Mughal India
circa 1594
ink, gold and opaque watercolour on paper
text copied in nasta‘liq script; with 18 lines to the page
37.8 x 24.9cm (page)
The religious tolerance of the third Mughal emperor, Akbar, was in the eyes of his contemporaries excessive. He commissioned translations from the Hindu religious epics and held religious debates between Muslim clerics and Jesuit missionaries, but ultimately proclaimed his own syncretistic religion. The copy from which these pages are taken – a simplified version of the original text of the Hindu epic, the Ramayana – bears two inscriptions in the name of Hamidah Banu Begum, wife of Humayun, the second Mughal emperor and Akbar’s mother, who died in August 1604.
L. York Leach, Paintings from India, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, volume VIII, London 1998, cat.8 and 9, pp.40–49. J.M. Rogers, The Arts of Islam. Masterpieces from the Khalili Collection, London 2010, cat.314, pp.272–3.