The Evolution of Mughal Painting

Last Tuesday, we were addressed by Dr Heather Elgood, Course Director of the British Museum postgraduate Masters Diploma in Asian Arts. Introducing her, R’ann Rashmi Jolly said that Dr Elgood was a highly qualified and extremely well-read teacher with a deep interest in Asian and Middle Eastern Culture. She graduated in Fine Arts with honours from St Martin’s School of Art, London, acquired a Master’s degree in Middle East studies at SOAS ( the School of Asian and Oriental Studies), London and wrote her doctoral thesis on 16th Century Mughal Miniatures, with reference to Persian Culture and Political Influences.

“She is a well-known author of many books on sculpture, wall and manuscript painting of the Islamic world and Indian subcontinent. She knows French, Urdu, Persian and colloquial Hindi,” said Rashmi.

Dr Heather Elgood began by saying, “Some people have a view that in Islam, images are not encouraged. Today I want to show you 13th Century manuscripts that show that such images were encouraged. I will also show that you cannot show any culture in isolation. So I am going to show the relationship between the inspiration of early manuscripts from Baghdad of 13th Century, of India, of scientific knowledge from Greece, of Zoroastrian traditions, and I am going to look at them as the development of the work done on the Islamic course, looking at the inspirations of China on the Mongol manuscripts of the early 14th Century and then show the way in which it blossomed under the Timurate dynasty of Timur the Lame.

“I will show the importance of culture, literature and poetry to the Sultans, who were in some ways considered to be very militaristic and concerned only with warfare. They were indeed at home with intellectual circles, and highly punctilious about recording daily events.

“These are the kind of things I am going to show you, and then look at the way in which the development of the dynasty of the Great Mughals, who in their own times would not have considered themselves by that title. The Mughals were very keen to demonstrate that they descended from Timur the Lame and Genghis Khan. I will show how they used manuscripts as a sort of PR exercise to promote themeselves.

“I will also talk about the problems of methodology of the workshops were organized . There is very little evidence of how those operated in earlier days. Only in the 15th and 16th Centuries do we get some records of the workshops established, and inscriptions giving the actual name of the artists.”

Among the many slides that Dr Elgood exhibited were:

• A manuscript image from Baghdad (1220 AD), when the city was renowned for a magnificent library which held thousands of volumes of texts on scientific and philosophical subjects, and copied Byzantine and Greek medical texts. The image showed a mounted Indian elephant using strange mechanical devices which were invented in India. “It was this great library that Genghis Khan demolished during his invasion in 1220, destroying many of the manuscripts,” Dr Elgood explained.
  
  
• An illustration that gave an indication of the interrelationship between India and Middle-East, illustrating the fable of a jackal and a lion, named Khaleela and Dimna. “This manuscript of fables is one of the most-copied fables in the world,” said Dr Elgood. “In the West, it is known as Aesop’s Fables, but its origin is India’s famous Pancha Tantra, which was illustrated. We have examples of Indian sculpture showing somebody’s famous moments in a story. Even during the Islamic period, the Pehlavi script in Persia actually translated the Sanskrit into Pehlavi and subsequently it went into Arabic. So this slide shows painting of Khaleela and Dimna done in Baghdad in 1220.”
  
  
• A manuscript painting of mounted warriors done in a Chinese style with minimal colouring. “Having invaded various parts of the Middle East, Ghenghis Khan and his mongols began to settle and establish court in the Western Persia. Partly thanks to opening up of the Sea route trade with the Far East, Chinese scholars and painters were brought to the court and employed to compile a great history which was illustrated on a very large scale in around 1306-14,” Dr Elgood explained. “Chinese-style paintings had an impact on the way in which soldiers riding horses were ranged across the page, breaking out of the margins on their sides. The script is Persian above and below, and history covered such things as the Christian stories like angel Gabriel, some of the Islamic dynasties, some aspects of Buddhism, and even Prophet Mohammed.
  
  
• A painting of Prophet Mohammed placing the Black stone of Kaaba on the Kaaba cloth — extremely rare because it is rare to see the Prophet portrayed at all. “It demonstrates how recently the Mongols had converted to Islam, because they were free of the restraint that one normally found in the Islamic world. They were also keen on writing their history in order to legitimize their own authority,” explained Dr Elgood.

• A painting by Ahmed Musa, illustrating the great mythological and real history of the Persian culture, called Shah Nama (Book of Kings) and is considered to be of great value to Persian literature. It starts from mythological times, and also illustrates Mongol rule. “This painter marks a transition from a lack of colour that was previously seeen. You now see many colours with Chinese high horizons, a rapidity of movements, and a sense of context for the figures. This is the inspiration of the great painter Ahmed Musa,” said Dr Elgood. “The tradition of passing knowledge from one to another becomes evident in Musa’s works. Musa’s greatest pupil was Shamsuddin who worked for the Mongol ruler. And Shamsuddin also had a pupil called Junaid, who signed his manuscripts, which were a great work of poetry,” she added.
  
  
• A painting showing Timur, Babur and Humayun, seated on thrones. “Right in the centre is the figure of Timur, because the Mughals looked to Timur and Timurates to give themselves a sense of status, legitimacy, pride and strength. And in this symbolic painting done later in early 17th Century, we see Timur handing a crown to Babur , first of the great Mughals. And sitting on the right of Timur here is Babur ’s son Humayun wearing a distinctive turban,” Dr Elgood explained.
  
  
• “Babur lived in a place called Sargana in present day Afghanistan, and he rose to his father’s kingdom, which was on the caravan route, depending on trade for prosperity. As his father spent his time feeding his pegions, Babur rose to the throne at a very young age of 13. He had a great charisma, military vigour, and he spent several years losing and regaining various towns in that region, until he set out to Kabul in around 1513.
  
  
• “In 1526, he came to India and defeated the ruler Ibrahim Lodi at the battle of Panipat. He said that India had no understanding of gardens, even though India gets plenty of rains and had fertile soil. So the first thing he did was to establish the four kinds of gardens called Char Bagh on the edge of the River Jamuna in Agra. Afterwards he spent four years in India, became extremely ill and died in 1530.
  
  
• “His eldest son Humayun rose to the throne and ruled in India resting on his laurels, successfully. But in 1540 he got defeated by an Afghan called Sher Shah and then he escaped and sought asylum in the court of Shah Tamasp, who ruled the Western Persia,” she said.
  
  
• A picture of Humayun with his distinctive turban seated in a large garden, when he managed to retake Kabul in around 1546. “We also see Humayun sitting next to his son Akbar and his son Jehangir and grandson Shah Jehan. These were all added later to the painting. This is an extremely unusual painting, because it is very large, and the British Museum owns it, but does not display it,” said Dr Elgood.
  
  
• A picture of Humayun’s splendid court in Kabul, where he is seen painting a picture and giving it to his son Akbar.
  
  
• A portrait of Akbar. “Humayun went back to India in 1554 and lived there for about a year. Akbar rose to the throne at the age of 15 and this is portrait, and we can see how the portraiture is becoming extremely realisitic in comparison to the Persian examples,” said Dr Elgood.
  
  
• Next slide. This shows the method of producing paintings. This is burnishing a page, and this is a calligraphy writing text.
  
  
• A famous wall painting of Ajanta of the 5th Century. “India itself was not a stranger to paintings,” explained Dr Elgood.
  
  
• Manuscripts on paper, dated sometimes in 15th century from Jain patrons of West India.
  
  
• An example of a Hindu painting in the early 16th Century from Mewar, showing a beautiful maiden in a walking pose, found in the manuscript called Caura Pancasika. “This actually incorporates some evidence from the school of Mewar and represents very early manuscript done for Akbar, the kind of a cross-section and checkered pattern and even the costume worn by women, the way women were depicted,” explained Dr Elgood.
  
  
• A manuscript bearing a round seal from the library of Akbar in mid-15th Century. It has inspired the paintings of scenes of two horse riders. This is the painting called Hanza-Nama made for Akbar.
  
  
• A painting of Akbar in his court at Fatehpur Sikri, with young sons being presented to him. The richness and the complexity of the court is an indication of the contemporary history.
  
  
• A portrait of Jehangir handing a manuscript to Salim Chisti, the Sufi saint, who was respected even by the ruler of the Ottoman empire and by King James of England.
  
  
• A typical portrait of Shah Jehan, who was more interested in jeweller and architecture than in painting as a way of expressing the glory and the majesty of the Mughal empire.
  
  
• “I want to stress that paintings continued as an intimate art, a costly and highly valued pursuit for reinforcing the emperors’ perception of themselves. The synergy between the metaphor, simile and poetry and paintings developed in early Timurate years into a hidden message of the Sufi paintings, and finally into a more pragmatic portrayal of the deification of the emperor and conscious European symbolism in the allegorical paintings of Jehangir,” said Dr Elgood.
  
  
• “Perhaps the relationship between poetry and paintings was even closer than we realize. Scholars have noted that to recognize a favorite image in new aesthetic forms — be it in poetry or in painting — was seen as the highest pleasure.
  
  
• “An Englishman at Akbar’s court in 16th Century recorded that Akbar had writers who by turns set down everything that he did, so there was nothing left out in his life time which was not noted, not so much as was necessary as how often he liaised with his women and with whom, and all this was done to his end, so that when he would die all his actions and speeches would be recorded in the chronicles,” concluded the art expert.
  
  
• Later, in reply to a question by PP Arvind Jolly, as to where these paintings were currently, Dr Elgood replied, “Not all these paintings are in the British Museum. I collected paintings and slides over many years from various places. I got the one of Prophet Mohammed, which is very rare, from the library in Edinburgh. Some of them are in Victoria Museum, some others are in the British Museum’s library, some are in private collections in India. I got these pictures from many different places.”