Asian and African studies blog

In a recent post I wrote about some of our loans to the exhibition The Everlasting Flame: Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination in Delhi. These included our Mughal illustrated Shāhnāmah (Add.5600). A direct benefit of participating in exhibitions such as this is that we have now been able to digitise it and make it available on our website.

The heroes Gīv and Pīrān bring Kay Khusraw from Turan to Iran to be crowned king. Artist: Shamāl (British Library Add.5600. f. 139v)

This copy of the Shāhnāmah is thought to date originally from the 15th century. Unfortunately it has no colophon but it was extensively refurbished in India at the beginning of the 17th century when the 89 illustrations were added. These are numbered consecutively 1-91, only lacking no. 37 which, together with a gap of about 150 verses, is missing at the beginning of the story of Bīzhan and Manīzhah between folios 201v and 202r. The manuscript was altered again in the first half of the 18th century when elaborate paper guards and markers were added. The magnificent decorated binding, however, dates from the early 17th century.

Rustam, glass in hand, prepares to eat a wild ass alfresco while Bahman contemplates killing him with a giant boulder. Artist: Banvārī (British Library Add.5600, f. 320v)

In his Workshop and Patron in Mughal India: 263-73, John Seyller expands Jerry Losty's view (Art of the Book: 122-3) that the paintings were added for the great statesman and patron ʻAbd al-Raḥīm Khān Khānān (1556-1627). The artists Qāsim and Kamāl are known to have worked for him and one of the paintings, ascribed to the artist Shamāl (f. 274r), is dated 1025 (1616/17) which places the Shāhnāmah in ʻAbd al-Raḥīm's studio at that time. The volume, Seyller suggests, was probably incomplete when ʻAbd al-Raḥīm acquired it. Thirty-five of the paintings were added directly to blank painting areas, leaving four completely empty (for example f. 446v). Some folios were replacements for missing ones. The remaining 55 original illustrations were covered with paper which was then painted over. Occasionally the original painting is visible from the other side, as in folio 338 illustrated below, or round the edges of the new paintings.

Right:  folio 338v showing the dying Rustam, impaled in a pit of spears, shooting Shaghad through the tree trunk. Left:  folio 338r, the other side of the same leaf showing visible traces of over-painted branches of a tree (British Library Add.5600, f. 338)

Left: folio 257r and right: folio 189r,  examples of original paintings showing round the edges

The artists of the Shāhnāmah
The 89 paintings are the work of seven named artists listed below. Follow the hyperlinks to go directly to the digital image. Details of the individual illustrations are available here.

Banvārī 26, (ff. 32v, 65v, 84v, 107v, 128r, 130r, 134r, 154v, 178r, 200v, 234v, 295r, 304v, 314v, 320v, 325v, 333r, 343v, 344v, 357r, 437r, 452v, 488v, 525r, 555v, 562v)

Bhagvatī 3 (ff. 28r, 68v, 338v)

Būlā 1 (f. 24v)

Kamāl 11, (ff. 54r, 88r, 156v, 211v, 264v, 346v, 353r, 361v, 464v, 551v, 578v)

Mādhū 1 (f. 12v)

Qāsim 25 (ff. 37r, 42v, 64r, 75v, 78v, 99r, 142v, 147v, 182v, 222v, 236v, 269v, 280v, 285r, 288v, 310v, 350r, 372r, 399v, 404v, 408v, 477v, 483v, 548r, 573v)

Shamāl 21 (ff. 18v, 51r, 116v, 139v, 169v, 176r, 180v, 183v, 189r, 197v, 244v, 250r, 257r, 274r, 277v, 364v, 385v, 411v, 419v, 506r, 538v)

Unattributed or erased 2 (ff. 387v, 402v)

An illustrious past
Lack of  ʻAbd al-Raḥīm's name in Add.5600 means we can only deduce his connection from other evidence, but luckily we have a bit more concrete information about what happened after it left his studio. The details, however, are far from certain and allow plenty of scope for future research!

The first piece of tangible evidence occurs in inscription A below, which records that the manuscript was given in 1625 to Muʻtaqid Khān who had been awarded this title by Jahāngīr when he was made chief huntsman (Maʻāsir al-umarāʼ, vol. 1: 668-72). After Jahāngīr’s death in 1627, Muʻtaqid Khān was promoted to Ilāhvirdī Khān by Shāh Jahān as a reward for his loyalty at the time of succession. This explains inscription B written by Muʻtaqid, now Ilāhvirdī Khān (or Chelah as his name is in the inscription), which confirms that the Shāhnāmah had been a gift from Jahāngīr which he was now presenting to his brother Khvājah Muḥammad Rashīd¹. The inscription is dated on the first of the month of Āzar, regnal year 8. Both John Seyller (“Workshop and Patron”: 264) and Jerry Losty (Art of the Book: 122-3) have interpreted this date as referring to the eighth year of Jahāngīr’s reign (November 1613) which is problematic. If the manuscript was presented to Ilāhvirdī Khān in 1613, then how could it have been in ʻAbd al-Raḥīm’s studio when the artist Shamāl completed his painting in 1616? Bearing in mind that inscriptions A and B presumably refer to the same person, the later inscription B, written after Jahāngīr's death, is surely more likely to indicate a date in Shāh Jahān’s reign equivalent to November 1635² referring to the time when Ilāhvirdī presented the book to Muḥammad Rashīd.

Portrait of Ilāhvirdī Khān (d. 1659), identified in a Persian inscription, c. 1680 (Johnson Album 64, 2)
 
Inscription C is unfortunately undated but records that the manuscript passed from Muḥammad Rashīd, Ilāhvirdī's brother, to his son Muḥammad ʻĀrif. It is accompanied by his seal.

Several others are mentioned in later inscriptions and seals, but Khān Jahān Bahādur, mentioned in inscription D can perhaps be identified with Aurangzeb's military commander Khān Jahān Bahādur Ẓafar Jang Kokaltāsh who was awarded the title Khān Jahān Bahādur in regnal year 16 (1672/73). The seal associated with this inscription is dated 1101 (1689/90). Khān Jahān Bahādur became Governor of the Punjab in regnal year 34 (1690/91) and remained there until summoned to court three years later. He died in 1697 (Maʻāsir al-umarāʼ vol. 1: 783-91).

Portrait of Khān Jahān Bahādur (d.1697), identified from a Persian inscription, by the artist Hūnhār, c. 1690. See also Mughal India, pp.156-8 (British Library Johnson Album 18, 12)

The octagonal seal E on folio 1v is dated 1142? (1729/30) and belongs to Mutahavvar Khān Bahādur who was perhaps Mutahavvar Khān Bahādur Khvīshagī (d. 1743), a learned scholar and collector who was given the title Mutahhavar Khān after Aurangzebʼs death in 1707 (Maʻāsir al-umarāʼ vol. 2: 333-43).

The most recent owner was Nathaniel Brassey Halhed (1751-1830), famous for his grammar of Bengali, his support of Warren Hastings and also his promotion of the self-proclaimed prophet Richard Brothers. Halhed acquired a fine collection of oriental manuscripts mainly in Calcutta between 1776 and 1789 and sold them to the British Museum in 1795 and 1796 (Add.5569-5661).

 
Seals and Inscriptions³

Left: Add.5600, folio 2r; right: Add.5600, folio 1v

A (in gold): Ba-tārīkh-i hashtum-i māh-i Amurdād [ilāhī] sanah 20 julūs-i mubārak [...] [ba-m]uʻtamad Muʻtaqid Khān ʻināyat k[ardah]
Translation: On the 8^th of the month Amurdād ilāhī year 20 of the blessed accession [of Jahāngīr] (August 1625) [this book] was given to the trusted Muʻtaqid Khān

B (the left hand margin recopied at the time of repairs and added in [ ]): Īn Shāhnāmah rā ḥuz̤ūr-i ghufrān panāh Jahāngīr [pādshāh] bah kamtarīn-i ghulāmān Ilāhvirdī Chelah ʻināyat farm[ūdah būdand] bah tārīkh-i ghurrah-i māh Āzar ilāhī sanah 8 chūn mulk-i [bandah būd] [ba-]barādar-i ʻazīz Khvājah Muḥammad Rashīd guzarānīd[ah shud]
Translation: The late Jahāngīr pādshāh had given this Shāhnāmah to the least of his slaves, Ilāhvirdī Chelah. On the first of the month of Āzar ilāhī year 8 (of Shāh Jahān = November 1635), since it was mine (lit. the property of this slave), it was presented to [my] dear brother, Khvājah Muḥammad Rashīd

C: Min mutamallakāt al-muḥtāj ilá raḥmat Allāh al-Malik al-Ḥamīd, Muḥammad ʻĀrif ibn Khvājah Muḥammad Rashīd…
Translation: From the possessions of one who needs the mercy of God the king the praised one, Muḥammad ʻĀrif son of Khvājah Muḥammad Rashīd ...
This is followed by a seal (undated): Dīn-i ʻĀrif ibn Muḥammad Rashīd yāftah bar fayz̤-i ilāhī kilīd

D: Min mutamallakāt-i Muḥammad ʻĀdil ibn Muḥammad Saʻīd bin Muḥammad Ḥasan tamannā-yi⁴ Navvāb Khān Jahān Bahādur ba-qaymat-i haftṣad rūpiyah dar Lāhūr kharīd namūdah shud.
Translation: From the property of Muḥammad ʻĀdil son of Muḥammad Saʻīd son of Muḥammad Ḥasan, purchased for 700 rupees at Lahore at the desire of Nawab Khān Jahān Bahādur.
This is followed by a seal:  ʻĀdil hast ibn Saʻīd Khān 1101? (1689/90)

E: Octagonal seal: Mutahavvar Khān Bahādur 1142? (1729/30)

Further reading

John Seyller, “Workshop and Patron in Mughal India: The Freer Rāmāyaṇa and Other Illustrated Manuscripts of ʻAbd al-Raḥīm”, Artibus Asiæ. Supplementum, 42 (1999): 263-73, 378.
J.P. Losty, The Art of the Book in India. London, 1982: 122-3.
J.P. Losty and Malini Roy, Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire: Manuscripts and Paintings in the British Library. London, 2012.

Ursula Sims-Williams, Asian and African Collections

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[1] Ilāhvirdī Khān is known to have had one brother, Mukhliṣ Khān (Maʻāsir al-umarāʼ, vol. 1: 668), but he may well have had others whom we don’t know about!
[2] The ilāhī era was in use for the first 10 years of Shāh Jahānʼs reign until 1638 (Stephen Blake, Time in Early Modern Islam, CUP 2013, p.131).
[3] I am grateful to my colleague Saqib Baburi for his help and patience with these inscriptions!
[4] I am grateful to John Seyller for this suggestion.

Celebrating Noruz in Delhi with new 'Everlasting Flame'

Razmnamah: The Mughal Mahabharata

The tales of Darab: a medieval Persian prose romance

15000 images of Persian manuscripts online

The city of Madurai in Tamil Nadu is the home of the Minakshi Sundareshvara Temple, one of the largest and most famous temple complexes in the south of India. Far less is known about the Great Palace at Madurai, constructed by Tirumalai Nayak in the 1620s, which covered an area the same size as the temple complex. In the early 18^th Century, following the demise of the Nayak Dynasty, the palace fell into disrepair. Today, only two buildings from the original palace are still standing, and are protected by the Archaeological Survey of India.

Detail from an oil painting by Francis Swain Ward showing the west side of the palace from outside the city walls, 1764 (British Library F31)

In the British Library’s collections, there are numerous visual sources showing how the Palace at Madurai looked in the 18^th Century. With the help of these images, one can reconstruct areas of the palace that are now missing.

Detail from a map of Madurai by William Jenings, 1755. The palace buildings, labelled “5”, are in the top left corner. (British Library Maps.K.Top.115.87)

The history of courtly architecture in South India has understandably been overshadowed by interest in temples. It is far easier to research a vibrant living tradition than it is to study the fragmented remains of a palace. Fortunately, pictures and archival records such as those in the British Library can help form a clearer picture of Madurai’s palace, and its powerful relationship with the Minakshi Sundareshvara Temple.

Aquatint by Thomas and William Daniell of a missing courtyard, 1792. (British Library P948)

Drawing by Elisha Trapaud of missing structures in the palace, 1780s. (British Library WD4561)

The Nayak Palace at Madurai is an architectural conduit towards our understanding of South Indian courtly architecture. It was constructed when the Vijayanagar Empire was falling into decline in the early 17^th Century, and it was in use when a number of small adjacent kingdoms, such as Pudukkottai and Ramnad, began building palaces of their own. Madurai’s palace therefore provides an important link within South India’s palace building traditions.

Further reading
Howes, Jennifer, The Courts of Pre-Colonial South India: Material Culture and Kingship. London: Routledge, 2003.
Michell, George, The Vijayanagar Courtly Style: Incorporation and Synthesis in the Royal Architecture of Southern India. New Delhi: Manohar, 1992.
Patterson, George, The Diary of George Patterson (1772-1773). Vol. 8 of 9, pp. 238-242  (British Library Mss Eur E379). 

Jennifer Howes, Art Historian

One of our most important Mughal manuscripts is Or.12076, the Razmnāmah (ʻBook of Warʼ), copied in AH 1007 (1598/99) and containing the concluding part, sections 14-18, of the Persian translation of the Sanskrit epic the Mahābhārata. It is currently on display at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, in the exhibition Pearls on a String: Artists, Patrons, and Poets at the Great Islamic Courts curated by Amy S. Landau of the Walters Art Museum Baltimore where it was originally exhibited. As a result of the Library's participation in the exhibition the whole volume has now been digitised and is available online for everyone to look at — whether they are lucky enough to be able to visit the exhibition or not!

While Arjuna and Tāmradhvaja fight against each other for seven days, the gods enjoy the spectacle (tamāshā), watching safely from the sky. Episode from the 14th book, the Aśvamedhikaparva (ʻhorse sacrificeʼ). Painting attributed to Paras (Or.12076, f.76r)

Commissioned in 1582 by the Emperor Akbar, the Persian Razmnāmah is a prose translation of all 18 books of the Sanskrit Mahābhārata in addition to the Harivaṃśa appendix. It is not a literal translation though the content is relatively unchanged. For those interested in the storyline, a detailed summary of the Persian version is given by T.H. Henley in his preface to Memorials of the Jeypore Exhibition, 1883. vol. 4: The Razm Námah (London, 1885).

The reasons for its composition, as outlined in Abū ʼl-Faz̤l's preface of 1587, were primarily to make the stories and ideologies of the Mahābhārata more accessible. At the same time it invited both Muslims and Hindus to question some of their traditional beliefs while, of course, simultaneously glorifying Akbar's role as the perfect ruler (Cosmopolitan encounters, pp. 227-238).

The blind king Dhṛtarāṣṭra, led by Kuntī, leaves the city of Hastinapur and retires to the forest. His wife Gāndhārī, blindfolded, supports him following behind. From the 15th book, the Aśramavāsikaparva (ʻRetirement to the Hermitageʼ). Painting attributed to Dhanū (Or.12076, f.110v)

The translation process

The logistics of how the Mahabhārata was translated are described in the contemporary author Badāʼūnī's Muntakhab al-tavārīkh who writes somewhat disparagingly (M. Athar Ali's translation, p. 40):

Collecting together the learned men of India, His Majesty directed that the book Mahabharat should be translated. For some nights His Majesty personally (had it) explained to Naqib Khan, who wrote out the resultant text in Persian. On the third night His Majesty summoned me and ordered me to translate it in collaboration with Naqib Khan. In three or four months out of the eighteen chapters (fan) of that stock of useless fables... I wrote out two chapters. ... Thereafter Mulla Shiri and Naqib Khan completed that section, and one section Sultan Haji Thanesari ʻMunfaridʼ brought to completion. Shaikh Faizi was then appointed to write it in verse and prose, but he too did not complete more than two Chapters (fan). Again, the said Haji wrote out two sections and rectified the errors which were committed in the first round, and fitting one part with another, compiled a hundred fasciculi. The direction was to establish exactitude in a minute manner so that nothing of the original should be lost. In the end upon some fault, His Majesty ordered him (Haji Thanesari) to be dismissed and sent away to Bhakkar, his native city, where he still is. Most of the interpreters and translators are in hell along with Korus and Pandavs, and as for the remaining ones, may God save them, and mercifully destine them to repent.... His Majesty named the work Razmnaama (Epic), and had it illustrated and transcribed in many copies, and the nobles too were ordered to have it transcribed by way of obtaining blessings. Shaikh Abul Fazl... wrote a preface of the length of two quires (juzv) for that work.[1]

Equally important are details preserved at the end of the translation itself. As can be seen below, our manuscript, Or.12076, is partially damaged but fortunately the crucial passage is preserved in several other copies (Truschke’s translation, Cosmopolitan encounters, p.187 - the names have been Sanskritised):

Naqīb Khān, son of ʻAbd al-Laṭīf Ḥusaynī, translated [this work] from Sanskrit into Persian in one and a half years. Several of the learned Brahmans, such as Deva Miśra, Śatāvadhāna, Madhusūdana Miśra, Caturbhuja and Shaykh Bhāvan…read this book and explained it in hindī  to me, a poor wretched man, who wrote it in Persian.

 
The conclusion to Naqīb Khān's translation of the Mahābhārata (Or.12076, f.138v)

This process is also confirmed in an illustration (Lewis M18) preserved in the Free Library of Philadelphia (one of 25 leaves from the now dispersed earlier part of the same manuscript) which shows the two groups of linguists, Muslim and Hindu, translating and discussing together (Pearls on a String, p. 146).

The British Library manuscript

Or.12076 consists of 138 leaves which are numbered continuously in an earlier foliation which begins at 715. There are several leaves missing, but the last numbered leaf is folio 131 which is numbered 846 suggesting that our volume represents the last of a possible six volumes altogether. It was purchased by the British Museum on 11 December 1954 from the dealer A. Garabed who had himself bought it at Sotheby's a few weeks earlier (Lot 230, Sotheby's sale 8 Nov. 1954). It is not known who owned it immediately before that but we do know that it had previously been sold anonymously at Sotheby’s in London in 1921. The Library's annotated copy of the 1921 Sotheby sale catalogue (S.C.Sotheby(1), 24-25 Oct. 1921, lot 203) has not to my knowledge been studied before, but shows that it was purchased for £76 by the British collector and art historian Gerald Reitlinger (1900-1978).

 
Lot 203 of Catalogue of Persian, Indo-Persian and Indian Miniatures, Manuscripts & Works of Art from various sources & private collections, Southeby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 24-25 October 1921 (S.C.Sotheby(1), 24-25 Oct. 1921)

The original manuscript had already been divided up when it was sold in 1921. In addition to our volume, lots 204 to 278 included 125 separate paintings from the same work. These are now in museums and libraries all over the world. In an appendix to his article on three illustrated copies of the Razmnāmah (Model and Copy, pp. 56-62), John Seyller lists the locations of 161 identified illustrations. The attached descriptions with the buyers' names in our annotated copy may provide further details on some of them. Sadly, we'll probably never know what happened to lot 279  “the remaining portions of the work, loose leave, incomplete,” sold to Gazdar (presumably the art dealer  J. Gazdar) for £1. Several leaves were purchased by the Persian scholar C.A. Storey. These are now in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society, London. A further 8 individual leaves were acquired subsequently by the India Office Library from Maggs (British Library Add.Or. 2776-2783).

The artists of the 1598 Razmnāmah

Candrahāsa kneeling before the Raja of Kuntala on being presented to him by the minister Dhṛṣṭabuddhi after Candrahāsa’s victory over the king’s enemies. The elephants, horses and hawk are booty from the enemy. Episode from the 14th book, the Aśvamedhikaparva (ʻhorse sacrificeʼ). Painting attributed to Kanhar (Or.12076, f.83v)

Our manuscript contains 24 illustrations which are all attributed beneath the paintings to individually named artists. The fact that several of them also contributed to known imperial manuscripts suggests that it was completed at court, no doubt one of the many copies transcribed by order of Akbar which Badāʼūnī mentions in the passage quoted above.

Table based on Meredith-Owens and R. H. Pinder-Wilson (“A Persian translation ...”, p. 65) giving a list of artists of the Razmnāmah showing which ones also worked on the Mughal Bāburnāmah and Dārābnāmah (follow the hyperlinks to go directly to the digitised images)

One of  Rama's servants overhears a washerman quarrelling with his wife. Episode from the 14th book, the Aśvamedhikaparva (ʻhorse sacrificeʼ). Painting attributed to Daʼūd, brother of Daulat (Or.12076, f.48r) 

Kusa and Lava defeating Bharata, Lakshmana and the monkey army. European-type Gothic spires are visible on the skyline. Episode from the 14th book, the Aśvamedhikaparva (ʻhorse sacrificeʼ). Painting attributed to Ās, son of Mahesh (Or.12076, f.62v)

Pearls on a String: Artists, Patrons, and Poets at the Great Islamic Courts is on view at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco until May 8th. A catalogue with the same title is available which includes details of all the exhibits in addition to several lengthy contributions by scholars in the field.

Further reading

Amy S. Landau,  Pearls on a String: Artists, Patrons, and Poets at the Great Islamic Courts (Baltimore, 2015),  especially Adamjee and Truschke's chapter “Reimagining the ʻIdol Temple of Hindustanʼ,” pp. 141-65
Audrey  Truschke, Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (Columbia University Press, 2016). Unfortunately at the time of writing I haven't yet had access to this newly published work but have referred instead to her PhD thesis: Cosmopolitan Encounters: Sanskrit and Persian at the Mughal Court  (Columbia University Academic Commons, 2012)
Yael Rice, “A Persian Mahabharata: The 1598-1599 Razmnama,” Manoa 22/1 (2010): 125-131
John Seyller, “Model and Copy: The Illustration of Three Razmnāma Manuscripts,” Archives of Asian Art 38 (1985): 37-66
J. P.Losty and Malini Roy, Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire (British Library, 2012), pp. 55-8
G. Meredith-Owens and R. H. Pinder-Wilson,“A Persian translation of the ‘Mahabharata’, with a Note on the Miniatures,” The British Museum Quarterly, 20/3 (1956): 62-65
M. Athar Ali, “Translations of Sanskrit Works at Akbar's Court,” Social Scientist 20, no 9/10 (1992): 38-45

Ursula Sims-Williams, Asian and African Studies

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[1] ʻAbd al-Qādir Badāʼūnī, Muntakhab al-tavārīkh, ed. Mawlavī Aḥmad ʻAlī,  W. N. Lees (Calcutta, 1865-1869), vol 2, pp. 319-21.
[2] Dharamdās, if he is the same artist as Dharamdās Lunj, also illustrated the Khamsah Or.12208 (ff. 52r, 102r, 195r, 254r) and the Akbarnāmah Or 12988 (ff. 50r, 59v, 73r, 73v, 76r, 115r).

Related articles

The tales of Darab: a medieval Persian prose romance

The Mahabharata in Malay manuscripts

Twenty more Persian manuscript treasures now online

15000 images of Persian manuscripts online

Previous posts on the subject of late Mughal or Delhi miniature paintings on ivory have dealt with portraits, with which the Visual Arts collection is well endowed. Not so well represented in the earlier collection are topographical paintings on ivory, so it was especially gratifying to be able to acquire two superb examples of the genre during my time as Curator of Visual Arts.


A view of the Qutb Minar from the east. By the Delhi artist, Ismail Khan, 1860-65. Water-colour on ivory: oval, 175 x 140 mm, within a gilt frame, and framed in a velvet-lined case, 34 by 30 cm. Engraved on a gilt strip inside frame: The Khutub Minar Delhi. Ismail Kahn. Royal Painter (British Library, Add.Or.4692)

A view by Ismail Khan of the Qutb Minar from the east is especially rich in topographical details. The tower was begun by Qutb al-Din Aybak in 1193 as a minaret to his adjacent mosque and as sign of his victory over Prithviraj Chauhan, the Hindu king of Delhi and Ajmer. Three more storeys were added by his son-in-law and successor Iltutmish. The topmost storey was struck by lightning in 1368 and the repairs by Firoz Shah Tughluq divided that storey into two and partly faced them in marble. The screen of the Quwwat al-Islam mosque also built by the first two monarchs stretches across the background. In front of the central arch of the mosque screen is the famous Iron Pillar, a 4th-century wonder of Gupta-period metallurgy, brought from elsewhere and placed in this site most probably by one of the previous Hindu rulers. On the left is the octagonal Mughal tomb of Adham Khan built in 1562 in the style of the previous Lodhi dynasty. Adham Khan (d. 1562) was the son of Akbar’s wet-nurse Maham Anga and killed on his orders after he assassinated Akbar’s general Ataga Khan. Despite his transgressions, Akbar built him this lavish tomb, which is now surrounded by the buildings of Mehrauli. Nearer is the gateway known as the Alai Darwaza built by Ala al-Din Khilji in 1311 along with part of his colonnade of re-used temple pillars in his bid to double the size of the mosque. In the foreground is Major Robert Smith’s re-sited cupola that crowned the top of the Minar in his repairs to earlier damage in 1828 and taken down and re-sited here in 1847. It was moved again in 1914 to a garden south-east of the Minar.

A letter accompanying the painting dated 21 September 1881 records the gift of the painting to Arthur Tite by the original purchaser D.A. Traill Christie, both men having worked for the Bengal Central Railway in India:

Meantime I send herewith for your acceptance the Indian miniature I spoke of the framing of which was delayed in consequence of my own exigeances (sic) & which I think you will like. It is a genuine work of Ismail Khan’s bought by myself from Delhi in 1865 and has been pronounced by several connoisseurs one of the finest examples of the art. Its Eastern origin & associations will be an appropriate souvenir to recall to you the establishment of the Bengal Central.

Ismail Khan was one of the famous artists of Delhi in the second half of the 19th century. Val Prinsep, who visited India in 1876-7, wrote in his journal (Prinsep 1879, p. 47):

Today I have received visits from the artists of Delhi: they are three in number, and each appears to have an atelier of pupils. The best is one Ismael Khan. Their manual dexterity is most surprising. Of course, what they do is entirely traditional. They work from photographs, and never by any chance from nature. Ismael Khan showed me what his father had done before photography came into vogue, and really a portrait of Sir C. Napier was wonderfully like, though without an atom of chic or artistic rendering. I pointed out to the old man certain faults - and glaring ones - of perspective, and he has promised to do me a view of the Golden Temple without any faults. “These”, he said, pointing to his miniatures, “are done for the sahibs who do not understand. I know they are wrong, but what does it matter? No one cares. But I will show you that I can do better.” This better miniature I never received; perhaps my friend Ismael found it not so easy to do a perfect picture

Lockwood Kipling suggests in the Delhi Gazetteer of 1883 that photographs were photographically enlarged or diminished to the right size, before having their outlines traced on transparent talc: ‘this tracing is then retraced in the reverse side of the talc with transfer ink and transferred to a thin sheet of ivory, the features, etc., are then touched up and finally shaded and coloured. ... As the whole work is done with water-colour any part can be washed out and redone.’ (Archer and Archer 1955, pp. 70-71)

Left: Sir Charles James Napier. Attributed to Ghulam Husayn Khan, c. 1850, after Comte Hippolyte Caïs de Pierlas. Watercolour on ivory, 55 by 45 mm (British Library, Add.Or.5638)   Right: Sir Charles James Napier. By Richard James Lane, after Comte Hippolyte Caïs de Pierlas. Lithograph, 1849. 203 by 163 mm (National Portrait Gallery NPG D21721)

A recently acquired portrait miniature of Sir Charles Napier (1782-1853) gives visual expression to Prinsep’s opinion. Napier was Commander-in-Chief of the Bombay Army famous for his capture of Sind in 1843 (‘peccavi’ he is supposed to have telegraphed to Calcutta). He left India in 1847 but returned as Commander in Chief in 1849. The face is fine, but the shoulders are too close together and the decorations are worn too high up on the chest. He is wearing the star and sash of a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GBC) conferred in 1843 and the Sind Campaign Medal of that same year, as well as other medals connected with his earlier career in the Peninsular War. The long forked beard has gone awry, since the artist is dependent not on a photograph, as Prinsep suggests, but on a lithographic print.

The original artist of the portrait, Caïs de Pierlas, was a plantsman and amateur artist based in Nice and he seems to have met Napier in 1848 - the inscription states that the original drawing was done in that year. An oil painting by him of Napier on a rearing horse meant to be at the Battle of Miani in 1843 appeared at Christie’s South Kensington on 29 September 2011, lot 239. The details of the beard are not clear in the lithographic portrait nor are there any medals, but the latter must have been copied from other prints. The artist of our miniature is almost certainly Ghulam Husayn Khan, who painted both in oils and in watercolour on ivory in the mid-century, although Ismail Khan is thought to be the son of the topographical artist Mazhar ‘Ali Khan (see below).

The Qutb Minar. Albumen print by Samuel Bourne, mid-1860s (British Library, Photo 11(68))

At first sight Ismail Khan’s view reproduces the photographs of the Qutb Minar taken by John Murray and by Robert and Harriet Tytler in 1858 and by Samuel Bourne in the 1860s. All three images are almost identical in composition: reproduced above is the Bourne version. Only one structure would have allowed this viewpoint at that time, the so-called Garhgaj (literally ‘elephant-house’), near the Mughal caravanserai to the east of the Qutb enclosure, a stepped pyramidal structure constructed by Sir Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe when Agent at the Delhi Court, who had converted the nearby Mughal tomb of Adham Khan’s brother, Muhammad Quli Khan, into a summer retreat. All 19th century photographs of the Qutb Minar taken from this point show a tangle of trees intervening across the foreground, making a picturesque view, but not appealing much to an artist trained in the Mughal tradition. Ismail Khan has therefore opened up the foreground, by reducing the size of the trees, thus allowing him to incorporate part of the southern colonnade of ‘Ala’ al-Din’s early 14th century extension to the mosque enclosure to the east of his gateway, as well as a pathway coming in from the viewer’s left; both innovations increase the sense of depth in the painting, as well as conforming to the higher viewpoint beloved of Indian artists.

Ismail Khan must not, however, be supposed to have been so radical an innovator that he actually stood on the Garhgaj to record the view. The lower part of the painting is based on views by Delhi artists of the 1840s, first taken for Syed Ahmed Khan’s publication on the monuments of Delhi Asar al-Sanadid, published with woodcut illustrations in 1847. The woodcut of the Qutb Minar between pp. 128-9 is of this same view, complete with the broad path and the colonnade; the latter also appear in two large water-colours, one in the Visual Arts collections (Add.Or.3100, Archer 1972, no. 162) and another in the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava’s collection (reproduced Welch 1978, no. 51). While making use of both sources, the early photograph for the upper part of the painting and the earlier Indian artists’ views for the foreground, Ismail Khan has imposed his own sense of proportion and landscape.

The second topographical painting on ivory shows a view of the Mughal city of Shahjahanabad or Delhi from the north-west with the River Yamuna beyond.


Delhi from the north-west. Attributed to Mazhar ‘Ali Khan, c. 1845. Water-colour and body-colour on ivory; 105 by 210 mm (British Library, Add.Or.5476)

The view is taken from the Ridge and encompasses the northern and eastern walls of the city: St. James’s Church (built by Col. James Skinner and consecrated 1836), Shah Jahan’s Red Fort itself (finished 1648) and the older fort of Salimgarh (built 1545-54) beside it, and Shah Jahan’s Jami‘ Masjid (built 1650-56) are prominent. Lesser mosques visible include the Akbarabadi Masjid (to the right of the Fort, demolished in 1858) and the Fatehpuri Masjid (far right), both built by two of Shah Jahan’s wives.

Outside the walls along the river, there are seen the back views of the Qudsia Bagh (a garden built by Qudsia Begum c. 1748) and two British structures: Metcalfe House and Ludlow Castle on the extreme left, which were the private residence and the official home of the Agent and Delhi Commissioner Sir Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe from 1835-53. For details of these buildings, see Losty 2012, figs. 2 and 16. The tents visible on the tract outside the north wall are those of the military cantonment. Perspective is most skilfully handled in the recession of the foreground dotted with trees, rocks and animals. A second version of this view also on ivory is in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Dalrymple and Sharma 2012, no. 71). 


Sir Thomas Metcalfe's ‘Delhi Book’ illustrating Delhi from the north-west. Attributed to the studio of Mazhar ‘Ali Khan, c. 1842-44. Water-colour on paper. Folio size: 25 by 19 cm; painting 8 by 13 cm (British Library, Add.Or.5475, f. 11v, detail)

A similar view of Delhi from further back along the Ridge is placed in the ‘Delhi Book’ of Sir Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe, about which Metcalfe complains: ‘The artist in his endeavour to do much has been more minute than clear in his delineation.’ The two versions on ivory seem a riposte by Mazhar ‘Ali Khan himself, availing himself of the minute and delicate brushstrokes possible on this medium. He was the major topographical artist in late Mughal Delhi, painting many of the topographical views in Metcalfe’s ‘Delhi Book’ and also the great panorama of the city of 1846 (Add.Or.4126, see Losty 2012). While there is no direct evidence that Metcalfe was the patron of this view, any more than there is for the panorama, since both begin their views with Metcalfe House on the left it would seem very possible.

Further reading:

M. Archer, Company Drawings in the India Office Library, 1972
M and W.G. Archer, Indian Painting for the British 1770-1880, London, 1955
Dalrymple and Y. Sharma, Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707-1857, Asia Society, New York, 2012
J.P. Losty, Delhi 360°: Mazhar Ali Khan’s View from the Lahore Gate, Lustre Press Roli Books, New Delhi, 2012
Prinsep, Imperial India: an Artist’s Journals, London, 1879
Y.D. Sharma, Delhi and its Neighbourhood, Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi, 1974
S.C. Welch, Room for Wonder, New York, 1978

J.P. Losty, Curator of Visual Arts (Emeritus)

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The Jain manuscripts currently in the British Library collections have a long history and were formerly held by two distinct institutions, the British Museum and the India Office Library.

Built over a period of more than two and half centuries, from the earliest acquisitions of 1753 (in the British Museum’s Sloane and Harley collections), to the latest in 2005, the collection includes works in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Hindi, Gujarati and Rajasthani and in view of its size (over 1000 items), range of material and state of preservation, it is one of the most important outside India.

Aḍhāī-dvīpa, ‘Two and a half continents’. Painting on cloth, 18th century (British Library Or 13937) 

Most of the Jain manuscripts originally belonged in several individual collections acquired in India during the 19^th century by Indologists and employees in the service of the East India Company (among them H.T. Colebrooke, G. Bühler, W. Erskine, H. Jacobi, C. Mackenzie, A.C. Burnell). The subject areas and literary traditions represented are numerous and diverse: canonical, ethics, ritualistic, narrative, astronomy, astrology, mathematics and music. 33 Jain manuscripts are now available online in Digitised Manuscripts.

Miniature of Gautamasvāmin seated, in the typical Śvetāmbara monastic dress and holding a rosary, 15th century (British Library Or 2126A) 

The selection includes rare and valuable palm leaf manuscripts such as Or 1385B, the oldest Jain manuscript in the British Library dated 1201 CE, several Kalpasūtra versions, some of them illuminated (i.e. Or 11921, Or 14262 and Or 13959),  and a 15^th century manuscript of the Śrīpāla-kathā (Or 2126A) and IO San 3177, which contains the manuscript used by Hermann Jacobi for his edition, translation and glossary of the Kālakācārya-Kathānakam of 1880 (at that time the only known written version of the legend). Finely illustrated, it is also an amazing example of Jain calligraphy.

Folio from the Saṁgrahaṇīratna by Śrīcandra in Prakrit with interlinear Gujarati commentary. The miniature depicts the Pancaparameṣṭhins on Siddhaśilā, 17th century (British Library Or 2116C) 

Beside poetical compositions like the Ādityavāra-kathā (Or 14290),  there are cosmological treatises such as Śrīcandra’s Saṁgrahaṇīratna (Or 2116C) and three Aḍhāī-dvīpa (‘Two and a half continents’), illuminated diagrams representing the world inhabited by human beings according to Jain cosmology (Add Or 1812, Add Or 1814 and Or 13937).

More digitised Jain manuscripts from the British Library and other collections in the UK are available at Jainpedia: the Jain universe online.

Further reading

Nalini Balbir ... [et al.], Catalogue of the Jain manuscripts of the British Library: including the holdings of the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum. London: British Library & Institute of Jainology, 2006.

Hermann Jacobi, "Das Kālakācāryakathānakam", Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 34 (1880), pp.247-318. 

Pasquale Manzo, Asian and African Studies

Continuing the theme set by its acclaimed recent exhibition - West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song – the British Library will be challenging preconceived ideas about Africa and the broader global South with another event. This time, in conjunction with the Academic Book of the Future project, we will be hosting the conference The Academic Book in the South on academic book production.

At the British Library we spend a lot of time dealing with the changing world of academic publications. We have extensive collections of academic books published all over the world. We acquire books from across the global South, in all major languages, and our historic and contemporary holdings are very strong. The book covers shown below give a flavour of these collections.

Left: ʻAbd al-Munʿim Mājid, Nuẓum al-Fāṭimīyīn wa-rusūmuhum fī Miṣr (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anjlū al-Miṣrīyah, 1973); Right: Luṭfī Jaʻfar Faraj ʻAbd Allāh, ʻAbd al-Muḥsin al-Saʻdūn wa-dawruhu fī tārīkh al-ʻIrāq al-siyāsī al-muʻāṣir (Baghdad: Wizārat al-Thaqāfah wa-al-Funūn, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻIrāqīyah, 1978)
These two 1970s texts deal respectively with the Fatimid dynasty in Egypt (973-1171) and the history and politics of modern Iraq. In Arabic 

As the publishing environment changes radically, we know that our thinking about the future of academic publications and, more broadly, effective dissemination of academic thought is incomplete without a truly global dialogue. After all, academic research is geared more than ever to tackle global challenges. This is an exciting ambition across all academic disciplines – from improving health outcomes across the world to finding new paradigms for politics, economics and culture in a fast-changing world.

If this ambition is to be realised, it has to include an effective global system to disseminate new academic ideas in all their diversity. This is why we need to build and strengthen our understanding of academic book authorship, publication and circulation, through dialogue with colleagues in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.

Sabitendranātha Rāẏa, Kaleja Sṭrīṭe sattara bachara (Kalakātā: Dīpaśikhā Prakāśana, 2006-2008). A memoir on the book trade and literature in Kolkata. In Bengali

While our contacts across the world tell us that there are common challenges, there is a lot that we do not know. This is why we are pleased to host The Academic Book in the South, a two-day conference taking place at the British Library on 7th-8th March 2016. This event will investigate the current situation and future prospects of the academic book in the global South.

This event will offer a unique opportunity to hear from the speakers and participants across Africa, South Asia and the Middle East, including: Walter Bgoya, Sukanta Chaudhuri, Abhijit Gupta, Sari Hanafi, Shamil Jeppie, Akoss Ofori-Mensah, Mark Muehlhaeusler, Padmini Ray Murray and Nureldin M. Satti.  

Shamil Jeppie and Souleyman Bachir Diagne (eds), The meanings of Timbuktu (Cape Town; Senegal: HSRC Press in association with CODESRIA, 2008).
A collection of essays on the manuscript cultures of Timbuktu, Mali, and the surrounding region. In English

Will today’s ubiquitous digital technologies and open access provide us with a new environment, which will alleviate geographic inequalities in knowledge production and distribution? Will this lead to new opportunities for arts and humanities scholars to make their voices heard as we try to navigate new global complexities? Or is digital change just homogenising the world of academic publications and suppressing the diversity of academic voices?

Join us for a debate and to find out how academics, publishers and librarians in the global South perceive these issues.

This conference is organised by The British Library in collaboration with Professor Marilyn Deegan, Kings College London and Dr Caroline Davis, Oxford Brookes University.

This event is an outcome of the Academic Book of the Future research project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

The conference is now open for registration and full details are available on the British Library website, along with a provisional conference programme. The conference fee is £30.00 (£15.00 student rate) for the two-day event, which includes registration, lunch and refreshments.

Maja Maricevic, Head of Higher Education, British Library

A recently acquired group of miniatures painted on ivory and laid down on paper supports with identifying inscriptions,  still mostly with their original glass, is of considerable interest. Such items were increasingly the stock products of the tourist trade in Delhi in the later nineteenth century, but the inscriptions of this particular group suggested that they must have been made before 1850 and in Lahore or Amritsar rather than Delhi, the usual production centre for such items. The portraits include various Maharajas of the Punjab from 1839-49 with other rulers. They were presumably bought and pasted down onto sheets of paper in order to be sent off to Britain for the enlightenment of friends or relations at home, so that they could put a face to the names that occupied so much of the British press in the 1840s with the doings of the Lahore court and the two Sikh Wars, which ended in the annexation of the Punjab in 1849. Several of the inscriptions are unfortunately in error.

    
Inscribed: Now Nihal Sing successor to Rangeet Sing [i.e. Kharak Singh]; Maharajah of Lahore Ranjeet Sing; Bahadoor Shaw present King of Delhi [i.e. Akbar II]  (British Library, Add.Or.5680-82) 

The miniatures are arranged in four groups. Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Lahore (r. 1799-1839) is given primacy of place in the first group with the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar (r. 1838-58) to his right and Ranjit Singh’s son Kharak Singh (r. 1839-40) to his left. The inscriber has wrongly identified the latter as Nau Nihal Singh (r. 1840), who was the son and successor of Maharaja Kharak Singh (see next). He was still only aged nineteen when he was killed on returning from his father’s obsequies by masonry falling from an arch, and the portrait is of his father Kharak Singh. For his portrait around 1840 showing him with just a chin beard, see Archer 1966, pl. 35. The inscribed ‘present King of Delhi’ (as the British called the Emperor) dates paintings and inscriptions to at least before 1858. The inscriber seems mistaken here also, since the portrait is surely of Bahadur Shah’s father Akbar II (r. 1806-37) (see Dalrymple and Sharma 2012, nos. 30, 32-36). 

Inscribed: Dhuleep Sing present Ruler of Lahore; Kurruck Sing successor to Now Nihal Sing of Lahore; Kurrum Sing Rajah of Putteala [i.e. Kharak Singh] (British Library, Add.Or.5683-85) 

The second group has again a central portrait, that of Maharaja Kharak Singh (r. 1839-40), son and successor of Ranjit Singh, who died, it was rumoured, of poison. He has a very distinctive long pointed black beard. The inscriber has muddled Kharak Singh and his son Nau Nihal Singh. The latter was succeeded by Maharaja Sher Singh (r. 1840-43), another son of Ranjit Singh, who is represented later in the portraits, see below. Kharak Singh’s successor was Maharaja Dalip Singh (r. 1843-49), the youngest son of Ranjit Singh, identified with an inscription ‘the present Ruler of Lahore’ which firmly dates the whole group to before 1849. The other portrait in this group purports to be Maharaja Karam Singh of Patiala (r. 1813-45), ruler of one of the Cis-Sutlej states outside Ranjit Singh’s empire and allied to British India, but this portrait does not resemble him (for his portrait, see Stronge 1999, no. 188 and Falk and Archer 1981, no. 553). Again the long pointed black beard suggests Kharak Singh as in Add.Or.5680 above.


Inscribed: Rajah of Nepaul; Sumroo Begum; Mirza Zanghir 3 son King of Delhi [i.e. Maharaja Sher Singh]; Dost Mahomet (British Library, Add.Or.5686-89) 

Four of the remaining ivories are meant to be of local notables. These are the Maharaja of Nepal, who would seem to be the teenage Maharaja Surendra Bir Bikram Shah (b. 1829, r. 1847-81). Next is the Begum Samru of Sardhana (d. 1836) who ruled her own jagir near Meerut east of Delhi, one of the most redoubtable characters of early 19^th century India. Next, a portrait labelled as Mirza Jahangir, the third and favourite son of the Emperor Akbar II, who died in confinement in Allahabad in 1821, cannot be him since this figure is wearing a Sikh type of turban. In fact he is almost certainly the missing Maharaja Sher Singh of Lahore (r. 1841-43), identified by comparison with other portraits by Sikh artists as well as his well-known portraits by both Emily Eden and the Austrian artist T.A. Schoefft (for his portraits by Indian artists, see Archer 1966, pls. 92, 104). Finally in this group is Dost Muhammad, the Amir of Afghanistan (r. 1825-39, and again 1845-63). Dost Muhammad repeatedly fought with the Sikhs in his first reign over the disputed border territory of Peshawar, but then allied himself with them in the second period of his reign before the final annexation. He is often depicted in other groupings of Sikh notables.

The various dates of rulers presented above suggest that the grouping of the portraits was done some time between 1847 and 1849. After the final annexation of the Punjab in 1849, artists in both Lahore and Amritsar produced many sets of portraits on ivory of Sikh rulers and notables in the period of their greatness. The British Library already has five such sets (Archer 1969, nos. 190-194), including one set from the 1850s that is almost certainly among the earliest known (Stronge 1999, no. 20), but this new set is definitely from the late 1840s. It must have been put together put together by a British officer probably in the British Residency in Lahore that was established by the Treaty of Bhairowal in 1846, and sent back home as suggested above for the enlightenment of his friends.

While the arrangement of the first two groups of three portraits is perhaps arbitrary, nonetheless the central large portrait flanked by two smaller ones closely resembles that of the jewels of bazubands, the jewelled armbands worn by the elite as can be seen in the larger portrait of Kharak Singh above (Add.Or.5684). Whereas portraits on ivory by Delhi artists were normally individual commissions, and even when in sets such as of the Mughal emperors were individually framed, the idea behind these groupings of Sikh notables seems to have been to have them mounted up in a frame, as are indeed all those in the British Library which are enclosed in 19^th century frames (see Stronge 1999, no. 20).

Inscribed: [Ko]otub Minar Church at Delhi [Bui]ldings… at Delhi (British Library Add.Or.5691-94) 

The set ends (apart from one unidentified ruler, Add.Or.5690) rather oddly perhaps with three pictures on ivory of monuments of Delhi, all of them mounted up on the same sort of paper and with inscriptions in the same handwriting. In the middle is what is meant to be the church at Delhi, the church of St. James, built by Col. James Skinner near the Kashmir Gate and consecrated in 1836. It does however look rather more like a Mughal tomb such as that of Salim Chishti at Fatehpur Sikri and clearly the artist did not have a very good model for his depiction, although the dome and the parapet are passable. The heavy eave and the Mughal jalis or screens should not be there, but the tomb of William Fraser of 1836 seems to be present in front of the church.

Pictures on ivory of monuments had a different purpose from portraits, since often at this period they were mounted as brooches. Indeed one of the earliest such examples is a picture of the gateway of the Taj Mahal mounted up in a gold brooch with an inscription saying that it was sent from India by Lady Sale in 1840 (private collection). Later such pictures were mounted up into ivory boxes or else, as small circles or ovals, into cufflinks or shirt studs. Apart from brooches, they could also, we now learn from this set, be turned into earrings, since it has two pictures of the Qutb Minar, the famous 12/13^th century tower in old Delhi, painted on shapes that are surely destined to be long drop earrings, when encased in gold. Below the tower are painted little round pictures of the Taj Mahal in Agra on one and what appears to be the tomb of Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq on the other. An additional small circular painting of the Quwwat al-Islam mosque and the Qutb Minar may indeed have been for one of the roundels covering the ear lobe from which such drop earrings normally hung in the Victorian era. The roundel is actually loose but is positioned in the above image as if this was indeed the case.

The earring paintings can be dated by the presence of the cupola in Mughal style added to the top of the Qutb Minar during a restoration in 1828 by Major Robert Smith of the Bengal Engineers, which was removed in 1848. Although artists in Lahore or Amritsar might not necessarily have known this, they liked to be up to date with their depictions, so this is yet another reason to date the set to the late 1840s.

Although there is no direct evidence that this group of miniatures in ivory was painted in the Punjab, their subjects of local interest to the Punjab and their somewhat unsophisticated technique would certainly suggest that this was so. Sikh artists do not seem to have attempted to paint on ivory any earlier. Such work when done by Delhi artists is more refined and polished, and this will be the subject of a second blog.

References:

Archer, M., Company Drawings in the India Office Library, HMSO, London, 1972
Archer, W.G., Painting of the Sikhs, HMSO, London, 1966
Dalrymple, W., and Sharma, Y., Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707-1857, Asia Society, New York, 2012
Falk, T., and Archer, M., Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, Sotheby Parke Bernet, London, 1981
Stronge, S., ed., The Arts of the Sikh Kingdoms, V & A, London, 1999

J.P. Losty, Curator of Visual Arts (Emeritus)

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In a previous post (When Good Literary Taste Was Part of a Bureaucrat’s Job Description) I introduced readers to the high-ranking courtier, poet and writer Ānand Rām Mukhliṣ (1697?-1751). Here I focus on his idiosyncratic dictionary, the Mirʾāt al-iṣt̤ilāḥ (ʻMirror of Expressionsʼ) completed in 1158/1745, which provides us with a delightful hodgepodge of cultural and social information about eighteenth-century India

Decorative shamsah followed by the opening page of Mirʾāt al-iṣt̤ilāḥ (British Library Or.1813, f. 11)

The biographical note on a certain Rājah Harīsingh from Sialkot, for example, which describes him as peerless in archery and entertaining (ʿilm-i majlis), is a little unusual in its detail but unremarkable for this book:

On dark nights he shot by torchlight at a target made from knot of horsehair. He had a servant named Gopī… [Gopī] would place a piece of candle on the tip of his finger, set a lentil on it, place a grain of rice on top, and stand facing the Rajah, and the Rajah bent his bow. First he knocked the rice then the lentil then the candle from his finger. Neither did the Rajah make a mistake nor did the unjust [sic] servant frown. Now I come to his knowledge of entertaining...
(Mukhliṣ 2013: 238, my translation).

Biography of Rājah Harīsingh from Sialkot inserted into an explanation of the phrase tīr-būtah ʻarchery rangeʼ (British Library Or.1813, f. 90r)

The account continues by explaining that the Rajah had not studied Persian but could make conversation so impressively in the language that Iranians praised him. He also recited poetry in Hindi and Persian. He was a musician himself, and kept qawwāls (Sufi singers) and dancing girls in his retinue. This was a man who clearly knew how to throw a good party.

Historians delight in such specific descriptions of particular people in history, but it is of course unusual to find them in a text that purports to be a dictionary. In this case, the account of the Rajah fits into an entry on tīr-būtah (meaning an archery range). An elegantly written copy of this remarkable dictionary—or perhaps it is better to see it as a miscellany cast in the form of a dictionary—is available at the British Library in manuscript (Or.1813) and has recently been printed in a critical edition (Mukhliṣ 2013). Besides providing us with details about life in eighteenth-century Delhi, even a cursory reading of the text demonstrates the richness of Persian scholarship and literary society in late Mughal India.

The historical importance of Persian in India has all but faded from modern cultural memory, but it was undeniably the key medium of expression among north Indian elites during the Mughal period. Though Persian is written in the same script as Arabic and therefore often pigeonholed as an Islamic language, Persian was a secular language in pre-modern India in the sense that all communities had access to it (though there was a class divide—it was mostly an elite language) and many Hindus like Mukhliṣ made their living by mastering it. The parallels between the Persian of pre-colonial times and the English of today as languages of personal advancement in South Asia are striking. (For more on this, see my new book Delhi: Pages from a Forgotten History (Dudney 2015), which addresses the history of Persian in India in far more detail than I can here.)

The composition of Mukhliṣ’s dictionary came at a time of great uncertainty for Delhi’s elite. Patronage for poets and indeed the whole political system was being renegotiated in the wake of Nādir Shāh’s conquest of Delhi in 1739. Nādir, ethnically a Turk, had conquered the whole of Iran and the region that became Afghanistan and turned next to India. It is undeniable that politics were by then quite different from how they were in the Empire’s glory days, but it is almost eerie to trace how literary culture not only carried on but arguably shone with greater brilliance in the aftermath of the worst bloodshed Mughal Delhi had ever seen.

Three-quarter length portrait of Nādir Shāh, Shah of Iran (r. 1736–1747), painted by an anonymous artist ca. 1740. Oil on canvas (British Library F44)

Mirʾāt al-iṣt̤ilāḥ has a particular interest in administrative terminology as well as in words and expressions having to do with painting, clothing, handicrafts, animals, flowers, hot beverages (particularly coffee), games, and so on. It is different from other Persian dictionaries in that it contains a great number of  ʻproto-anthropologicalʼ observations as well as long digressions describing, for example, particular people that Mukhliṣ knew such as the poet and scholar Sirājuddīn ʿAlī Khān Ārzū (briefly defining the term ārzū as ʻhope and desireʼ in as many words serves an excuse to launch into several hundred words of praise for his friend and teacher) or objects like the Peacock Throne. Additionally, it ends each letter’s section with a series of adages (amsāl), some of which have Urdu equivalents provided.


In this passage the expression dar jang ḥalvā bakhsh nimīkunand  [During war they don't hand out sweets] is rendered in Hindi (written in a special calligraphic script) as laṛāʾī meṁ koʾī laḍḍū nahīṁ baṭte —Indian laddus have been substituted for halwa (British Library Or.1813, f. 141r)

Despite these unusual features, Mirʾāt fits squarely into a remarkable tradition of Persian lexicography that began in Central Asia and continued in the Indian Subcontinent, with virtually no counterpart in Iran. In fact, there is a gap of nearly three centuries between Surūrī’s Majmaʿ al-furs (first ed. 1008/1599-1600, compiled in Isfahan) and the next major dictionary written in Iran, Riẓā Qulī Khān Hidāyat’s Farhang-i anjuman-ārā-yi nāṣirī (1288/1871, compiled in Tehran). (The fullest account of Persian lexicography in English remains Henry Blochmann’s 1868 article)

Like earlier dictionaries, Mirʾāt bridges different usages around the vast region where Persian was a language of high culture, a region that at its peak stretched from Anatolia (modern Turkey) in the west across Central and Southern Asia to the Chinese frontier in the east. Scholars debate the question of how different Indian Persian was from Iranian Persian—remarkably there has been little dispassionate analysis of this topic since the starting point is usually the misleading assumption that Indo-Persian, whatever it was, could not have been ʻauthenticʼ compared to Iranian usage. That is a discussion for another time but worth mentioning in the context of Mukhliṣ’s scholarship because he was so attuned to how different people used words and expressions.

There is an apocryphal story that Mukhliṣ chased after the Qizilbash soldiers of Nādir Shāh’s army to ask them about points of Persian usage. The logic is that they were native speakers, and he wanted to know how Persian was really spoken. One difficulty in this story is that these soldiers were not actually native speakers in our sense because in daily life they either spoke Turkish dialects (like Nādir Shāh himself) or local variants of Persian. The category of native speaker (usually translating the term ahl-i zabān) is a problem in this context because literary Persian was a learned language. Mirʾāt was part of this economy of teaching Persian. The entry in Encyclopaedia Iranica claims that Mukhliṣ’s dictionary was intended to “to improve the falling standard of Persian in India”—but its preface does not in fact say anything like that (and indeed though there is a reference to īrān-zamīn [the land of Iran] in the colophon, this was written in 1850, a full hundred years after Mukhliṣ, and therefore cannot be assumed to reflect his thinking). Even the editors of the 2013 critical edition claim that “It can be seen from a close reading of the text that after finishing the work, he got it authenticated from speakers of the language just arrived in India” (2013: 33, English introduction). While some of his material comes from such people, the implication is wrong: He was asking them not because he thought of them as ʻnative speakersʼ but because they knew administrative terminology current in the establishment of Nādir Shāh, who having just conquered Delhi had modified the administrative structure to suit his needs. To find positions under the new regime, Mukhliṣ and his colleagues needed to be savvy in the new terms and procedures. It was not that Indian elites were desperate for Iranian native speakers to sort out their degenerate Persian but rather that they sought insider knowledge about the new political dispensation.

Further reading
Anand Ram Mukhlis, Mirʾāt al-iṣt̤ilāḥ, edited by Chander Shekhar, Hamidreza Ghelichkani and Houman Yousefdahi. Delhi: National Mission for Manuscripts, 2013.
—,  Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Medieval India: Mirat-ul-Istilah, translated by Tasneem Ahmad. Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan, 1993.  A complete English translation of the text, this is a useful tool but too ambiguous and inaccurate to be used without consulting the Persian text.
Ahmad, B, “Ānand Rām Mokles: Chronicler, Lexicographer, and Poet of the Later Mughal Period”, Encyclopædia Iranica vol. 2.1, p. 1 (1985).
Blochmann, Henry, “Contributions to Persian Lexicography”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal 37 (1): 1-72 (1868).
Dudney, Arthur Dale,  A Desire for Meaning: Ḳhān-i Ārzū's Philology and the Place of India in the Eighteenth-Century Persianate World. Columbia University Academic Commons, 2013.
—, Delhi: Pages from a Forgotten History. New Delhi: Hay House India, 2015.

Arthur Dudney, University of Cambridge
[email protected]

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