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 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 ), the masters of Shah Tahmasp • s court whom 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 . . ~H~ .Ji.s ua t image, often synoptic in form and design, functioned boch a s a recal l of cumulative memories of the past to supplement and e rnbo ~y i t a nd as promptings for the viewer to conjure a parallel enactme nt a t will i n his own mind. It approximated the poem or tale in substance bhava ) rather than illustrating themes or characters. Its pu rpose was regenera­ tive or temporal rather than permanent. So i t c~an~ed wit h i~p ro visation

.. ' . . f rom version to version, region t o r f~ gio n n d .. , an ~ ~ -=. o n a 7""~ ~ • ..j 1 LL g 5 fJ c e 5. as pictorial theatre with broad expanses of colour, the painter inserted signs of known metaphors and subliminal provocations to evoke a se::-ies of sensations ranging simultaneously from physical to spiritual. His palette, redolent with unpolluted hues .of dyes, oxides and earth pig­ ments retained the raw vitality of the early medieval ethos, or even of primeval sources, through the ages of changing paint technologies 13 and import of minerals like lapis. This remained a latent force mani- fest in individual works or conveyed as a parampara bv organised insti­ tutions like the artists' guilds, big and small. The commissions of the guilds or of individuals depended upon a pan-Indian and provincial heritage of shared paramparas of literature and theatre: of the epics, Puranas, scriptures, Nitikathas, romances and ballads which were usually in a mixed genre of poetry and prose composed for oral rendition. Poetry and music being the core of performance, spontaneity of improvisat i on central to these arts made the narratives resilient enough to al l ow multiple interpretation. Art is t s who visualised poe try or music k1"l(!·,..r the parampara from within and must have worked in unison with or in the company of performers.

The system of the guilds (which probably grew 6ut of and subsequently returned to the gharana or family unit) required expertise of various kinds. As the guild often undertook commissions of total structures - both secular and sectarian - which included carving, murals and other embellishments, the artists usually got trained in more than one discip­ line. While specialisation in technique, mode and medium was integral to the system, it also encouraged multifaceted dexterity to deal with exi genc i es of replacement. Hence i t wa s not unusual for a metal c r afts­ man within a guild to try his hand at Kalamka ri and v ice v ersa, if required • The t r ad i t ion o f p a in t i ng g a in e d from such f 1 ex i b i 1 i t y e a s e , grace and ad a p tab i 1 i t y • I t had a 1 so 1 earn t to rep 1 en i s h i t s s tore o f d evi ces periodically by borrow i ng mod e s a nd meth ods fr o~ al ied dis c i J ­ lines. Marshalling devices from non-pictorial practises to resolve pictorial problems often lent the Rrt of painting an unusual richne s s .

~1eta l lic o r ma tt s urf a c e s c o ul d have depended '_; pon exp erience o f • o ~ ::: 6. in smithy or kiln: angularities and curves of contours upon past expertise in drypoint or cast metal; broad, linear, punctuated or serrated render­ ings upon textile or lacquer techniques or thos.e of wrought iron and turned wood. Doesn • t the black linear figuration upon burnt red ground of the Mrigawat and Lahore-Chandigarh Chandayana have something to do with slip on terracotta or heated pigment on lacquer ? And the Manchester Chandayana set with painted textiles ? Gold leaf upon lapis and red grounds of the Mandu Kalpasutra indicates sources of enamelling and

metal in~ays. To be specific, the garment of the lady in 'Queen Rebukes Vazier• (Hasht Bihisht, mid-fifteenth century) clearly shows traces of metal intaglio wriggles. To extend the case further, permutation of motifs, even mediums or techniques indicates the form the image may assume with the result that its character obtains definite edges. The rectangular, diminutive figuration of the Hasht Bihisht folios suggests experience of making images in pared or compressed spaces, like in the strips running round metal utensils, as on . the pot portrayed in the picture.

Undoubtedly, the interaction could not have been restricted to technique alone. In the transmittance, traditions of the regions and communities that the artists hailed from were reflected in the formulation of images. The Hasht Bihisht images for instance, purportedly adhering to royal setting, use descriptive motifs of modest ambience. The convention of using script to name the proud and haughty Chaurapanchashika figures derives from 'popular• rather than elite sources. The Sultanate Hamza­ nama characters are nearly comic with their often askew, mask-like heads and jerky movements, as they would be in a rural performance of puppet­ play. The reasons are not far to seek. As the majority of artists were drawn from the vast, working class population of villages and small towns , the ima ges of urban setting were coloured by perceptions of their past. Under the circumstances, the traditions of Margi (urban or classi- 14 cal) and Desi (rural or 'popular•) could not remain unaffected by each other. In the process, the transference of the qualities of ornament i nto 'human' figuration and vice versa remained much less restricted 7. than is often assumed. In fact it is difficult to cast 'classical' and ~ so-called 'folk' into ri gid stereo typical categories of 'figurative' """-/' and 'decorative'. On the contrary. the two streams inextricably linked 1 gave rise to the evolution of a human imagery enriched by arboreal and faunal elements and ornaments bearing 'human' attributes. This explains why much of can not be easily defined in anthropocentric terms. The springing gesticulations and fullness of body forms of Bilhana and Champavati tn tht Chaurapanchashika sugges~ the fore-play of animals or the sapful burstinss forth of flowers and plants. A leaning tree,

~ peeping white border of sky , a lotus drooping heavily by its bloom 'behave'. as do the dramatis personae. Even bolsters on a bed, a knot of the curtain, or a jutting-out lamp gesticulate innuendoes. The burgeo­ ning character of forms full of Rasa derive f rom arboreal principles of growth. Obviously such a tradition had li t tle use for naturalism; it sought perceptions other than those centred uoon the retina.

The artists who reached the Mughal court c a rried accretions of this paraw.para as a part of their collective subconscious. They also brought with them a certain familiarity with pictorial t raditions of the Islamic world acquired through sporadic encounters with Persian, Turkish and Arab manuscripts during the long interregnum o f the Sultanate period. With the import of lapis and paper through navi gational commerce, motifs of Persian origin had entered Jaina manuscri pts - which were absorbed within the indigenous scheme. Formulation of c haracters like the Sahi u. King in the Kalkacharyakatha was made from t h e theatric prototype of a Sultan. A con"s ci ous attempt at a r tic ulatinS! a n d as simila ting Turko- Persian schemes be com e s v isible in t he boo :: -: f recipe s, the Ni'amat Nama and the Avadhi t al e o f Chandayana wri tten in Persian s cript by Maulana Daud ( in the Manc hester col lect ion ) . The pictures of the Ni'amat Nama ( painted most likely by a loc al Mandu han'2 ) t hough candi d , betray an awkwardness in the handling o f un f amilia r pi~ toria l me ans. In trans­ lating lateral planes into naturalistic s pace units of pale grounds, and in the slow-paced g est i c ula t ions of figures ther e i s a lack of res o lve . The :.anchester Ch andayana fo l o s ( p2i :-.-:ed by a cleverer hand ) 8. however overcome these shortcomings with an insinuation of surface by

animatin~ the broad colour planes bu z zing with arabesque : a disarming improvisation of ' the Persian calligraphic squiggles upon its attenuated and somewhat still figural ima gery.

Strangely, the story of Hamza is not known to have been painted i~ the Islamic world outside India. And the Sultanate precedent on a modest scale could hardly have been a model for the Mughal magnum opus. In that sense, the entire formulation of the story had to be visualised anew. Both for the Indian painters and Persian ustads it meant breaking of fresh ground in every sphere: format, image and language of articula­ tion. The large 72 x 57 ems. format of cloth lined with paper does not 15 fit any known category with the exception of the Falnameh .. It was too stiff for a scroll, too large for a 'miniature' in a book. Though unlike mural, its separate folios designed in 'miniature' space are to be seen in a continuum similar to wall paintings. The format, t.rith hardly a single precedent and no successor involved both middle and close range viewing in alternate glances to grasp the whole and scan 16 the details. This made demands on the viewer to adopt mobility in the process of viewing. Designed to be within the module of a n arm's stretch (unlike a miniature fitting into the palms of the hands) the scale of the folios proposed a fresh mode of viewing and a new viewer.

The expectation of a new viewer was not beyond the ambit of a new world view in the process of being articulated. The new viewer can be located in the person of the patron and the painter who fo und thems e lves in the midst of a transition f ul l of imponderabl e queri e s, chal l enge s a n ci excitements. Here was a youthful emperor g roping to g ras p e ssences o f an incredibly complex culture during hi s conquests, who opted alt e r­ natively for the continuance of older con servative po l icies in c ertain areas while introducing reforTt in others. : ; The painters t r i ed co i nsert modes and methods invented anew or from their own repertory into the heavily Persianised idiom o f the Safawi masters. It is d i ffi.c ult to say if the process of trans fo rm a t ion wa s =.. inear , ra t1er un li: ely c ons i ­ dering the collective nature of the work. Undoubtedly , the Ham za expe ri- 9. ment echoed and recorded the changes taking place in s o cial relations. in the polity and in art. By foregrounding an interface o f opposites and a kinship of common concerns it pronounced a debate between the polemics of transience and permanance, between the world of phenomenon and its transcendental other. Growing at various levels the debate touched the dialogue between the ruler and the ruled, the patron and

the pai~ter, the alien and the insider. Initiating a continuous jugal­ band! of tastes raw and refined in the portrayal of violence and tran­ quality - it often ranged boundless beauty and horri f ic, repulsive details against each other to enlarge the scope of its epic panorama ·and to ensure personal space for viewers of different tastes. In the physical process of painting, it projected an interface of detail and scale, ornament and figuration, space and surface while inserting dimensions of naturalistic origin in the metaphoric u sage of cc1lour to illuminate demonic and divine images with the same ardour. And all ~e~ut~ of this often on a single page, with the synchronisation of several 1\ heads and hands. The joint pro j ect seems to have provided considerable independence to individual artists - despite the presence of Persian supervisors - to evolve a collective language and idiom of painting as well as an eclectic view of the world to cut acro ss polaris2tion of personal egos and identities.

The keenly observant art.ist must have realised his role in the process of change since Mughal taste focused upon the visual idiom as an important mode of articulation to encompass the complexity of transformation.

The availability of varied and refined pigments and bett er paper - a l on~ with the prospect of learning secrets of Persian pa i :-:ting f r om the

foreign masters added to his excitement. To an artist f o ~ who m paintings were emblems of transience, viewed widely and painted over repeat edly for renewal, the alternative of selective viewing by ·::o nno isseur s a nd methods of care and conservation employed in the royal l ibra r y to ensure their permanance for posterity must also ·have enthused him. But more than any thing else, the promise held out by the star·: o f Ha mza fo r devisin'r-"an entirely new v isual idiom must have f ired h i~ i ma gination . ..

10.

All tht5 points to a growing need to visualise the world as a ~. iving theatre or a palpable dream. It was further reinforced by the ne·ed to approximate dimensions of volume and receding space to make the imagery more believable. The means the artist devised to grapple with challenges of such renditions emerged from the interaction of the two Asiatic traditions of painting at the outset, aided by European prints during the final stages of the project. The coming together of the art of the book and art of a visual stage - to put it metaphorically - augured magical discoveries of the tangible world. As a result the purple, pink of orange glows of landspaces began _ to shimmer against deep green foliage burnished at the rim of every leaf (as a metalsmith turned painter might have fashioned it); palaces and courtyards in saturated madders and earth reds seemed to have been soaked in dyes or lacquer, skies blazed blue or gold to stun the viewer at first glance. Animals and birds were treated most intimately and tenderly as they began to assume differentia­ ted identities. The demons too formed part of the new excitement for improvisation. Ungainly , grotesque and a bit comic rather than evil they are rendered with compassionate humour in their body-masks. Human resemblances continue to be seen in terms of pun or simile rather than

by reproducing exa~t l ikenesses as would be in a Bhagawata _or a Chanda- yana. Unusual 'characters' like the thug in his den (V. 47)* or the black king (V. 36) are however closely observed equivalents of individuals.

All this is realised through a changing palette of mixed Persian and · Indian origin combini ng ea rth, minera l and vegetable pigments with metal extra c ts a nd pr ec ious s t one s . The process of using light upon dark, staining and washes changed the surfaces and quality of form. Most characteristic (a nd reminis cent of Aj anta) however is the increasing and varying use of white as a pigment which by giving 'body' t o surface' introduc ed a ph ysicolity into the image. And the mi x ing of raw, l uminous

pi gm ents ~ ith white s eems to have a ided a new form of visual materiality to emerge.

The grea test cha llenge wa s howe ver to formulate the ima ge of Hamza and

vI 0 tG\- ~ \o\$ 1J "v't: ~ \A

. tf\lt_C~cM, I N: l-+ ~ I-{ 11. visualise his world. The image of an Arab hero of the time of Harun al-Rashid coalescing with the son of Abul Muttalib, uncle of the Prophet (that the 'character' of Hamza represented) was attractive but remote. In the Sultanate version the Hamza image was based on the stereotype of a Mongol no·bleman with plaits, not unlike the Sahi King of the Kalakacharyakatha sans beard. In fact it was more like an exotic variant of a local hero made up with mask and costume to look like a Muslim nobleman. Gait, stance and physical mien remained close to the figuration of the theatric narratives of the period. Obviously the demands of a

new Hamz~ did not fit this prototype.

According to Abul Fazl, seemed obsessed by the tales of Hamza which he narrated personally in the harem for long hours. The fact that the tales were a great favourite of Akbar's invites comparison between the fictional and historical heroes. The narrative of Hamza portrays his adventures into distant lands of Central Asia, China, Rum and even Ceylon inhabited by strage people, giants and demons. Accompanied by his friend Amra (or Umar ?) and a giant voung prince Landahur of Ceylon, he is en~aged in conflicts with demons and infidels and eventually dies a martyr's death at the battle of Uhud. It is not incidental that the period of execution of the Hamza pro j ect coincided with Akbar's own heroic adventures and conquests including the violent campaigns of Chittor and Ranathambhor before the comparative calm of Fatehpur Sikri when the empire was firmly consolidated. The fact that a large nunber of Hamza folios deal with episodes of violent confrontation gives cre]ence to the telescoping of thei r c haracters and roles into one. It would seem that the ambit i ous young emp eror r e aching t he age of twenty commenced his campaigns in a 'mythical • land as the Hamza pro ject o pened and , settled to ponder over his destiny as it concluded. The overlap of the 'quests' o f Hamza and Akbar appears to have provided the artists a basic nucleus and driv e for a f res h visual fo rmu l a tion. I n the image of Hamza emerges a young soldier-nobleman in his twenties, with a short beard and well-t r imm e d moustac he , dr essed in c hakda r j ama and atpati turban.

And the l ands of h is co n qu est ~ have t :,e a rcnitecture, f l o rCJ. ;cl nd fauna of northern and western Ind i a . Being average in appeara nce and m ien~ 1 3. i-Ilahi,. which he believed in but was unable to propagate or enforce. So it is Hamzanama that records the process of transformation of an alien hero into the alter ego of Akbar, who grew in stages from a young prince into a visionary ruler coming to terms with his own duality and the multiplicity of his domain. This combination of might and suscepti­ bility in the characters of Hamza and Akbar enables the painter to circumvent the danger of fascist interpretation their power equations could have led to. Similarly, in the interaction of Safawi and Indian painters there seems to have emerged a recognition of both ability and innocence which enabled them to establish a rapport. The collective experiment however could not have frui tioned had they not relaxed

re~iprocal resistance to change from their respective traditional stand­ points. \Jitness to models of change in the person of the emperor and the kingdom, such resilience appears to have become the raison d'etre of the enterprise. Similarly, elements of power deployed in the visual combat of figure-ground gestalt were accelerated to generate a momentum which neutralised centrality, with focus moving alternately from image to image, on objects and figures. Such decentralisation removed Hamza from centre-stage he is often irretrievably lost in the crowds. In fact here emerges a metaphor of the multiple the paintings portray people rather than a person and in turn become free of any singular force, either of the protagonist's or the painter's ego.

The Hamza experiment initiated a process of formulation of self-identity not only for the growing emperor but for - the mythical hero and its creator, the painter. Akbar realises his destiny, of being conquered 19 by the land of his quest, with a mission for a polity of syncretism. This in turn changes the image of Hamza from an alien, holy knight tnto a quasi-secular Indian hero placed in tangible times. Representa tions of his vulnerability and worldly pursuits (like his dalliance with a

Greek princess or amorous overtures to Mihrdukht) render him e n d earin ~ . His conquests subtly interlinked with those . of Akbar makes his painters view his adversaries as poll tical opponents rather than , as infidels . Th is enables them to portray even s cenes o f iconoc l asm with a d egree of objectivity. Significantly the process of indigenisation correspond s 14. · to the successive exits of the Persian masters from the scene before the completion of the project.

The evolution of the self-identity of the painter began with the distri­ bution of work. Thrown as he was among practitioners of other provincial schools in the presence of the Persian masters, he must have realised the diversity of each, not excluding his own. It is difficult to say if the guild he belonged to followed the practice of assigning drawing, colouring and finishing respectively to different hands or allocated portrayals of animal and human figuration in separate categories, as seems to be the case at the Mughal atelier. It can be assumedJ however, that belonging to a shared parampara, visions of artists in systems like the guilds were expected to match in form and spirit, their modes

and met~ods blending in harmony not unlike the practise of individuals r\ belen .ging to musical gharanas. Understandably the guilds could not '-.._./ afford to entertain individual idiosyncracies. The Hamza story having had no visual precedent or prototype to emulate made it essential for the artists to seek new sources of articulation. The panorama of 1 if e provided the alternative. Perhaps the notion of specialised expertise 20 sprang from personal observation, skill and individual sensitivity. It is difficult to say if the method included direct use of models or acute observation of life distilled in memory; nonetheless the practice opened a new way of looking. Such a direct brush with representation of physical reality - like the taste of forbidden fruit - could not have been free of tensions. Alienated but not divorced from the parampara yet heady with the exc i tement of new adventure, the artist must have perceiv ed h i s s el f bo t h f rom within and without the tradition. Hamzanama marks that moment of self realisation. With his identity in a fluid state of definition and ambiguity the artist devised a language to match his condition. It was not a language of harmony: here elements of contrast, even conf lict were j uxtaposed against each other i n a spirit of contest. Far from blending one's voice or instrument in rhythmic curves it used s taccato, even clashing sounds to enact an order of to tal i ty cl::.:- to the o rchestral. This wa s a radica l departure from the t raditional harmonising principles of the gharanas and guilds. The 15. apparent dangers of a mutual negating of indiv idual visions or chaotic dissipation of the image (to which Hamza fell prey occassionally) were controlled by inventive devices of visual equil ibrium. Take for instance the reversibility of negative and positive ( V.S6, V.34) or the juxta­ position of faience patterns and figures in V.32, V.39, V.l8. The equa­ tion of diverse hands and sensibilities is achieved here by each form alternately projecting forth and throwing back the other.

The dynamics of such interaction gains its strength from the tenor of the times. The third quarter of the 16th century was a period of momentous change war campaigns, bloody confrontations of mighty adversaries and movement of vast masses. We are told that painters at the court of Akbar often marched with armies as large as the population of a city. 21 The complexion and character of such c ities on the march must have been both bewitching and menacing. So must have been the beauty of the land that lay indifferent before the violence that surrounded it. Such intense encounters with stark physicality made the painter evolve a vision of epic dimensions, turning ,.; hat was commonplace into a theatre of wonder. Feeling the pulse of the a ge, he used the occasion to chronicle a historical event as an opportunity to portray the process rather than a moment of time. The act of paint ing became an affirmation of hope, a survival strategy to outlast the pr esent. The world viewed in long marches and assaults, from invincible f ortresses and encampments in the wilds must have come to him in the spells of vision and nightmares which he portrayed with such vivid, acute percept ion. It is not difficult to believe that he could v isuali s e the giant Zamurrad r esting l ike a rock or a knight t os s ing an elephant i nto the a :~ .

To match Hamza' s marches, the ima gery of mirac-J lous visions and bloody battles that ensued had to be charged with £reat force and momentum.

The battl ing armies of t he ~i th a r a m Bhagawa t a a~d wild , wr ithing Tur kman dragons come to mind. What emerges in the proc e s s is a surf ace seething

vi g o u r ,hu ~a n with energy; charged with boundless . I ima gery is set in un- c e a s in g ::: o r:1 en t u rr. ; t r _ e s s t-j in g - n s t.J a y , r oc _. : :: - i s e , b u i l J i ::1 s:; s .s hoot up like apparitions , and blades of gr a ss and =.eave s quiver. Ev en t r i - 16. angles, hexagons, star-patterns of faience of floors and walls seem set at an axis to spin, shoot and burst. In the dizzying whirl of move­ ment there is no central focus. The experience is akin to being in the middle of a crowd where the individual dissolves into a larger rhythm governing the mass. This internal momentum is further reinforced by the structural devices of diagonals and centrifup;al constructs. The use of the diag_onal to destabilise the centre of the picture plane accentuates gravitational pulls by stretching and releasing tensions. The velocity of a crashing giant is felt manifold as he comes headlong from the. corner hitting the centre (). Enigmatically. weight and buoyancy simultaneously interject the spinning elephant into the hands of the diminutive knight (V. 35). In 'Amra Pulling Down the Bath House' (V. 3) there is a seismic diagonal divide of the picture plane. In another picture (V. 18) the directio n of swords pulls the movement of soldiers march! ng with the captured Hamza in the opposite direction. In 'Hihrdukht's Wager' (V. 54) four archers shoot out from the dark oxbow stream like the arrows they are sent out to retrieve as she sails away. These outward movements at t i::1es leave figures half across borders (V&A. 27, V. 32, V. 11) for the viewer to complete in the unpainted spaces. The device is used to link preceding and f ollowin ~ pages and retain a sense of narrative continuum.

Most challenging however was the task or renderi ng the massive figures of ·giants in a physical space inhabited by 'nor.nal' beings. The scale of the demons changes the plausible scene into a ma g ical sight. In 'Zamurrad Shah Watching the Feat o f the Kni fS h : Spe arin g a Tree' (V . 16), the giant's head, though apparently in c -: e d i s tanc e , zooms ou t of the picture plane by its sheer size to j oin : he viewer watching the scene below. The dazzling pale blue trunk of the : hinar and the forceful action of the knight however pushes the g iant ·_a ck i n his bal cony i an alternate telescoping of far and near. Such i nterface o f a frontal fullfaced giant and midspace scene of action eact alternately pro j ecting the other works like a reversible Ba r o

The most realistic and unprecedented instance · however, is the represen­ tation of violence (V. 27, V. 44, V. 25) where limbs and bodies being ripped and torn apart are portrayed with the objectivity of a butcher or a tanner. Perhaps the experience of being constantly at war where death stalked gave a. nightmarish quality to the evocation of fear and revulsion. The grotesque on the other hand provides comic relief. One can hear bells ringing on the tips of horns or on belts as a demon abducting a handsome prince flies in the air. Beauty of the male figure abounds in the representations of the sleeping prince, a swimming f i gure, a boatman or even a giant (V. 5, V. 26, V. 13, V&A. 8) in t he relative dearth of women.

The realism of the Hamza pictures is however not literal: it demonstrates that physicality need not be antithetical to metaphoric representation. It evolves ways of articulating dual or even multiple motives and offers means to achieve their integration without dilu t i ng t heir fo rm . l' he growing preoccupation with 'characters' of physical t ypes and their lR.

~expressions' does not reduce the quality of animation. Contortions of faces are held in check to contain emotional fluctuations. An over­ riding ambivalence or reticence about an image assuming physical veri­ similitudeexists despite its partial reversal. Its reality lies in using the world of appearances infused with animated substance of life and the unseen qualities of taste, touch, sound and smell, that complete the experience. So the grasses, flowers and trees in saturated pigments send out scents and saps; the dry and drying leaves rustle; landforms surge forward with smells of rocks and plains; and sweat-stained clothing exudes body warmth. The whole new world locating Hamza in specific time and place was however rendered without recourse to devices of illusionism like linear perspective, chiaroscuro and cast-shadows. In other words, this stunning formulation of materiality was not made with the means it is usually associated with. Ths was primarily because the story of Hamza was in a genre other than the naturalistic, for it did and yet did not belong to the times of Akbar. Its spectrum was wider, stretching on the one hand to memories of the archetypes and on the other towards an unseen future. So the process of its historicising remained in tune with the myth that stretched beyond the moment of history. It is in a territory where contemporaneity does not kill its past, nor does the onslaught of reality diminish the dream. With Akbar Nama, the magic of myth dissolves into drama of life, chronicling historical moments in the life of an individual. In Hamzanama the commingling of myth and history produces an unusual combination of visionary brilliance. It is a dream visualised with an open eye full of miraculous flashes. This ambivalent region of dream a nd reality is full of light: everything glows or is illuminated f rom within. There is 1 i terally no place f or a cast shadow; leaves of trees; walls of buildings and their tiles, bodies and costumes are vivid and aglitter. The physicalisation of the i ma ge is her e prevented from a ssuming a literal body , casting shadow. Effects of chiaroscuro obtained from European prints are used when they do not disturb luminescence. Foreshorten:i."ng is employed only · to the point of being consistent with bod y rhythms or pictorial structures. 19. Basically, the Hamzanama continues the use of theatric space of props and characters to project images out of the surface. There is little use of deep recession, hence panorama is excluded: even landscapes and skies remain within a middle range. The physicalisation of the image, however demands new space constructs. The change that follows marks a departure from the form of continuous narration where the story unfolds with the protagonist moving across a combined time-space panorama toward representation of definite time. Hamza or Amra rarely appear twice on a single page. Simultaneity of situations however continues; the inside of the cell and the outside of the prison in 'Amra rescuing Hamza• (V. 21) are portrayed on the same page. Space is now viewed as a scenario to be scanned in stages which in turn occasionally locates the position of the viewer. In the 'Sorceress; (V&A. 10) the viewer finds himself watching the duo on trees from another tree of the same height. The device also serves to create empathic reflection to induce the viewer into the picture.

To articulate the nature and quality of the emergent polyvalent languages is fraught with the dangers of literal interpretation and oversimpli­

fication. It can however be said with sufficient emphasis that a cl~ar shift is visible toward greater physicalisation of the ima ge in an effort to evolve a language of dynamic realism in tune with the times. The assumption that Hamzanama heralds a change from poetic rendition of the narrative tqward a prose format or from oral to written traditions is premature in view of limited resources available to study the content at present. It is however a pparent that i mages o f the Hamzanama , picked

from the - theatre of the s treet, the court a nd ba ttl e field such 3.S t hos e of noblemen, soldiers, courtiers, wayfarers, residents of the sera is like cooks, guards and even camels, thugs and thieves, be l ong to a specific time and surroundi ngs. There are hin ts of specific ecol ogy in the portrayal o f chosen bi rds and a n ima ls , village d\.;e llings of Sultanate monuments like the minar i n Mihrdukht's garden (V . 55 ) which is reminiscent of Rani Sabrai ' s mos qu e in Ahme da bad. 20. So the paintings of the Hamzanama carry the times of transition and change. They deal with flux and ferment rather than fulfilment; with processes rather than points of arrival. 'Marriage with Greek Princess' (V. 4) records a revocation of decision as the floor expands over figures already painted. Offering an alternative of continuous interaction between the timebound and timeless they demonstrate the coexistence of the collective and the individual instead of placing one in the service of the other. Individuation here finds its rationale from abilities to interact rather than dissolve or assert one's identity as was the practice in the guilds earlier or became prevalent in later. Having defined an intention other than achieving 'harmony• or 'unity•, the Hamza pictures evolved a language of counterpoints to keep an energy circuit alive without letting the diverse elements fall apart. Eclecticism as a means of strength and sustenance emerges as a viable principle of achieving totality. Apparently there are no 'finished' or 'final' pictures to be isolated and arrested in frames : Hamza folios seem to resist the notion of singular masterpieces and appear to explode the very margins they are held in. By structuring and mobilising vital elements of a tradition with forces of change to effect a subtle yet profound transformation of both they propose redefinition of the totality of a work of art. In effect they also question standardised notions of harmony and unity, originality and uniqueness as sole aims of art.

To reiterate, the strength and power of the Hamzanama pictures came from the challenges of change. But does it leave them in the realm of a unique moment of history created by convergence of events or do they contain elements of sustenance and continuity relevant for o ther times ? The subsequent Mughal manuscripts including Akbar Nama los t Hamzanama's

'blustering vigour• ~espite some of the gains, partly because they were book-bound, precious and • complete', while Ha mzanama remai ned f ree of such restrictions. And we are at a point in history where con t inuo 1.1 s transition and change - as also conflict and conflagration - are t he order of the day. What is the language of our time ? Does a c ollective enterprise hold any relevance in an age of ' o riginal ity' and ' i nd i v i ­ duality • but where some artists seek a lterna tives o f t he ys t.ems the y 23 belong to ? What does a tradition such as Hamza hold fo r us ?

May 2, 1989 NOTES

1} Variously referred to as Dastan-i-Amir Hamza or Qissa-i-Amir Hamza or Hamzanama, painted between 1562 and 1577 A.D. according to Pramod Chandra. Surviving folios include 61 in the Museum fur Angewandte· Kunst, Vienna, 27 in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, some in the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum, and stray folios dispersed between collections in Europe, USA and ·India. These might amount to a total of over 150 folios. Among the Indian collections, there is one each in the Baroda Museum and Picture Gallery, the Calico Museum in Ahmedabad and the National Museum in New Delhi. There are also two fragments in the Bhara t Kala Bhavan, Varanasi. References to pictures here are made from a publications 'Hamza Name I and II', Akademische Druck-u. Angewandte Kunst, Vienna and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London respec­ tively. (Abbr.: Vienna-V., Victoria and Albert Museum-V. & A.) Please also see author's 'The Paintings of the Hamza Nama', Inside­ Outside, Jan-Feb 1978)

2] Dastan-i-Amir Hamza, ed. Dr.Farooq Angali translated into modern and annotated at the behest of Lala Ratan Lal from the Persianised Urdu) translation by Jalil Khan in 1801 commissioned by Sir John Gilkright, Commander of Fort William, Ratan and Co., Tajiran-i-Kutub, Dariba Kalan, Delhi. This and other translations consulted are abridged versions and mostly do not tally with the stories of the surviving pictures.

Between the completion of this essay in 198~ and its publica tion now, information is received about growing research in the Hamza text and the pictures. Hopefully, a complete text and remaining folios will be published soon to facilitate fuller reading of pictures.

3] Archer W.G.; Indian Miniatures, 1960, p.l8 4] Arranged sideways, 1400 folios of 72 ems. each would span a space of 1.008 kms.

5] Welch, Stuart Cary; India, Art and Culture 1300 - 1900 p. 146

6] This contention is based on inferences made on stylistic grounds and not on any definite evidence of artists having directly descended from traditions of any of these manuscripts.

7] This is visible in the occasional rendering of • European style' curtains and costumes of Mihrdukht in monochrome (V. 42, V. 37) or wavy squiggles of water in white on indigo (V. 19)

8] Plantin's Polyglot Bible was presented to Akbar in 1572, i.e. dtiring the concluding years of the Hamza project, which speaks for the limited use of European motifs.

9] This is also based on movements of artists from He-rat to Tabriz and vice versa as well as the the Turkman tradition being related to Mughal ancestry.

10] Welch, Stuart Cary; Art of Mughal India.

11] Observations made by Nilima Sheikh in a discussion on the subject.

i2] Mani Kaul's observations are far more applicable to the non-Mughal space constructs t han to the Mughal ones. Mani Kaul, 'Seen from Nowhere'; 'Bahuvachan' - 1988

13] The statements here are generalised in order to make the point about t he changing palette. The subject of changing paint and paper technologies needs further research.

14] Or it coul d be called ' the a rts of the hi ghwa ys and t he byway s ' in Coomaraswamy's words •

. ' 15 J The only comparably sized manuscript, Falnameh (59 x 44.5 em., Tabriz, 1550), a book of prophecy, is known to have been made for ·shah Tahmasp. Its scale and visuals indicate a relationship with the Hamza f o 1 ios. The pain ted cloth hangings of Himalayan Buddhist traditions, especially Tibetan Thangkas and a reference to painted hangings used in Central Asian encampments (now lost) indicate probable antecedents of the Hamza folios.

16] We are told that the folios with image in front on cloth and text on paper on the reverse were bound in fourteen sets of a hundred. It was however believed until recently that folios were held up at the coqrt to the audience while the story was read out from behind. This view is contested on the ground that text on the reverse does not correspond to the image in front, instead corres­ pondence is cited between the text facing a folio which endorses the contention of folios being bound.

17] During the early years of his reign, despite the influence of Sunni orthodoxy, the pilgrim tax and jizya were revoked by 1569.

18) It is unusual to find portrayal of the emperor in a vu lnera~ l e condition when illustrations of imperial chronicles were meant to project an image of his might.

19] willed to be buried in Kabul, Huma yun died the year Delhi was reconquered, so it was Akbar who consciously made India his home.

20} It would be possible to identify the hand of a Bas awan here, or

that of a Daswanth there, or to locate t he mountain ~ o ats of Mir Sayyid Ali and the luminous rocks of Abd-u s-Samad in some f ol ios. Aided by librarians ' notes in the ma r gi::s includ ing :1ar:1 es o f artists, one may indicate recognizable motifs but this is unl i kely to throw light on the growth of an indiv idual's vision or t echnique. It i s howe ver , like lv t hat a pa i nte r s pecial ising i n , sa'> . patterns might have also tried the fi gures or t he l andscape, a nd i ce versa. Such a practise points to changes in rendering and articulation. It would be worthwhile to identify the painters of the massive figures or of the crowds; the painters prone to effects of shimmer­ ing whites and wriggles on indigo; or the painters with a penchant for diagonal and centrifugal constructs.

21] Attilio Petruccioli; 'The City as an Image of the King'; A Mirror of Princes, ed: Dalu Jones; Marg Publications

.. 22] Welch, Stuart Cary; A Flower From Every Meadow, p. 26-27

23] Three artists, Bhupen Khakhar, Nalini Malani and Vivan Sundaram are presently engaged in a collective mural on glass in a Bombay residence (completed in ). LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ( C6LOU R ) *

Published in

1. Knight Spearing a Tree watched by Zamurrad Hamza Nama Vol . I v. 16 Akademische Druck-u Verlagsanstalt, Graz

· 2. Sorceress V. & A. 10 Hamza Nama Vol. II­ Akademische Druck-u Verlagsanstalt, Graz

3. Hamza in Prison (detail) Hamza Nama Vol. I v. 21 Akademische Druck-u Verlagsanstalt, Garz

4. Foliage and Architecture (detail) Hamza Nama Vol. I 31 v. Akademische Druck-u Verlagsanstalt, Graz · A Battle in the Caucasus or March of Hamza's Soldiers into Northwestern · ,* Mughal, A.D. 1570 from the Hamzanama (1562-77 A.D.), 28"x22", painted on cotton partially covered with text on paper.

The well-preserved Hamzanama folio is among the five or so pictures in Indian collections from a little over one tenth of the original 1400 painted at the court of Akbar which survive today. It is covered by bands of inscribed text ·unlike most other known pages which have the text invariably pasted on the reverse. The earlier contention that the pictures were shown to the court while stories were read out from the back is now controverted by the discovery that the stories do not necessarily match the visual in front. More likely, as the contemporary chronicles suggest, the folios were sewn in sets of a hundred - bulk notwithstanding.

The stories of Hamza recounting the heroic exploits of an uncle of

the Prophet are entwined with other tales of popular romanc~s, which we are told were a great favourite of Akbar's. The unusually large format of the 'miniatures' conceived on an epic scale - estimated to span the space of a kilometre if laid out horizontally - took about a hundred artists and craftsmen fifteen years to complete. The grand experiment enabled a large contingent of indigenous artists under the guidance two Iranian ustads Mir Sayyid Ali and Abdus Samad to visualise stories rarely painted before. Arguably, it is the early years of Akbar's reign with his heroic conquests which serve as a backdrop to formulate the images of the mythical protagonist and the arena of his action is placed in the landscape, people, flora and fauna of the subcontinent. It also sets the stage for the conscious evolution of a visual idiom - Mughal in this case - through an exercise where hands and minds of several artists of diverse predispositions worked on a single folio.

The surviving pictures which have of most dispersed in Europe and USA and are in varying stages of damage and disf iguration, reveal an unmistakeable outpour of explosive energy, diagonal if centrifugal compositions, especially in the scenes of conflict and war. In the portrayal of violence, the Hamzanama has few parallels, simultaneously it simmers with delights of exquisite and tender perceptions of animal and plant life. The imagery springing from multiple focal points often wells out of borders suggesting continuities from previous and succeeding pages, thus evoking the space - constructs of murals and scrolls.

The Baroda picture shows a battle scene with a giant and the rickety figure of Umar, Hamza' s clever companion swinging a sling amidst a melee of soldiers of various ethnic types. The rising rock - forms harking back to a Fareastern lineage and fiaence-patterned architecture derived through Persian prototypes interlocked with sinuously animated imagery drawn from the figuration of the pre-Mughal (Mitharam) Bhagavatapurana ring with eclectic resonances - a jugalbandi of the Iranian and indigenous qalams.

* The different titles refer to the Handbook of the Collections, Baroda Museum and Picture Gallery, 1952 and The Bulletin of the Baroda Museum and Picture Gallery, Vol. II, Part I, 1944-45 respectively.