Question

Write a Short Essay (About 250-300 Words) on the Following:-

To what extent do you think the visual material presented in this chapter corresponds with Abu’l Fazl’s description of the taswir (Source 1)?

Source 1 :- (In praise of taswir)

Abu’l Fazl held the art of painting in high esteem:-

Drawing the likeness of anything is called taswir. His Majesty from his earliest youth, has shown a great predilection for this art, and gives it every encouragement, as he looks upon it as a means both of study and amusement. A very large number of painters have been set to work. Each week, several supervisors and clerks of the imperial workshop submit before the emperor the work done by each artist, and His Majesty gives a reward and increases the monthly salaries of the artists according to the excellence displayed. .... Most excellent painters are now to be found, and masterpieces, worthy of a Bihzad, may be placed at the side of the wonderful works of the European painters who have attained worldwide fame. The minuteness in detail, the general finish and the boldness of execution now observed in pictures are incomparable; even inanimate objects look as if they have life. More than a hundred painters have become famous masters of the art. This is especially true of the Hindu artists. Their pictures surpass our conception of things. Few, indeed, in the whole world are found equal to them.

Answer 1

(i) Drawing the likeness of anything is called taswir. His Majesty from his earliest youth has shown a great predilection for this art, and gives it every encouragement, as he looks upon it as a means both of study and amusement.

(ii) A very large number of painters set to work.

(iii) Each week, several supervisors and clerks of the imperial workshop submit before the emperor the work done by each artist, and his Majesty gives a reward.

(iv) Paintings served not only to enhance the beauty of a book but were believed to possess special powers of communicating ideas about the kingdom and the power of kings in ways that the written medium could not.

(v) The historian Abu’l Fazl described painting as a ‘magical art’ in his view it had the power to make inanimate objects look as if they possessed life.