ear 1500. In this style, known as Turkman, the flat figures of previous
Persian painting were set in landscapes of rich and glowing herbage,
plants and trees being rendered with wild and primitive vigour. In each
case the style was probably brought to India by Persian artists who
communicated it to Indian painters or themselves adjusted it to local
conditions. And it is this process which was repeated but on an altogether
grander scale by the Muslim dynasty of the Mughals. Under the emperor
Akbar (1556-1605), the Mughals absorbed the greater part of Northern
India, concentrating in one imperial court more power and wealth than had
probably been amassed at any previous time in India. Among Akbar's
cultural institutions was a great imperial library for which a colony of
artists was employed in illustrating manuscripts in Persian. The founders
of this colony were Persian and it is once again a local style of Persian
painting which forms the starting point. This style is no longer the
Turkman style of Shiraz but a later style--a local version of Safavid
painting as current in Khurasan. With its lively and delicate naturalism
it not only corresponded to certain predilections of the emperor Akbar
himself, but seems also to have appealed to Indian artists recruited to
the colony. Its representational finesse made it an ideal medium for
transcribing the Indian scene and the appearance at the court of European
miniatures, themselves highly naturalistic, stimulated this character
still further. The result was the sudden rise in India, between 1570 and
1605, of a huge new school of painting, exquisitely representational in
manner and committed to a new kind of Indian naturalism. Such a school,
the creation of an alien Muslim dynasty, would at first sight seem
unlikely to produce illustrations of Hindu religion. Its main function was
to illustrate works of literature, science and contemporary history--a
function which resulted in such grandiose productions as the _Akbarnama_
or Annals of Akbar, now preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum.[74]
None the less there are two ways in which Mughal painting, as developed
under Akbar, contributed to the Krishna story. Akbar, although a Muslim by
birth, was keenly interested in all religions and in his dealings with the
Rajputs had shown himself markedly tolerant. He desired to minimise the
hatred of Muslims for Hindus and believing it to arise from mutual
ignorance, ordained that certain H