TRADITION in a MOMENT of CHANGE Tha
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TRADITION IN A MOMENT OF CHANGE Tha Paintings of the Hamzanama Gulammohammed Sheikh Few '-iorks of art are as tantalisingly problematic as the paintin~s of 1 the Hamzanama. With little over one t~:tnth of the original fourteen hundred folios having survived, in various stages of dama ge and d is figuration, any attempt to study them is bound to be somewhat tentative, cast with a shadow of fruitlessness. Added to this is the non-availabil ity 2 of a complete narrative in reliable translation which makes it diffi cult to compare the pictorial with the literary form. The impact of the v'isuals is however so overwhelming that the venture is worth all the hazards. With the exception of murals like those of Ajanta, not many paintings match the epic scale and structural complexity o f the Hamza pictures. Fewer still rival their explos1ve energy and 'blustering 3 vigour'. In their stark and often ruthless portrayal of violence they have no parallel. The observations here are based on these compelling r e sponses. While the place of the Hamza folios is of cardinal importance to the study of Mughal art, some of the issues they raise are central to the whole tradition of Indian painting when faced with challenges of change. The task of formulating a v isual language commensurate with the vicissi·· tudes of historical and material transition of an age that the Hamzn project a~tempts, points to i m po~derable questions raised bv c ompara bl.e situations in other time s . Th ese rela t e to the polemics of 'histo r i~a.L consciousness' against a 'timeless' tradition and concepts of ma t e ria l ity against ideals of 'spiritualist' persuasions. The self-effacing ' a nony mity' of the artist of ancient India here finds a counterpoint i n t he pronounced individuation that Mu g hal painting promo tes . The role of individual versus collective identities manifest in the mode of execution of pictures also assumes special si gnif icance in thi s cont ex~ . Fu r t her- more , the respon se of indi ~ enous sensi hility to morl es , m e th n~~ 1~d i~~ 2 s of alien origin adds a dime n s ion especially relevant to contempora r y practice in our times. c . 'f. 2. The massive HaTi1za project, we are told, involved a group of a hundred 1' : ; ; ; .. · -.c ) ' '~ ' · paintes, calligraphers, decorators, gilders, · binders etc. for fifteen ~ 4 years to cover its pictorial space spanning a kilometre. They worked under the guidance of Mir Sayyid Ali and Khwaja Abd-us-Samad(later joined 5 by another emigre Dust Muhammad), the masters of Shah Tahmasp • s court whom Humayun had lured to India during his Persian exile. The artists brought with them·the essence of the Safawi idiom at its height. The · Indian contingent belonging presumably to provincial traditions of the Chaurapanchashika, ( Mi tharam) Bhagawatapurana, Chandayana, Ni • amat Nama . 6 and Kalpasutras etc. hailed from Rajasthan, Gujarat, Gwalior, Lahore and even Kashmir as names of artists recorded in later chronicles suggest. Whereas it is not clear and seems unlikely that any European artist participated in person in the Mughal workshop, European encounter - by proxy - is .visible in the use of illusionistic and graphic devices 7 employed in a few Hamza pictures. Evidently these effects were derived from contact with European pictures - mostly prints of the Antwerp work 8 shops - floating about the court circuit. The broad Herati tradition the Safawi masters belonged to, also contained assimilated motifs and manners of Turkman and 'Far Eastern • sources partially derived from its Mongol ancestry: colours, rocks, dragons, phoenixes and Mongoloid 9 ,features entered the Mu~hal repertory through this channel. One may even trace the demons of the Hamzanama to the Turkman 'pen' of Siyeh Qalam, that intrepid master of the grotesque, however indirect the connection may be. In short, the • international' Hamza experiment involved hands and minds of varied - even disparate and distant origins. Compounding the variety, we are told, was the practice of several hands working on a single f olio. The Safawi masters belonged to a tradition of book illumination which sought microscopic revelation of the sublime rendered with the aid of a refined paint and paper technology. Pictures like gems conserved in the safe p recincts of spec i ally designed books - whose v alue i n the Islamic tradition was comparable to that of sacred monuments - were s a voure d l i ke poe t r y by informed connoisseurs. The pictorial vision i n its essence :,.;a s conc e i ved i n exalted momen t s of perceD tion tha t 3. drained off t h e superfluous and sullied, and was distilled into crysta lline sights. \Jhile Mir Sayy id Ali's 'Encampment' is cleansed to the extent of making the 'soggy wash of the laundress' fal l 'in sinuous 10 folds•, Abd-us-Samad's exquisitely chiselled rocks of emerald and cobalt harbour hidden creatures an unsuspecting viewer might miss at first glance in 'Humavun and his Brothers in a Landscape'. Broadly - L speaking, their images, wordly (Majazi) or transcendent (Haqiqi) were 1\ steeped in a combination of order, grace (nazakat ) and relish for the miraculous. This was achieved essentially through colouration from a palette based on mineral, metal and ceramic hues. Combinations of the embodied luminosity of mineral pigment with bronze tints, and with the gold sheens and simulated translucences of the fired 'pigment' of glass made the page of a Khamsa or a Shah Nama gleam with the sights of a cherished oasis, of a bahisht on earth. This was so even in portrayal s of gruesome events like 'Assasination of Khusraw Parviz' (Shah Nam a, ca. 1535 A.D.). A picture was essentially a vision, a nazara, a fo re image of a dream unfolding as revelation to g radually entrance the viewer , in an experience close to - intoxication. Conceived as a spatial panorama, images in most Safawi paintings were equalised between middle and lon~ distance (unlike the whirling Turkman demons and dragons surging out L'rfiL \ o.M'd s pG\ ce.. of the surface in frontal confrontation) upon a landscape successively V ( ~ \ b\..t, l'l'\ ;.!C\ j e.s. rolled out like a carpet stretching upto the horizon. The structure f:;v Vvj clcl-cu l . brought the metaphor of the prayermat to the space format of the book, LOA s.. 'Meo.N\t +v opening from its lower ed ges or footspace upward to make~ or touched be.. .Nl. "'-J.. as one scanned the scene discovering in the process subtle links between minutae and larger s pace un i ts . Th e intri c a t e f aienc e pa t terns in archi tecture a imed a t e mb e llishi"'!ent also s e r v ed as pictorial c omponen t s to define the changing space constructs. Insid e a nd ou tside monumen t s or from floors to ·..ralls and v ic e versa, t he opening and clos i ng o f spa ce s was devised almost ' i nvis i bl y ' through vary ing s c ales a nd f orms of patterns. On closer scrut i ny one d iscerns the ma thema tical preci si on with which such structuring of s pace was achie v ed . But f or the us e of pB tte r n, ~hich i n I nd i a was s omew ha t br oader in s cale and slightly d if f ere nt in pu r pose , mo st or t he p r eoccupations o f t he . ' 1 - ' •' ( ~ L- J ' ! . - : 4. Safawi masters were alien to the Indian painter. Wonder of the world came to him through a quality of animation that permeated all life. He realised his pictorial vision _, felt in rapturous flashes , as an act of spontaneous improvisation. Since the parampara he belonged to was deeply entrenched in theatre, where perception of life was articulated through a repertoire of movements, he devised a form of animation based upon dramatic conventions. Here, situations narrated through physical actions revolve around the protagonist, his adversary and a small chorus of characters. The movement of limbs at the joints, spaces for pirouett ing and vertical thrusts upon the horizontal plane of the stage came from puppetry. So did the large, telling eyes for direct communication with the audience. The Mrigavat, Sikandar Nama and the Sultanate Hamza --1-1 sets belong to this category. Gesticulations centred waist upwards as in the Chaurapanchashika or Issarda Bhagawata came from dramatic narration (like Pandavani) whether sitting or sranding. Full body move- ments and crowds of the Hitharam Bhagawata -lead spatial exploration to large spectacles and theatre of the street. From these, however, the painter construed images of growth formulated as springing from inside outwards, projecting upon the picture plane, nearly spilling I" out on to the spectator~ This evidently cut down the r ole of receding '-../ . space of an illusionistic kind or the rolled out landspace o f the Persian mise en scene. It explains why landscape did not belong t o his scheme of thin~s. His was not a space meant for viewers to phvsically enter 12 into nor did it define a point to view it from. Often laterally plannec for turning the picture around, the spatial scheme indicated inside_s and outsides, the far and the near by evoking a ss o c iat~ ns throu?h motifs and devices shared with theatre, dance and l ite ra t'.~:- E .