| [Contd from Part 1] |
| What the Greeks were to the Romans, the Persians were to the Mughals. And if any single manuscript could be regarded as the epitome of the Persian cultural tradition, it would be the Shahnama, commissioned by the Safavid ruler Shah Ismail in 1522 for his nine year old son Shah Tahmasp. This folio illustrates the Persian king Naushirvan receiving an embassy from Hind (note the elephant in the left-hand corner). They presented him with a game of chess, which had been invented in India. If the Persians could fathom the game, then the Indians would pay tribute to the Persians. If not, the Persians had to pay up. Naushurvan asked for a week’s time during which his state astronomer Buzurjmihr succeeded in understanding the game. He later having invented the game of backgammon, I suspect, as an act of retaliation. |
| If one was to classify the different levels of patronage, one would place this Shahnama at the apex, reflecting, like the metalled tip of a pyramid, an imperial brilliance. The business of kings being statecraft, it was perhaps natural that public grandeur should have been the subject of muraqqas assembled for the various Mughal rulers. It was perhaps a sign of the maturity of the Mughals, independent of their Mongol ancestry, that Jahangir, the first truly indigenous Mughal emperor, should have had himself portrayed receiving the Persian king Shah Abbas. In this painting, Jahangir is shown embracing his Persian counterpart, ostensibly as an equal, until one notices clues which hint at propaganda. Although each ruler stands within his own territory, Jahangir is given a lion as a footstool and Shah Abbas a lamb. Would it surprise you to know that the artist was a favourite of Jahangir, whom he awarded the title Nadir al Zaman? |
| The theme of the benign lion living in harmony with domesticated animals like the unsuspecting cow reappears at the foot of the jharoka in this folio from Shah Jahan’s famous Badshahnama. In this sumptuous folio, Jahangir is depicted presenting a turban ornament to his favourite son Prince Khurram, later the emperor Shah Jahan. This manuscript, once in the Imperial Mughal library, is now in another Royal Collection, in the library at Windsor Castle. |
| While Jahangir continued to have himself portrayed as an imperial potentate, sitting at a par with his neigbouring equals, in this painting again the hapless Shah Abbas whom he actually never met, one finds in the work patronised during his reign an increasing swing towards naturalism. |
| What could be more illustrative of this than the allegorical picture of a hunter trying to climb a tree full of squirrels? Why, you may ask, should the hunter be attempting what was an obviously futile task? Is this painting in fact a visual comment on man’s essentially hopeless attempt to harness nature? Perhaps the real secret lies in the brilliant exercise of the artist’s acute powers of observation, matching those of his patron the emperor Jahangir. |
| Nothing escaped the attention of Jahangir. He loved beauty in all its forms – in the works of nature, in animals, in beautiful women, and above all in himself. He fancied himself as somewhat of a ladies man, and therefore it was perhaps to be expected that he would be partial to that timeless symbol of male vanity – the peacock. |
| And living his own life to the full, Jahangir could readily sympathise with anyone at his court who chose to burn life’s candle at both ends. Inayat Khan, one of his courtiers, did just that through drug addiction, and reached a terminal middle. When Jahangir heard of his condition, he had him carried into court and quickly sketched before, as Jahangir put it, Inayat Khan passed on `the road to non-existence’. |
| The drawing, now in the Bodleian Library, was later fleshed out into a painting, although adding colour did no more for the monochrome drawing than it did to the body of the unlamented Inayat Khan. |
| If death could generate such interest, how much more excitement must there have been over a birth, and especially a birthday. Royal birthdays were occasions for considerable pomp and show. Here, Jahangir celebrates the birthday of his son Prince Khurram by weighing him in bags of gold. A mughal prince in those days, like a good cook today, was worth his weight in gold. |
| And when Shah Jahan came to the throne himself, he found it difficult to break himself of this expensive habit. He continued to have himself weighed in gold, even though he had begun to put on more weight than even his imperial treasury could afford. |
| If the Mughals lived a life of public grandeur, they assuaged any private discomfort they might have felt with such distracting novelties as costly drinking cups. This one, made from a single piece of mutton-fat jade for Shah Jahan and dated 1657, has a handle carved as an ibex head and has as its base an open flower. |
| Such extravagance may have been justified by Shah Jahan to himself on the grounds that he was tired of drinking out the same old Chinese bowl. This one at its base contains an inscription dated as 1646. This unusual piece of pottery is now in the Freer Gallery, Washington, and is an interesting example of the diversity of his tastes and the movement of objects from the east to the near east. |
| If drinking was a private pleasure for the Mughals, the siring of sons was, if not a public function, at least a public duty. Until they grew into adults, each Mughal ruler hoped that his sons would be more filially obedient than he himself had been. Shah Jahan had even less success than his father and grandfather before him. Whatever expectations Shah Jahan had that these three sons would ride in the same direction were belied by events. Dara Shikoh, the eldest, fell casualty to his own cupidity and to the ambitions of his younger brother Aurangzeb. |
| It would be tempting to muse over what might have happened had Dara Shikoh rather than Aurangzeb succeeded their father Shah Jahan on the mughal throne. Would he have taken it to even greater unsurpassable heights of patronage? Certainly the evidence of his taste would indicate that he could be a patron of unusual sensitivity. This is borne out by a beautiful album commissioned by him for his wife the lady Nadirah begum. |
| The album, now in the India Office collection of the British Library in London, contains a number of elegantly executed miniatures, such as this fine painting of a night heron. |
| I have shown you some examples of patronage by the Mughals of paintings commissioned as acts of state and at a more personal informal level. But who were the artists who observed these royals with the tenacity of official paparazzi, and through their glowing paintings gave them a life beyond death? |
| It is symptomatic of their almost unobtrusive position at the court that a painting of a zebra presented to Jahangir, the artist did not sign his name but left it to his patron to make the introduction with the viewer. Jahangir’s handwritten scrawl in the margin tells us that the painting was done in 1621 by his gifted painter Mansur. |
| Bichitr, another of his artists, was more daring. Boldly he included himself in the group in this picture. It is a composite image with meanings at different levels. Jahangir is seen as a temporal monarch, extending his beneficence to a sufi. At another he is preferring the company of the sufi to that of King James I. It does not matter that James has already turned his back on Jahangir. It is the thought that counts. |
