The Jenghiz Kahn Miniatures
Designed by Bedrich Forman,
Design and Production by Artia for Spring Books, London 1963, printed dint Czechoslovakia. Text by J. Marek and H Knízkova
Toward the end of the 16th
century Akbar, the greatest of the Islamic rulers of India and (approximately)
a 15th generation descendent of Genghis Kahn through
Tamerlane, commissioned an illustrated version of this history. Akbar was
a great synthesizer. He understood that he could not impose Islam on India and
that he could not rule only through a Muslim minority, and gave prominent
places in the sophisticated administration he created to many Hindu and some
Christian men. Among his many wives, mostly married for political purposes,
were Muslims, Hindus, and Christians. Illiterate himself, Akbar was one
of history’s’ great patrons of literature, the arts, and architecture.
His favorite grandson built the Taj Mahhal. He employed
philosophers and theologians and listened thoughtfully to their debates. His
own attitudes and thought underwent a historical development; he grew from a
rather narrow cultural background to the synthesis for which he is known.
Miniature painting was an
important area of his patronage. A Hindu tradition existed before the
coming of the moguls, and he also imported masters from the Persian court (the
source of the tradition celebrated in Orhan Pamuk's fascinating novel My Name
is Red). The greatest ornament of this school of artists was the
illustrated edition of the Genghis Kahn history.
The images lack the least effort
at historical verisimilitude or the slightest suggestion that things in the
past may have looked different from how they look now. All the men and
women wear the clothing of their class in Akbar’s time. When Genghis Khan
attacks the encampment of an enemy, it looks like a The Red Fort. The armies of
whatever period are borne by the camels, elephants, and elegant horses of
Akbar’s India and involve firearms and cannon. Islamic aniconism does not
prevent the representation of thousands of human figures and faces from all
levels of society and many occupational groups. There are few puritanical
restrictions on the depiction of women. They are all clothed, as are men. Their
heads are usually covered, but there are no burkas; the drawing often
accentuates their curves, and dancers and the like wear filmy outfits.
The sum total is rather like the
shield of Achilles. The whole world as it was present to sophisticated folk of
Akbar’s time is represented: forests, farms, forts, rivers, mountains,
orchards, gardens, armies, great hunts, the multifariousness of cities,
thieves, beggars, courtiers, warriors, harems, dancers, jugglers…. It is an
intensely social world. There are very few isolated figures like the mountain
sages of Chinese landscapes or the country folk of Constable landscapes. The
society portrayed is hierarchical and sexist.
To my untrained, western eye,
the illustrations present a flatish surface full of detail. Objects
appear in front of one another but near objects are not consistently larger
than far objects. Foreshortening is inconsistent, chiaroscuro is absent,
and distant objects are usually as distinct a close ones. There is no
representation of space as in western historical painting or even as in many
Chinese landscapes. As far as I recall no horizon line ever appears.
If you draw a scale between
cartoon caricature at the one end and, say, Holbein at the other, the
exquisitely painted miniatures hover in an intermediate location hard for me to
define. They are portraits of typical people rather than portraits
of individuals. They show feeling and attitudes: fear, love, contentment,
rage, generosity, submission, but do not suggest an individual.
As maybe you can tell, the
historical and cultural implications of this book interest me somewhat more
than the art itself. The miniatures are wonderfully painted. They are
pleasant and engaging. They are interesting. But they do not move me. I
suppose this is because of the lacks I have mentioned, of portraiture of individual
consciousness, or chiaroscuro, of a sense of things being organized around
space. Perhaps I have become dependent on these things to get the historical
hit. But, for example, Chinese and Japanese landscapes that omit the same
devices often move me. Perhaps it was different to viewers in Akbar’s time.
The Sanskrit tradition of
literary criticism holds the purpose of art as to create a mood rather than to
teach a lesson, and this seems to be the goal in these paintings.
The book is nicely printed and
arranged with many pages usefully showing details of the larger views.
Reproduction on book-quality paper is appropriate for these paintings.
The text that appears of the pages is usefully translated with discussions of
the many lacunae and confusions in the MS. A long and informative
introduction explains the historical context of the family of Genghis Kahn, the artistic community of Akbar's court, the history of the manuscripts,
and issues of artistic influence and technique.
