5. Art of Akbar's Era

After Humayun’s death, his son Akbar carried his noble intention towards the art of painting, making it an ‘Art of Court’. It was his period (1556 – 1605) during which the art of miniature painting flourished in India. Though the artists working under the patronage of Akbar kept following the basics of Persian paintings, they had added their vision and took some freedom.

Whatever the stylistic changes, the art of Akbar's era continues this spirit of 'being realistic' in its approach. Akbar ruled for almost five decades. He was near fourteen when he ascended the throne of Mughal Empire. In almost no time he began gearing up everything, even the atelier at Mughal court, in whatever shape it was. Much before 1560, that is, within four years of his ascendance, his artists were at work. Thus, art had at Akbar's court tenure of some forty-five long years.

Akbar was illiterate and wished to know a book not by its linguistics but by the pictorial representation of its theme. Thus for him, a painting was a book. He hence preferred illustrative painting serializing a theme, whatever its kind, a book of tales, legends, history, religion, theology, astrology and so on. He did not approve fanciful versions, or even much of random depictions. He could accept legends, romances, ghost tales, even superstitions but only when they reached his atelier through an authentic channel, literary, traditional or even folk.

Thus, Akbar's art is always the authentic statement of a theme. It should not, however, be mistaken to mean that artists of Akbar's court were re- producing histories or factual data of an event or a subject matter in contemplation. Authenticity confined to an authentic perception of the painted thing and extended too many more dimensions, which histories- like factual writings

Babur's four-year tenure, or rather break in India was spent almost on horse-back fighting a recurrent series of battles. His autobiography Baburnama accounts for most of them. But when translated into lines and colors at his grandson Akbar's atelier, battles, warfare, massacres, violence, polity occupy only some small space of its canvas.

On the contrary, society, customs, courtesies, feasting, progress of a work undertaken and inspection of construction sites, visits to faqirs, holy places, houses of relatives, meetings, conversations, consultations and moments of leisure are in greater focus.

The early works of Akbar's atelier, such as Hamzanama, the story of Amir Hamza, Tutinama, the tales of a parrot, Duval Rani Khizr Khan, the Persian romance of Duval Rani and Khizr Khan, Gulstan, the Rose-garden of Sadi, Anvar-i-Suhayli, and T'arikh-Alfi, or the history of a thousand years, are stylistically different from its later works. But, as regards their perception they show an alike uniformity.

T'arikh-Alfi is a book of history and Shahnama a poetically narrated history. Their painted folios obviously resort to significant historical events, which also included matters related to Islam, as Islam was a new upcoming sect dominating the entire Arab world including Persia. Timurnama, Chingiznama, Baburnama and Akbarnama are histories composed as biographies and autobiographies. These too are factual in their treatment and are authentic sources to know the concurrent epochs of past.

What is more significant is the fact that the emphasis of their illustrated version is not so much on depicting political or court related matters as on surveying the over-all contemporary scenario, whatever its direction. In them, one finds what were people's chosen colors for dresses and what their dressing models and modalities.

Historical data reports Mughal victory over Mandu, the capital of Malwa, and presenting to Emperor Akbar the war booty, including some dancers, but it is only the artist of Akbar's court who sees and records that the dancing girls wore European costume and were perhaps of European origin. It shows that much before Mughals, Indian rulers had multifarious transactions with European world

The illustrations based on these texts, thus, enable to know and apprehend history but more significant is that through them one knows past and its many avenues better than he knows from conventionally written histories. Thus, these illustrated works of Akbar's era are actually the additional sources of history as in them one discovers more than what the conventionalized factual histories contain.