Prospero | Mughal India

Treasures from a vanished world

A moving and impressive exhibition about the Mughal empire at the British Library

By A.C.

THE British Library holds one of the world’s foremost collections of Indian manuscripts and art. This is hardly surprising for a nation that controlled the subcontinent for almost 200 years. Yet these treasures are not necessarily the result of plunder. Most are the fruit of collecting by representatives of the British East India Company who, upon arriving in Delhi in the 18th century, found themselves enraptured by a civilisation in full flower.

“Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire”, the library’s new exhibition, is an unprecedented attempt to capture the full sweep of the Mughal dynasty. The Muslim rulers reigned for almost 350 years over a mostly Hindu population, and were renowned for their religious tolerance and patronage of science and art. Their empire stretched across almost all of modern-day India as well as Pakistan, Bangladesh and parts of Afghanistan and Iran at its height, until the last emperor was overthrown by the British Raj in 1857. There are 200 works on show, well-known early masterpieces as well as later Mughal artworks, commissioned or bought by Europeans who were impressed by the sophistication of the Mughal court.

A central area is devoted to the “Rulers’ Gallery”, a series of detailed court scenes portraying the 15 Mughal emperors. The exhibition snakes around it with paintings and objects that explore life at court, international relations, and the painting and literature of this vanished world. The founding battle of the dynasty is a dizzy, gilded clash of swords and horses rendered in tiny brushstrokes, commemorating the first emperor Babur’s victory over the sultan of Delhi. Nearby is a full-sized Mughal cavalryman, his mount covered nose-to-tail in ornate armour. The Mughals were famed for their technical sophistication, evident in such armour, and proud of their direct descent from the powerful Central Asian rulers Genghis Khan and Timur, says the curator, Malini Roy.

But they were not only warlike. Akbar, grandson of Babur, devoted his reign to commemorating the dynasty in art. Around 1580, he established a royal painting workshop, initially with Iranian artists, to produce illustrated histories. At its peak it employed 100 painters fusing elements of Iranian, Indian and European art into what Ms Roy calls “the mature, eclectic Mughal style”. Works from this period include pages from the illustrated Persian translation of “Memoirs of Babur”, such as “Babur Hunting”, a luminous painting in which deer plunge and twist as peasants beat them toward the royal hunter.

Much is owed to Richard Johnson, an East India Company representative who collected a vast number of miniatures between 1770 and 1790, and masterpieces from the earlier reigns of Akbar and Jahangir (two of the “Great Mughal” emperors from whom the word “mogul”, meaning rich and powerful, derives). There are bustling, fairy-tale landscapes replete with peasants reminiscent of Flemish painting, such as “The man carried away by the simurgh” (1595). Painters also often portrayed rulers in formal palace compositions, such as “Prince Aurangzeb reports to Shah Jahan” (1650), or on more intimate occasions, as in “A young nobleman enjoying Holi with his consort” from 1760-5 (pictured above).

Love of the natural world is also evident. Some scenes commissioned by Jahangir, Akbar’s son, are startlingly modern. “Squirrels in a Plane Tree” from 1605 is powerfully graphic and colourful. A similar energy animates “Elephant Trampling a Tiger”, a painting made nearly two hundred years later. By the late 17th century, a new kind of portraiture had emerged: pared-down profiles against plain backgrounds rather than the landscape settings preferred by Akbar and his immediate descendants. What strikes the viewer throughout the show is the variety of styles.

The final room is particularly sobering. By 1857, the Mughal empire was in decline. In Delhi, Indian soldiers mutinied, slaughtering British civilians. In response, Britain brutally crushed the uprising and ended Mughal rule. Glorious monuments remain, such as The Red Fort in Delhi and the Taj Mahal in Agra, but there is a poignancy to all that is lost. All that is left of many fantastically patterned palaces and tombs are the architectural drawings on display here, and a five-metre long panorama of Delhi as it once was.

The only extant photograph of Bahadur Shah II, the last Mughal emperor, shows a broken, aged figure just before his exile. His filigreed golden crown, one of the exhibition’s highlights, is inset with diamonds, emeralds, rubies and pearls. In what John Falconer, the library’s curator of photography, calls “a not so subtle symbol of the transfer of power, voluntary or involuntary,” the crown landed on an auction block in Delhi. A British major snapped it up, and sold it on to Queen Victoria. It has been lent from the royal collection to this moving and impressive show.

“Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire” is at the British Library until April 2nd

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