MUGHAL INDIA, CIRCA 1600

The rounded faces and the figures' necks, which are often long and extended are typical of paintings commissioned by members of the Mughal Emperor Akbar’s court around the turn of the 17th century. For a painting also in this style but depicting a scene from the Ramayana completed in 1598-99 now in the collection of the Freer Gallery of Art see John Seyller, Workshop and Patron in Mughal India, 1999, no.73, p.149. Our manuscript is not an illustration from a Hindu-inspired epic. It is more likely that it is from a dynastic epic relating to the lives of previous Mughal Emperors or others counted in their lineage such as the Baburnama and the Timurnama. A Baburnama completed between 1598 and 1599 now in the collection of the National Museum in Delhi has illustrations very similar in style to our present painting (M.S. Randhawa, Babur Nama, New Delhi, 1983).