Jauhar, a private servant of the Mughal Emperor Humayun (r. 1530–1540; 1555–1556) made these observations while describing a moment during Humayun’s flight from the Indian subcontinent. In 1540, a brilliant and able Afghan, Sher Shah, seized control of the kingdom in India established by Humayun’s father Babur in 1526, and Humayun was ousted from power. That a painter was among the few people who accompanied him into exile certainly indicates the importance of painting at his court; while information that the artist was asked to observe and record aspects of the natural world allies Mughal painting to the innovative, if more fanciful, documentary interests of such works as the Ni’matnama. However, painting as precise record of specific events, personalities, or objects is not known among the pre-Mughal Indian traditions we have discussed.

Humayun’s retreat from India was slow. In 1542, he was in the deserts of Sind (now within Pakistan) where his fifteen-year-old empress Hamida Banu Begam gave birth to a son. This child, the future Emperor Akbar, was then left with guardians and attendants while Humayun continued to the court of the Safavid Shah Tahmasp of Iran to ask help in regaining his territories. Successful, and wildly impressed by the splendor of the court he had visited, Humayun returned east with military reinforcements. He captured Kabul (presently the capital of Afghanistan) after a series of battles with his brother Kamran, who had taken advantage of Humayun’s misfortunes to proclaim his own independence and power. Humayun then used Kabul as a base for his campaign to return to India.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, painters in India were already heirs to an unbroken artistic tradition of great antiquity and extraordinary brilliance. Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain religious sanctuaries had long been decorated with carved and painted figures, and these were often accompanied by illustrative wall murals and ornamental designs. The libraries and treasuries of these temples usually housed religious manuscripts; often illustrated and decoratively embellished, these books preserved religious teachings for the use of devotees. As early as the fifth century, the Kama Sutra had mentioned that painting was an established and expected social accomplishment, and contemporary paintings at the Buddhist site of Ajanta are among the most sensuous and sophisticated visual images known from any source (fig. 2). Even today, both unpretentious village houses and royal palaces are decorated with paintings on ceremonial occasions, a longstanding practice, while village storytellers continue to perform in front of narrative scrolls painted in traditional style. Painting, therefore, was never an exclusive or elitist activity, nor one limited to a particular social or religious community.

The majority of the paintings from Ajanta evoke that sense of three-dimensional volume that is so distinctive of Indian sculpture. By the sixteenth century, however, the wall-paintings at such shrine sites as Lepakshi (near Vijayanagar) were instead most expressive through two-dimensional surface design (fig. 3). This was due in part to the relative decline of the sculptural tradition in India, as well as to greater specialization among artists – painters no longer felt obliged to create sculptural effects.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS

Aurangzeb died in 1707, but the Mughal empire endured, at least officially, for another 150 years. It lasted until the British exiled and imprisoned the last Mughal ruler after the uprising in 1858. Shah 'Alam Bahadur Shah succeeded Aurangzeb in 1707. Continuous political turmoil prevented him, however, from entering the long-standing Mughal capital, Delhi, after his coronation. Delhi again became the imperial residence in 1712, but the empire continued to suffer seriously from financial problems, political intrigue, inadequately prepared rulers, and invasions. Moreover, Delhi experienced difficulties that reflected on the entire state. In 1739 the city was sacked by the Iranian ruler Nadir Shah and again in the 1750s by Afghans who entered India four times. In fact, as Delhi became increasingly vulnerable, it also became virtually all that was left of the Mughal empire. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, two Delhis emerged – the older Mughal city where the king still resided in Shah Jahan's fort, and British Delhi which increasingly encroached upon and transformed the older city.

As the empire weakened, the nawabs of Murshidabad, Awadh and Hyderabad established their own successor states, while Sikh, Jat, Maratha and other Hindu rulers asserted their independence, carving out numerous little kingdoms from what once had been a single empire. The architecture sponsored by the rulers and inhabitants of these new domains is heavily dependent on the Mughal style established under Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, yet in each case new formal interpretations and meaning are given to older forms. The results are often highly creative expressions, reflecting these houses' political allegiance and religious affiliation.

By 1700, Rajput palaces contained gardens, courtyards, pavilions, and darbar halls in the Mughal fashion; court dress and manners often followed Mughal standards; and, in the arts, many painters used finer pigments to paint subtler perceptions of the natural world in softer colors and more experimental styles. Neither architects nor painters working for Rajput patrons adopted anything more than this superficial appearance of Mughal taste, however. Even when painting portraits – a Mughal-inspired subject – the Rajput artist showed no sustained interest in the visual specificity, or individual psychological comprehension, that was so distinctive a Mughal contribution to Indian art. Figures remained types. The regard for human portraiture so remarkable in the works of such Mughal artists as Govardhan or Hashim is found virtually nowhere in Rajput painting; compare, for example, figs. 117 and 124. This is, of course, a matter determined by the context of patronage. Some of the greatest Mughal painters were Hindus by personal faith, but the demands of the patron took precedence over the artist’s individual cultural affiliation. In fact, throughout the history of Indian painting, artists took jobs where they were available, and whether or not they were for patrons with whom they shared religious beliefs.

This difference of attitude is nowhere more obvious than in the treatment of space. A sense of spatial depth – whether or not successful by European terms – is basic to the mature phase of Mughal painting (for example fig. 111). By creating a visual equivalent for empty space, in which solid forms are carefully located, the boundaries and thus the inherent separateness of these forms is affirmed.

Whether we are dealing with imperial Mughal paintings during Jahangir’s reign, the Rajput style at Jodhpur, or pahari traditions, periods of innovation are followed by the resurgence of conservative, continually valid, pan-Indian artistic values. Two paintings from the pahari region are especially useful in defining these values. In Raja Sansar Chand of Kangra with His Small Son and Courtiers (fig. 166), the architectural setting and the arrangement of the people derive directly from Raja Balwant Singh Performing his Toilet Before Retiring (plate N), painted by Nainsukh more than half a century earlier, and the Mughal Muhammad Shah with Courtiers (plate O). The painting could not have been executed without these prototypes. Nonetheless, the dancing women and the foreground soldiers – hierarchically less important figures – are very much smaller in scale than the courtiers, and they in turn are dominated by the massive raja. As in the allegorical portraits of Jahangir which changed the direction of Mughal painting about 1615, we have been transferred back to a world of symbolism and hierarchy.

Arjuna and His Charioteer Lord Krishna Confront Karna (fig. 167) is in an even more conservative style. Like The Departure of Damayanti for Nisadha (fig. 157), this depicts an episode described in the Mahabharata. However, the earlier work placed the gods firmly on earth, inhabiting palaces and courtyards in which the patrons of the paintings would themselves have felt comfortable. The only space in the scene of Arjuna and Krishna, however, is flat on the surface; the confrontation is expressed through strong, formal surface patterns, flat shapes, and proportions based even more obviously on hierarchy rather than nature.

Shah Jahan, Jahangir's third son, emerged victorious in the power struggle that developed after Jahangir's death and assumed the Mughal throne in 1628. His thirty-year reign is dominated by an outward sense of prosperity and stability unmatched even during Akbar's rule. At the same time, almost every aspect of courtly culture became increasingly formalized. Shah Jahan was portrayed as an aloof ideal king. Official histories thus present him as a just leader and staunch upholder of orthodox Islam, but they give little insight into the emperor's personal thoughts. Yet Shah Jahan's unreserved preference for Dara Shukoh, his eldest son, an eclectic mystic thinker, suggests other aspects of this ruler's character never alluded to in court histories. The painted image of Shah Jahan parallels the literary one. The emperor is portrayed in an idealized manner – while he ages over time, his features remain flawless. His inner character is never revealed. Rather, his role as semi-divine king of the world, a play on his name, is the focus of each portrait. His face is always surrounded by a halo, as in late representations of Jahangir. In some of these illustrations the metaphoric nature of the king's semi-divine and just quality is taken so far as to show small angels above his head, often crowning him, while at his feet are the lion and the lamb of peace. Even more than light imagery, paradisical imagery now evolves from verbal to visual forms, particularly in Shah Jahan's architecture.

In the A’in-i-Akbari, Abu’l Fazl named the major painters at Akbar’s court, beginning with Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd as-Samad. Third on this list, which seems to be hierarchic, is Daswanth, of whom it was written:

The Akbarnama narrative dates the death of the painter to 1584, and corroborates his insanity and suicide.

The character of Daswanth as an artist is elusive, for few of his works exist. A signed and certainly authentic page is found in the Tutinama and provides further evidence for that manuscript’s imperial origin and Akbar period date; the illustration is early and immature, however. While he must have worked on the Hamzanama as well - its dates coincide with the years of his greatest activity in the court workshops - successful attributions to his hand have yet to be made. The greatest, fully mature illustrations by Daswanth known to us are in a Razmnama (Book of Wars) manuscript begun in 1582. These are paintings that he designed, but did not fully execute.

PRECEDENTS FOR MUGHAL ARCHITECTURE

Many of the monuments cited in this chapter as well as subsequent ones are discussed and illustrated in the two classical sources: Percy Brown, Indian Architecture, Islamic Period, 5th ed. rev., Bombay, 1958, and John Marshall, "The Monuments of Muslim India," in The Cambridge History of India, Vol. in, Cambridge, 1922.' While monographs and books concerning more limited areas or single sites have since been written, these two texts remain the best sources for comprehensive treatment of architecture in the pre-Mughal period and should be consulted for many works discussed here. John Hoag, Islamic Architecture, New York, 1977, is useful for placing the material in a greater Islamic context.

Other sources for material discussed here as well as in subsequent chapters include Alexander Cunningham (ed.), Archaeological Survey of India Reports (ASIR) , 23 vols., Calcutta, 1871-87. In addition there are numerous reports and series issued by the Archaeological Survey of India which will be cited in specific contexts throughout this essay. However, of particular value for historical inscriptions on these monuments are the Annual Report of Indian Epigraphy (ARIE) and Epigraphia Indica: Arabic and Persian Supplement (ElAPS). These sources are invaluable, but for descriptive rather than analytic material.

Upon the death of Akbar in 1605, Muhammad Sultan Salim assumed the imperial throne. He took the title Nur al-Din Muhammad Jahangir Badshah Ghazi, hence the name Jahangir by which he is most commonly known. It is generally believed that during Jahangir's 22-year reign, half as long as Akbar's, patronage for buildings declined because of his enthusiasm for painting. Further, common belief credits Jahangir's influential wife, Nur Jahan, a leading taste setter of the time, with stimulating the construction of buildings later in the emperor's reign. Her role as patron cannot be denied, but Jahangir continually refers in his own memoirs to his patronage of tombs, pleasure pavilions, forts and gardens as well as to the restoration of older structures. In fact, Jahangir in his memoirs refers more often to architecture he found pleasing or to buildings he ordered than to paintings he commissioned, even though he is regarded as a great connoisseur of painting. During Jahangir's reign the realm was secure. Thus the nobles were encouraged to embellish cities, construct serais, gardens and dwellings and endow shrines – all concrete manifestations of a prosperous state.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Salim was the name given to Jahangir by his father, Akbar, in honor of Salim, the Chishti saint of Fatehpur Sikri who had predicted his birth. He was Akbar's oldest son and heir-apparent. Akbar gave the young prince an education befitting his rank. The leading nobles and scholars such as the great littérateur, Khan-i Khanan cAbd al-Rahim, and the leading theologian, Shaikh cAbd al-Nabi, were charged with responsibility for educating the future emperor.

If the title Mughal and Rajput Painting suggests a simple historical tradition to be investigated through its year to year development, then it is misleading. The subject is, instead, a rich interweaving of varied and sometimes contradictory interests and traditions.

An initial unity is provided by format, for the earliest paintings to concern us were book illustrations. This means that the works were small (although books can, of course, vary dramatically in size), usually on paper, and closely linked to a literary narrative. The physical arrangement of volumes, however, evolved from two quite distinct sources: the cultural traditions that surrounded Hinduism and Islam. These were the major religious systems in India during the years included in this study, approximately 1500–1850. The earliest Hindu books, and related Buddhist and Jain volumes, were usually on pages made from leaves of the talipot palm; long and horizontal in format, the pages were pierced and threaded onto cords tied between wooden covers. The occasional illustrations were small and usually square. Islamic books, on the other hand, were on paper, bound along a spine, and often encased in leather covers. They were almost exclusively vertical, and were close to left – the reverse of the European system. While paper became plentiful in India after about 1400, so entrenched were traditional attitudes that Hindu artists and craftsmen only slowly took advantage of the freedom that the new material allowed, to vary the size and shape from the severely restricted palm-leaf format. And even then the folios were seldom bound. Kept in stacks, the loose paper pages were wrapped in cloth and tied in bundles.

Until the eighteenth century, painting for Rajput patrons was almost completely confined to the illustration of familiar, traditional texts - although we have already seen exceptions. Ragamalas, together with episodes from the god Krishna’s life (usually adapted from the Bhagavata Purana), were the most popular subjects for Rajput painters. The standard Ragamala (garland of ragas) is a set of thirty-six paintings depicting possible relationships between a man and a woman, categorized according to the emotional potential of different times of day (for example dawn or sunset) or seasons of the year (pre-monsoon heat, for example, or the rainy season). Each of these is a separate raga, or its variant, a ragini. Vasanta Raga (Plate H), for example, shows the man and woman dancing together in spring. Their physical union is foreshadowed by wild jungle plants, whose rich buds and blossoms are emblems of divine creativity. Nature is still used in such works to intensify the human situation, not to provide a spatial backdrop.

The text of the Ragamala illustrates an element of Hinduism known as bhakti, devotionalism. This is a system whereby the worshipper exists in a direct relationship with a god possessing personal attributes. In both literary and visual presentations, as noted above, this takes the form of romantic, often explicitly sexual, imagery: the worshipper (Lover) longs for union with the divine (the Beloved), and the obliteration of all sense of individuality. By the sixteenth century, numerous bhakti texts had been written in vernaculars, for this was a reactionary movement against priestly control of access to the gods through rituals in Sanskrit.

MUGHAL THEORIES OF KINGSHIP AND STATE POLITY

Akbar is generally recognized as the greatest and most capable of the Mughal rulers. Under him Mughal polity and statecraft reached maturity; and under his guidance the Mughals changed from a petty power to a major dynastic state. From his time to the end of the Mughal period, artistic production on both an imperial and sub-imperial level was closely linked to notions of state polity, religion and kingship.

Humayun died in 1556, only one year after his return to Hindustan. Upon hearing the call to prayers, he slipped on the steep stone steps of the library in his Din-Panah citadel in Delhi. Humayun's only surviving son and heir-apparent, Akbar, then just fourteen years of age, ascended the throne and ruled until 1605 the expanding Mughal empire. Until about 1561, Akbar was under the control of powerful court factions, first his guardian, Bhairam Khan, and then the scheming Maham Anga, a former imperial wet-nurse. Between about 1560 and 1580, Akbar devoted his energies to the conquest and then the consolidation of territory in north India. This he achieved through battle, marriage, treaty and, most significantly, administrative reform. Concurrent with these activities, Akbar developed an interest in religion that, while initially a personal concern, ultimately transformed his concept of state. Many of the policies he adopted, such as the renunciation of the poll-tax (jiziya) for non-Muslims, had a solid political basis as well as a personal one, for Akbar, much more than his Mughal predecessors, saw every advantage in maintaining good relations with the Hindu majority.

IMPERIAL PAINTING AND THE RISE OF LOCAL WORKSHOPS

The Akbarnamas were official state documents meant to dazzle with their splendour, and to create, uphold, and reinforce tradition. Other works, made for private imperial appreciation, therefore introduce more clearly and easily the new concerns that will dominate Mughal painting during the first three decades of the seventeenth century, and which are only hinted at in the later Akbarnama. These tend to be books of poetry, such as the Nafahat al-uns, dated 1604–1605 (fig. 46). As with the circa 1588 Diwan of Anwari (fig. 34), with which it is closely linked in format and taste, the paintings of this book are smaller in size than those of the historical manuscripts or the majority of known Lahore period volumes. They contain far fewer figures and descriptive details, and here too illustrations are by individual artists rather than being the result of shared workmanship. And more than ever before, they have become revelations of personal artistic sensibility. It is no longer the narrative or the sheer quantity of visual material that attracts us, but the profound interest in individuals and their interaction. A badly creased page inscribed to Balchand, The Donkey’s Refusal (fig. 46), exemplifies this. The story is about a Shaikh who tried to take his donkey to fetch wine, but the animal refused to move until his master had renounced such pleasures. This potentially lively story is not what interests Balchand, however; the donkey is outside the main area of interest and obviously incidental. Instead the artist concentrates on a drinking party, and among the five seated men - the others are servants - the emotions are almost palpable.