Wonders of Nature: Ustad Mansur at the Mughal Court 9788192110653, 8192110656

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This book presentsa detailed st Mansutr’s works in different genres, includi ag some never before published. The author has

spent several decades in pursuit of his subject, and has personally examined every possible work in museums, libraries and private collections.

Front cover: Iris Plant with Bird and Dragonfly, painted by Mansur Nadir ul-‘Asr. Indo-Persian (Nasir ud-Din*Shah) Album, c. 1620. Spine: Detail of a sarlawh, attributed to Mansur Naqgash, Gulshan Album, c. 1600-10. Collection of Golestan Palace Library, Tehran. Photographs courtesy Aga Khan Museum, Toronto. .

Wonders of Nature Ustad Mansur at the Mughal Court

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Wonders ot Nature Ustad Mansur at the Mughal Court Asok Kumar Das

The publication of this book has been made possible

by generous support received from the National Culture Fund

General Editor Vipya DEHEJIA

Senior Executive Editor SaviTaA CHANDIRAMANI Senior Editorial Executive ARNAVAZ K. BHANSALI

Editorial Executive Rauut D'souza Text Editor Rivka IsRAEL Designer Naju Hirani

Senior Production Executive

GauTaM V. JADHAV

Vol. 64 No. 2 December 2012 Price: ¥ 2800.00 / US$ 68.00 ISBN: 978-81-921106-5-3

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2012-323444 Marg is a registered trademark of The Marg Foundation © The Marg Foundation and Asok Kumar Das, 2012 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, adapted, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise or translated in any language or performed or communicated to the public in any manner whatsoever, or any cinematographic film or sound recording made therefrom without the prior written permission of the copyright holders. This edition may be exported from India only by the publishers, The Marg Foundation, and by their authorized distributors and this constitutes a condition of its initial sale and its subsequent sales.

Published by Radhika Sabavala for The Marg Foundation at Army & Navy Building (3rd Floor), 148, M.G. Road, Mumbai 400 001, India. Printed at Silverpoint Press Pvt. Ltd., Navi Mumbai. i Processed at The Marg Foundation, Mumbai. _

Captions to preliminary pages:

Page 1: An Imaginary Bird, see page 137 Page 2: A Tame Blackbuck, see page 82 Page 3: Chameleon on a Branch, see page 90 Page 4: A Pair of Bengal Floricans, see page 117 Page 5: A Variety of Flower, see page 142 Pages 6-7: Details of peacocks, see page 126 and a border, see page 107

Marg’s quarterly publications receive support from the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust - Endowment Fund

Contents Preface CHAPTER I

Introduction

CuaPTEr II Baburnama: Mansur’s Early Natural History Paintings Cuapter III Historical Paintings and Portraits by Mansur

CHAPTER IV The Illumination Work of Mansur Naqqash CHAPTER V Wonder of the Age: Studies of Animals and Birds CHAPTER VI

Mansur’s Flower Paintings

CuarTer VII The Legacy of Ustad Mansur Notes

Bibliography Glossary Index

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Preface HAVE LIVED WITH Ustap Mawnsvr for almost half a century, ever since my lee first alighted on two extraordinary pictures of birds displayed in the old Art Gallery of the Indian Museum, Kolkata, on the day I started working there. In the next three years, in the course of research for my dissertation as a Commonwealth Scholar, on the paintings produced during the reign of Emperor Jahangir, more birds and animals from the brush of Ustad Mansur followed — at

London’s V&A Museum and the British Museum and British Library (then in

the same premises), the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and the Royal Library, Windsor. Summer trips to Tubingen University Library where the Jahangir Album was then housed, the Academy of Sciences Library, Leningrad (now St Petersburg), the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, and the Musée Guimet and Bibliothéque nationale, Paris opened my eyes to the rich collection of Mughal paintings of flora and fauna, including several by the Ustad. Still, the list was not quite complete and | could not truly unravel the mystique of this great painter who won the highest accolades from his patron-emperor Jahangir, a connoisseur of art. Slowly, more works emerged from obscurity including the long-forgotten volume of the Akbarnama (partly published by F.R. Martin in his monumental work in 1912) that Robert Skelton showed me in his office where

for the first time we saw as many as four of Mansur’s historical paintings and a superbly embellished unwan bearing his name. The manuscript was subsequently acquired by the British Library and briefly noticed by G.M. Meredith-Owens and Norah Titley, but never received its due attention as key material for the study of Mughal painting. My assignment at the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh IT Museum in Jaipur provided a fresh opportunity as I found several new works bearing Mansutr’s signature in the collection. This also brought me close to the doyen of ornithological studies in the country, Dr Salim Ali, and led to my long friendship with Divyabhanusinh who was spending all the time that he could spare from his busy schedule of work in pursuing lions and cheetahs. Knowing my interest in Mansur, I got regular inputs from friends and scholars: Simon Digby sent a postcard giving details of the splendid drawing of a saltwater fish that he noticed at the Red Fort Museum,

Delhi; Robert Skelton, besides providing inputs

from time to time over many decades, sent a photocopy of Badri Atabai’s Farsi catalogue of the Golestan Palace Library collection that includes the important painting in the Gulshan Album of flowering stems signed by Mansur. Colonel R.K. Tandan came to me with a picture of a prince, bearing Mansur’s signature; Joachim Bautze sent a photograph of another unwan from the Akbarnama with

PREFACE

Mansur’s signature that he noticed in a German private collection; S.P. Verma, who was himself writing a monograph on Mansur, discussed his identification of the exact variety of tulip painted by the Ustad and other such issues. In the 1970s I published two long notes on the known corpus of Mansur’s natural history drawings in Lalit Kala. Two long stints at the V&A Museum brought me closer to Mansur’s works in London collections that I had been unable to examine earlier. I benefited greatly from the help and cooperation of V&A scholars Deborah Swallow, Susan Stronge, Rosemary Crill and Divia Patel; Jerry Losty at the British Library; and Michael Rogers at the British Museum. Robert Skelton, Edmund de Unger, Toby Falk, Margaret Erskine, Brendan Lynch, Francesca Galloway and Indar Pasricha provided further help with images and information. In 1990 I wrote a seven-part survey of Mansur’s works in the Bengali journal, Desh and another article on him for the 1991 issue of Master Artists of the Imperial Mughal Court edited by Pratapaditya Pal for Marg, and made a lengthy presentation on Mansur in one of my Satyajit Ray Lectures at Visva Bharati, Santiniketan in 1997. Yet the feeling persisted that there was still a lot more to learn about Mansur and his work. In the summer of 2000 I got a call from Chahryar Adle to join the International Study Group assembling in Tehran to study the Gulshan Album in the Golestan Palace Library with the intention of publishing its contents in a joint volume; a facsimile edition of the Album was also proposed by the Smithsonian Institution. It was a lifetime opportunity for me as I had studied and written on Jahangir’s interest in the arts without ever getting a chance to examine this

grand album that truly reveals the extent and depth of his passion for collecting and commissioning paintings and works of art. In addition to looking at the album over the course of a week, I met there some of my old friends and foremost authorities on various aspects of Persian painting and calligraphy, European engraving and Mughal painting that included Robert Skelton, Milo Beach, Susan Stronge, A.S. Melikian-Chirvani, Chahryar Adle, A. Adanova, Anatoli Ivanov, Oleg Akhimushkin, Robert Hillenbrand and John Seyller. I found much new

material on Mansur in a genre not so well known to me: sarlawhs, unwans and marginal drawings. Unfortunately, the Gulshan Project did not materialize and much work remains to be done to unravel the true import of this extremely important source of Mughal painting and art of the book-making. In the past few years with more travel and more access to the Ustad’s work I have succeeded in tracking down nearly everything connected with Mansur. Amina Okada, Marianne Yaldiz, Gouriswar Bhattacharya, Joachim Bautze, the

late Krishna Riboud and Eberhard Fischer were of special help during this period when I visited their museums and examined their treasures. Time, I thought, to write a comprehensive book on Ustad Mansur. My proposal was readily accepted by my old friend Pratapaditya Pal in his capacity Ze

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as the General Editor of Marg. I was able to complete the preliminary draft within the deadline but three successive years of Fellowships at the Freer-Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the opportunity to examine works connected with Mansur and his colleagues and followers in various private collections and museums like the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Fogg Museum, Cambridge Mass., Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, and the San Diego Art Museum opened up new vistas and access to further materials connected with Mansur that exposed loopholes in my thinking and necessitated additions and fresh orientation. I received all possible help and cooperation from museum personnel, scholars and collectors including Julian Raby, Massumeh Farhad, Debra Diamond, Neil Greentree and Betsey Kohut at the Freer-Sackler; Michael Brand and Lee Hendrix at the Getty Museum; Sonya Quintanilla at the San Diego Museum of Art; Stephen Markel at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Woodman Taylor and Pamela Parmal at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Tom Lentz and Mary McWilliams at the Sackler Museum ofArt,

Cambridge Mass.; John Gilmore Ford, Trustee, Jenny Beard and Ruth Bowler

at the Walters Art Museum; Navina Haidar, Sheila Canby, Marika Sardar,

Mariyam Ekhtiar, Abdullah Ghouchani, Yana van Dyke, John Guy and Neal Stimler at the Metropolitan Museum ofArt; Julia Burke of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Aimee L. Marshall at the Art Institute of Chicago; and from long-time friends like Robin and Milo Beach, Catherine Benkaim, Joan

Cummins, Walter Denny, Layla Diba, Joe Dye, Dan Ehnbom, Rina and Norman Indictor, Brendan Lynch, Terence McInerney, Chitra and Pratapaditya Pal, Amy and Bob Poster. A highlight of this trip was when Stuart Cary Welch, in spite of his indifferent health, came with his wife Edith to meet my wife Syamali and me at the Sackler Museum, carrying the framed images of the Peafowl and the Troubled Gyrfalcon that I wanted to see. Jude Ahern of the Cary Welch Family

Collection was of extraordinary help in getting high-resolution images of objects in that collection. Emma Stuart of the Royal Library and Theresa-Mary Morton of the Royal Collection, Windsor have also been very supportive. I am beholden to Oliver Watson, former Director, Aisha Al Khater, Director, and Joachim Gierlichs,

Saba Al Kuwar and Michelle Walton of the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha; and to Hussa al-Sabah for inviting us to visit the Al-Sabah Collection, Dar al-Athar Islamiyyah, Kuwait, and Friedrich Spuhler, Manuel Keene, Deborah Freeman Fahid and Sue Kaoukji for extending every possible help during our stay. An interesting development during these trips was the shaping of a plan to hold an exhibition of Ustad Mansur’s work at the Getty Museum. It was also decided to show contemporary European images of natural history subjects simultaneously as part of the exhibition. It made good progress but had to be cancelled due to circumstances beyond my control.

PREFACE

A recent new assignment at my old place of work, the Indian Museum, Kolkata provided a further opportunity to examine the two Mansur birds that had first kindled my interest in the subject. Iam thankful to Kishore Basa, former Director, Anup Matilal, Acting Director, Nita Sengupta, Deputy Keeper, Art,

Devashish Gayen and his colleagues in the Photography Section, and Moumita Ghosh and Sayantani Ghosh, Researchers, for their help. In this long period of preparation I have drawn upon the works of many scholars and freely incorporated their views in my text. My deep gratitude to them all. In the matter of getting images of objects in museums, libraries and private collections scattered throughout the world I have received ready help and unstinted cooperation from most of them, though in some cases we had to spend huge amounts on fees and wait for many weeks and months, and in one or two instances drop images due to other difficulties. To name a few from the long list of friends whose names do not appear above: Naman Ahuja, Sussan Babaie, Taran Kumar Biswas, Szilvia Bodnar, Ratnabali Chatterji, Joanne and

Adhip Choudhury, Anjan Chakraverty, Daljeet, Vidya Dehejia, Swapan Kumar Ghosh, Kalicharan Hemram and his brothers, Rafiqu! Islam, Jyotindra Jain,

Jayasri Lahiri, Brendan Lynch, Darielle Mason, Pratip Kumar Mitra, Sumedha Mitra, Jagdish Mittal, Sabyasachi Mukherji, Soumik Nandi Mazumdar, Harish

Patel, R.L. Piplani, Bimla Poddar, Rashmi Poddar, Hitabrata Roy (Bachooda), Krishna Roy, the late R.C, Sharma, Subir Sarkar, Kavita Singh, Sutapa Sinha, R. Siva Kumar, the late $.G. Tiwary and Andrew Topsfield. The entire Marg team, especially Radhika Sabavala, helped me from the inception of the project. Special gratitude to Harkirat Sangha, who took time to look at every bird image and proyide accurate scientific identification at short

notice; to Melody Lawrence of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for going through the text and all other related matters; to Michael Brand for his help to

get funding from the Aga Khan Museum for procuring some important images; to Amina Okada for her help in getting images from the Musée Guimet; to Swati Biswas for procuring images from various libraries and museums in India; to Chris Southerns of the British Museum Picture Library; and to Divyabhanusinh who helped me at every stage of my work over this long period of time. I take this opportunity to express my deep regards to K.G. Subrahmanyam for his helpful suggestions and support, and I fondly remember my old friend the late Jayanta Chakrabarty, for all his help at a time when it was needed most. Finally, Syamali deserves a special mention for her strong support and help

at every stage of my research and writing over this long period of time. No one would be happier, I am sure, than Syamali, Kaushik and Cristina, Poulomi and

Priyam, who have all had to bear with my never-ending Mansur project, to see the book at last in print. Debby, Divya and Pratap, this book is dedicated to you. ——

te |

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CHAPTER I

Introduction

Ustad Mansur has become such a master in painting that he has the title

of Nadir ul-‘Asr [The Wonder of the Age] and in the art of drawing he is unique in his generation.

— Tuzuk-i Jahangiri, I, 20

N SPITE OF HIS PRE-EMINENCE as a painter and illuminator of manuscripts, no biographical information about Mansur is known. He was active from the early 1590s in the Mughal painting atelier of Emperor Akbar, working on illustrations for Baburnama and Akbarnama manuscripts, after which he was employed by the emperor’s son, Prince Salim, later Emperor Jahangir. It was for Jahangir’s

albums that Mansur painted many of his animal, bird and flower studies, becoming undoubtedly the most accomplished natural history painter of his time.

To appreciate the artistic works of Ustad Mansur, we need to first consider the tradition of representing nature in painting that flourished particularly under Akbar and Jahangir, with its roots in the time of their forefather Babur. Zahir ud-din Muhammad Babur (1483-1530, r. 1526-30), the founder of the

Mughal dynasty, was a multifaceted personality. Hounded by adversity throughout a life that took him from his kingdom of Farghana across many countries in search of a safe haven, he finally succeeded in establishing a prosperous kingdom in India by dint of courage, military strategy and personal integrity. He was at the same time a poet, calligrapher, naturalist, a devoted family man and a farsighted statesman. Writing in Chaghatai Turki, his native dialect, he was easily the most famous author in that obscure language after the celebrated poet Shir Nawa’i. His wonderfully written memoirs, Waqiat-i Baburi, which his grandson Akbar

INTRODUCTION

later had translated into Persian as the Baburnama, reveal amongst other aspects of his personality an “undiminished interest in natural history, and a singular quickness of observation and accurate commemoration of statistical details”.! Hindustan appeared a strange country to Babur: “Compared to ours, it is another world,” he writes in his memoirs, “its mountains, rivers, forests, and

wildernesses, its villages and provinces, animals and plants, peoples and languages, even its rain and winds are altogether different.”* After a brief account of the

region’s topography he provides a detailed account of its animals, birds, aquatic creatures, plants, fruit and flowering trees that were unfamiliar to him. His keen eye, his love for nature and his concern for the environment are apparent from even a cursory reading of his accounts. The manner in which he adjusted to this new country is amazing.

Babur’s son, Nasir ud-din Muhammad Humayun (1508-56, r. 1530-40, 1555-56), was politically weak and seemed to lack the courage and foresight of his father. He however inherited some of the finer aspects of his father’s character: a love of books and the arts, an interest in hunting as well as in nature and the environment.

From the evidence of his daughter Gulbadan it is known that

soon after his accession Humayun held a function in one of the rooms of the palace at Agra built by Babur, where books, gilded pen cases, splendid portfolios and muragqqa’s (albums) of paintings were displayed.’ His personal valet, Jauhar Aftabchi, was witness to an event that illustrates Humayun’s fascination with nature even at a time when he was fleeing his kingdom in dire straits and his political fortune was in jeopardy. Jauhar relates that a beautiful bird flew into the tent where Humayun was resting in his dressing gown. The emperor trapped the bird by closing the tent’s flap and had an image of it drawn by a painter present in his entourage, before releasing it.‘ Several months later, having arrived at Isfahan, Humayun was able to befriend

some of the finest masters of calligraphy, painting and book-making in the court of Shah Tahmasp. At least four of these musawwirs or artists, Mir Sayyid Ali, Khwaja Abd us-Samad, Dust Muhammad and Darwis Muhammad, joined him ;

in his temporary capital at Kabul and later travelled with him back to Delhi. The few surviving paintings done by them, dating back to Humayun’s years of exile in Kabul and the few months he lived in Delhi before his untimely death, reveal his love for nature. They no doubt follow age-old or contemporary Persian models, but many of them also include Indian landscape details, indicating their new patron’s tastes.

Humayun did not long enjoy the fruits of his success; he died only a few months after re-establishing himself at Delhi, in an accidental fall. The

throne passed on to his fourteen-year-old son Jalal ud-din Muhammad Akbar (1542-1605, r. 1556-1605). In his nearly 49-year-long reign Akbar totally transformed the history of the Indian subcontinent by his political wisdom and =