undue extreme. They were wonderfully successful in their *grisaille* drawings of a single colour, frequently a pale sepia, with delicate gradations of tint, very pleasing to my eye. At the same time they developed a mastery over individual characteristic portraiture never equalled, I think, by the Persians. The best Indian work dates from the first half of the seventeenth century, but good portraits are to be found executed as late as the early years of the nineteenth century.

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During Akbar’s reign (1556–1605) and a portion of Jahāngīr’s (1605–27) the standing portrait figures are usually represented in profile in a formal, conventional manner, with the right hand holding up a flower or jewel, and the feet placed one in front of the other. Gradually this stiff formalism was dropped, and men and women were drawn in natural attitudes. The more ancient Indo-Persian works, like their Persian models, follow unreservedly the style known to modern critics as ‘primitive’, that is to say, a style marked by the total lack of roundness, depth of tone, and aerial perspective, every object being represented as absolutely flat. During the later years of Jahāngīr’s reign and subsequently, this flat style was modified by the Indian artists, who frequently introduced slight line shading with admirable effect, so contriving to give their figures a sufficient degree of roundness with wonderfully few strokes. The change adds much to the attractiveness of seventeenth-century Indian work in European eyes.

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This improvement, if it may be so called, may have been the result of European influence, which certainly became a potent factor in Persian and Indian art at that time. Most of the albums show it plainly. For instance, Dārā Shukoh’s album includes two wood engravings (fol. 42 *b*, 43), one of S. Caterina di Siena, dated 1585, and the other of S. Margarita of about the same period, while the picture on folio 74 exhibits a lady and gentleman in European costume. Biblical subjects were frequently treated by the artists, and were specially favoured by the royal family, who used them for palace decorations at both Fathpur-Sīkrī and Lahore. The treatment at times seems very quaint, as when we see the Good Shepherd depicted in the form of a stout middle-aged man with a black beard, wearing a Muslim's robe and a twisted turban of gold brocade (Plate CXV). A second Good Shepherd in vol. xvi, fol. 1 of the Johnson Collection is signed by Ustād Miskīn, probably to be identified with Muhammad Miskīn, the author of a lady's portrait in vol. xxi, fol. 1 of the same collection, and with Miskīn, Akbar's artist, who signed some of the pictures in the Clarke MS. of the *Akbarnāmah*. Many other biblical subjects will be found in the collections, and it must be confessed that the pictures are not usually equal to those devoted to topics more congenial to the artists.

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One subject, frequently treated with variations, has been mistakenly identified as Christian, and dubbed ‘Angels ministering to Christ’, although all the compositions dealing with it are purely Muslim. The main motive is the miraculous supply of food to a hermit saint dwelling in the wilderness by angels, who vary in number in different replicas, and are generally, if not always, provided with wings in the conventional fashion borrowed by Christian art from the Greek figure of Victory. Most of the pictures show a second figure, a discontented darvīsh sitting sulking in a corner or at the mouth of a cave. As is proved in several instances by the labels, the principal figure undoubtedly is that of Ibrāhīm, son of Adham, who resigned the kingdom of Balkh, and withdrew as a hermit into the wilderness already haunted by a darvīsh, whose food had been provided regularly by the angels. When the ex-king appeared on the scene, the angels, while continuing to supply their old client the darvīsh with a single daily dish as a bare subsistence, liberally brought ten dishes to the retired monarch, in recognition of the sacrifice made by him. The darvīsh naturally was annoyed, and whenever he is introduced into the picture his feelings are indicated by the artist.¹

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¹ *J. R. A. S.*, 1909, p. 751; 1910, p. 167.

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The later pictures constantly display the effects of European example and teaching in ways more subtle than the selection of Christian subjects or the representation of people in European dress. The discreet use of shading to suggest an appearance of roundness, already noticed, may or may not be the result of study of European models. The development of landscape backgrounds, with a partial introduction of aerial and linear perspective, unquestionably is an imitation of Western exemplars.

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Many of the attempts to combine the methods of the West with those of the East are decided failures, as similar attempts in China have failed, but some few attain a high level of executive excellence. One such picture of good quality—a large landscape with a fortified town in the distance; a girl wading in the river, &c.—has been selected for reproduction as Plate XCV in the *Portfolio de l'Exposition des Arts Musulmans*, Paris. Another pleasing composition, fol. 221 of B.M. Or. 2265, depicts a lady in European dress with her husband or lover drinking under the shade of trees² (Plate CXVI). Numberless pictures indicate in a less conspicuous manner PLATE CXV. *Grisaille* Good Shepherd; anonymous. (Johnson Coll., vol. vi, fol. 7.)

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² This MS. has been cited above (p. 451) for a specimen of the work of the early artist Mīrak. It contains fourteen pictures, all of high quality, eleven being sixteenth-century works, and three being later additions, showing the extent to which Persian taste was affected by European models. Of those three, fol. 221 is the best. All the three are signed ‘Muhammad Zamān’, and dated A.H. 1086=A.D. 1675–6.

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the influence produced by the example of Europe on the treatment of landscape backgrounds and perspective, both linear and aerial. A skilled expert might possibly succeed by careful study in tracing the influence of particular individual Western masters, but I cannot attempt to do so, and, if I could, the task would hardly repay the pains.

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The Persian kings admired European art, and deliberately sought to introduce its methods into their country. During the residence of Sir Robert Sherley at the Persian court, sometime about A.D. 1606, Shāh Abbās I (1587–1629) sent to Rome a party of students, one of whom became a Christian and published a book under the name of Don John of Persia. Shāh Abbās II (1642–67) repeated the experiment and dispatched a second party. One of these, by name Muhammad Zamān, also was converted, and returned to Persia as a Christian under the name of Paolo Zamān. Having been obliged to quit his native land, he obtained in India the protection of Shahjahān, who granted him, with other exiled Persians, allowances as a *mansabdār* in Kashmīr. Early in Aurangzēb's reign all the Persian refugee *mansabdārs* were summoned to court for the verification of their grants, and on that occasion, about A.D. 1660, Manucci made the acquaintance of Muhammad or Paolo Zamān, who avowed his Christian profession, while continuing to live in the ordinary Musalman manner. The three Europeanized pictures in B.M. Or. 2265 evidently are from his brush.

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To this day the painters and illuminators of Isfahan, the earlier, and Teheran, the later, capital of Persia, cherish as their ideal the ambition to ‘paint like Raphael’, and pride themselves on their descent from certain of the students sent long ago to Rome who survived to return to the home of their fathers.¹

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¹ The strange story of the Persian missions to Rome is pieced together from Irvine, *Storia do Mogor*, ii. 17; and Sir C. Purdon Clarke’s article ‘A Tradition of Raphael in Persia’, *J. Ind. Art*, vol. vii (1897), pp. 25, 26, Pl. XLII–XLVI. The author of that article heard the tradition of the artists when he was visiting Persia in 1874–6. It is said that Muhammad Zamān, who was converted, had been sent abroad to learn how to confute the Christian missionaries. The adventurous lives of the Sherley (Shirley) brothers may be read in the *Dict. of Nat. Biography*. was affected by European models. Of these three fol. 221 is the best. All the three are signed 'Muhammad Zamān', and dated A.H. 1086=A.D. 1675-6.

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The attempt to weld Asiatic ideals and methods with those of Europe, although responsible for some pretty pictures, was not a permanent success in either Persia or India. It is now being renewed by the clever Bengālī artists of Abanindro Nāth Tagore’s school in a different form, and with considerable ability, but, I fear, without much prospect of producing any really important results.

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Asiatic art, whether Chinese, Japanese, Persian, or Indian, depending essentially on skill in the drawing of lines, cannot accommodate itself to the traditions and requirements of European realistic painting, based on different principles. The Chinese, Dr. Bushell observes,

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‘attribute an extreme importance to the line in pictorial art; bodies appear to them, not as they are in reality, that is to say, round and with light playing about

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