In the illustrative paintings to Amir Hamzah, done by Sayyid ‘Ali and ‘Abdus Samad between A.D. 1550 and A.D. 1560, the Sino-Persian influence was still predominant. But in 1562, when the famous painting showing the arrival at the Mughul Court of the Vaishnava musician, Tansen, was executed, the fusion of Hindu and Sino-Persian styles began to manifest itself. From A.D. 1569 to 1585 the walls of Akbar’s new capital at Fathpur Sikri were embellished with the masterpieces of the painter’s art by the joint labour of the of the Hindu and Persian schools, both being ready to imbibe and utilize new ideas and thus facilitating the growth of a new school of art. The Persian or other foreign artists in Akbar’s court were few in number, the most famous of them being ‘Abdus Samad, Farrukh Beg, who was of Kalmuck origin, Khursau Quli and Jamahed. The Hindu artists predominated in number. Of the seventeen leading artists of Akbar’s reign, no less than thirteen were Hindus. Abul Fazl thus refers to the standard of their art: “More than a hundred painters have become famous masters of the art, while the number of those who attain perfection, or of those who are middling, is very large. This is specially true of the Hindus, their pictures surpass our conception of things. Few indeed in the whole world are found equal to them.” They worked in collaboration and excelled in portraiture, book illustration and illumination and painting. Chief among them were Basawan, lal, Kesu, Mukund, Haribans and Daswanth. The last-named belonged to the Kahar or palanquin-bearer caste, while the rest belonged to the Kayastha, Chitera, Silavat and Khatri castes and were drawn from different parts of the country.
Akbar, who shared with others of his race “an intense appreciation of the wonder and glory of the world “, encouraged pictorial art in every possible way and gave it a religious outlook in spite of the Islamic injunction regarding the representation of living forms. “It appears to me,” said he, “as if a painter had quite peculiar means of recognizing God; for if a painter in sketching anything that has life, and in devising its limbs, one after the other comes to feel that he cannot bestow individuality on his work, he is forced to think of God, the Giver of life, and will thus increase his knowledge.” In this way he sought to remove the discontent of the orthodox Muslims, who were opposed to the art of painting. “Bigoted followers of the letter of the law,” writes Abul Fazl, “are hostile to the art of painting, but their eyes now see the truth.”
The school of art that grew up under Akbar continued to flourish in the reign of Jahangir through the enthusiastic support and patronage of the latter. Jahangir was an excellent connoisseur, who paid high prices for any pictures that satisfied his aesthetic taste, and an art critic who could tell the names of individual artists in a composite piece. The famous Muslim artists of his court were Aga Reza and his son, Abul Hasan, of Herat; Muhammad Nadir and Muhammad Murad from Samarqand, who were among the last foreign artists to come to India; and Ustad Mansur. Among the Hindu painters of this reign, Bishan Das, Manohar and Govardhan were the most eminent. Himself having a fair acquaintance with the classical aspects of miniature painting, the Emperor frequently purchased examples of the best schools of art in India or abroad; and his zeal, combined with the skill of his artists, led to the emancipation of Mughul pictorial art from the tutelage of Persian influences and to the development of an art style essentially Indian.
With Jahangir, however, according to Percy Brown, the real spirit of Mughul pictorial art declined. Shah Jahan did not possess the same passion for painting as his father, and his tastes were more for architecture and jewellery. The court portraiture and darbar pictures of his reign were characterised by rich pigments and a lavish use of gold rather than by the harmonious blend of colours which was present in Jahangir’s art. He reduced the number of court painters, and the art of painting was soon deprived of imperial patronage. In the imperial family only Dara Shukoh was a patron of art, as is proved by his album now preserved in the India Office, and his untimely death was a great blow to art as well as to the Empire. The artists were compelled to seek employment under nobles, as in Rajputana and the Himalayan states, set up studios in the bazars and sell their pictures, as a means of livelihood, to the general public, whose number was, however, limited. Bernier noted that the artists had no chance of attaining distinction and worked under adverse circumstances and for poor remuneration.
The reign of Aurangzeb saw a distinct decline of pictorial art, as the Emperor regarded its patronage as opposed to the precepts of sacred law. Large numbers of portraits of him in various situations were indeed drawn, with or without his consent, and he is said to have inspected at intervals the portrait of his rebellious son Muhammad Sultan, painted by his order, to know his condition in prison. But he is reported to have defaced the paintings in the Asar Mahal at Bijapur, and Manucci writes that under his orders the figures in Akbar’s mausoleum at Sikandara were whitewashed. With the disintegration of the Mughul Empire after the death of Aurangzeb, some of the surviving painters migrated from the capital to the states of Oudh, Hyderabad, Mysore and Bengal, which had made themselves practically independent, and some went to Lucknow and Patna. But both the support that they got and the work that they executed were far inferior to what had been the case under the Great Mughuls.
In the eighteenth century a style of painting noted for brilliancy and decorative effect flourished in Rajputana, particularly in Jaipur. In the latter half of the century, highly beautiful and refined pictures were painted by the Kangra school, of which the Tehri-Garhwal school was an offshoot; and in the early nineteenth century this developed into Sikh portrait painting. Recently, artists both in India and Europe have began to appreciate Mughul and Rajput paintings and are trying to revive the style.
Music
Indian rulers like the ‘Adil Shahi Sultans of Bijapur and Baz Bahadur of Malwa, a contemporary of Akbar, and all the Great Mughuls, with the exception of Aurangzeb, appreciated the art of music. Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan extended considerable patronage to it, which led to the improvement of its quality and to its being widely cultivated. According to Abul Fazl, thirty-six singers enjoyed the patronage of Akbar’s court. Of them, the most famous were Tansen, about whom Abul Fazl writes that ” a singer like him has not been in India for the last thousand years”; and Baz Bahadur of Malwa, who was employed in the service of Akbar, and has been described as ” the most accomplished man of his day in the science of music and in Hindi song “. Aurangzeb positively discouraged music and placed a ban upon it.
