ourt, travelled out to this northerly Rajput state, daring the
desert, and there produced these vapid works. It is likely that in the
early years of the seventeenth century, many areas of India possessed no
artists whatsoever and if a Hindu ruler was to copy Mughal fashion, the
only artists available to him might be those of an inferior rank. And
although exact data are wanting, such circumstances may well explain
another document of Krishna, the first illustrated version of Keshav Das's
_Rasika Priya_.[78] As we have seen, this poem was composed at Orchha in
Bundelkhand in 1591, at a time when both poet and court were in close
association with Akbar. Yet the version in question shows the same
poverty-stricken manner with its crude aping of imperial idioms and utter
lack of sensitive expression. There is no evidence that at this time
Bundelkhand possessed its own school of painting and in consequence the
most likely explanation is that yet another inferior artist trained in the
early Mughal manner, migrated to the court and there produced this crude
prosaic version. In none of these provincial Mughal pictures is there any
feeling for Krishna as God or even as a character. The figures have a
wooden doll-like stiffness, parodying by their evident jerkiness the
exquisite emotions intended by the poet and we can only assume that
impressed by the imperial example minor rulers or nobles encouraged
struggling practitioners but in an atmosphere far removed from that of the
great emperor.

Such paintings in a broken-down Akbari manner characterize the period 1615
to 1630. From then onwards Mughal painting, as it developed under the
emperor Shah Jahan, concentrated on more courtly themes. The early
interest in dramatic action disappeared and the demand for costly
manuscripts, sumptuously illustrated, withered up. Under Aurangzeb,
tolerant understanding gave way to a vicious proselytism and it was only
in remote centres such as Bikaner that later Mughal artists exercised
their style on Krishna themes. It is significant that at Bikaner their
leader was a Muslim, Ruknuddin, and that his chief work was a series of
pictures illustrating the _Rasika Priya_.[79] His figures have a shallow
prettiness of manner, stamping them once again as products of a style
which, in its earliest phases, was admirably suited to recording dramatic
action but which had little relevance to either religion or romance. For
these a more poetic and symbolic man