UPSC History The Mughal Empire NCERT Extracts - Architecture, Painting, Literature and Music

 Architecture

• The Mughals built magnificent forts, palaces, gates, public buildings, mosques, baolis (water tank or well), etc. They also laid out many formal gardens with running water.
• In fact, use of running water even in their palaces and pleasure resorts was a special feature of the Mughals.
• Babur was very fond of gardens and laid out a few in Agra and Lahore.
• These gardens were called chahar bagh, four gardens, because of their symmetrical division into quarters.
• Beginning with Akbar, some of the most beautiful chahar baghs were constructed by Jahangir and Shah Jahan in Kashmir, Agra and Delhi
• Some of the Mughal gardens, such as the Nishat Bagh in Kashmir, the Shalimar Bagh at Lahore, the Pinjore garden in the Punjab foothills, etc., have survived to this day.
• The famous mausoleum of SherShah at Sasaram (Bihar) and his mosque in the old fort at Delhi are considered architectural marvels.
• Akbar was the first Mughal rulers, who had the time and means to undertake construction on large scale. He built a series of forts, the most famous of which is the fort at Agra.
• Built in red sandstone, this massive fort of Agra had many magnificent gates.
• The climax of fort building was reached at Delhi where Shah Jahan built his famous Red Fort.
• In 1572, Akbar commenced a place-cum-fort complex at Fatehpur Sikri, 36 kilometres from.Agra, which he completed in eight years.
• Built atop a hill, along with a large artificial lake, it included many buildings in the style of Gujarat and Bengal. These included deep eaves, balconies, and fanciful kiosks.
• In the Panch Mahal built for taking the air, all the types of pillars used in various temples were employed to support flat roofs.
• The Gujarat style of architecture is used most widely in the palace built probably for his Rajput wife or wives.
• Akbar took a close personal interest in the work of construction both at Agra and Fatehpur Sikri.
• Persian or Central Asian influence can be seen in the glazed blue tiles used for decoration in the walls or for tiling the roofs.
• But the most magnificent building was the mosque and the gateway to it called the
• Buland Darwaza or the Lofty Gate, built to commemorate Akbar's victory in Gujarat.
• The gate is in the style of what is called a half-dome portal.
• This devise, borrowed from Iran, became feature in Mughal buildings later.
• Towards the end of Jahangir's is reign began the practice of putting up buildings entirely of marble and decorating the walls with floral designs made of semi-precious stones.
• This method of decoration, called pietra dura, became even more popular under Shah Jahan who used it on a large scale in the Taj Mahal, justly regarded as a jewel of the builder's art.
• The Taj Mahal brought together in a pleasing manner all the architectural forms developed by the Mughals.                                
• Humayun’s tomb built at Delhi towards the beginning of Akbar's reign, and which had a massive dome of marble, may be considered a precursor of the Taj.
• The double dome was another feature of this building.
• The Taj Mahal at Agra was completed in 1643.
• The chief glory of the Taj is the massive dome and the four slender minarets linking the platform to the main building.
• The decorations are kept to a minimum, delicate marbles screens, pietra dura inlay work and kiosks (chhatris) adding to the effect.
• The building gains by being placed in the midst of a formal garden.
• Mosque-building also reached its climax under Shah Jahan.
• The two most noteworthy ones being the Moti Masjid in the Agra fort built like the Taj entirely in marble, and the other the Jama Masjid at Delhi built in red sandstone,
• A lofty gate, tall, slender minarets, and a series of domes are a feature of the Jama Masjid.
• Although not many buildings were put up by Aurangzeb who was economy-minded.
• Mughal traditions influenced the palaces and forts of many provincial and local kingdom.
• Even the Harmandir of the Sikhs, called the Golden Temple at Amritsar which was rebuilt several times during the period was built on the arch and dome principle and incorporated many features of the Mughal traditions of architecture.

Painting

• The Mughal made distinctive contribution in the field of painting.
• They introduced new themes depicting the court, battle scenes and the chase, and added new colours and new forms.
• They created a living tradition of painting which continued to work in different parts of the country long after the glory of the Mughals had disappeared.
• The richness of the style, again, was due to the fact that India had an old tradition of painting. The wall-paintings of Ajanta are an eloquent indication of its vigour.
• While at the court of the Shah of Iran, Humayun had taken into his service two master painters who accompanied him to India,
• Under their leadership, during the reign of Akbar, painting was organised in one of the imperial establishments (karkhanas).
• A large number of painters from different parts of Ac country were invited, many of them from lowly castes.
• Thus Daswant and Basawan were two of the famous painters of Akbar's court.
• Indian colour, such as peacock blue, the Indian red, etc., began to be used.
• Above all, the somewhat flat effect of the Persian style began to be replaced by the roundedness of the Indian brush, giving the pictures a three-dimensional effect.
• Mughal painting reached a climax under Jahangir who had a very discriminating eye.
• It was a fashion in the Mughal School for the faces, bodies and feet the people in a single picture to be painted by different artists.
• Jahangir claims that he could distinguish the work of each artist in a picture.
• Apart from painting hunting, battle and court scenes, under Jahangir, special progress was made in portrait painting and paintings of animals.
• Mansur was the great name in this field. Portrait painting also became fashionable.
• Under Akbar, European painting was introduced at the court by the Portuguese priests.
• Under their influence, the principles of foreshortening, whereby near and distant people and things could be placed in perspective was quietly adopted.

• While the tradition continued under Shah Jahan, Auranzeb's lack of interest in painting led to a dispersal of the artists to different places of the country.
• This helped in the development of painting in the states of Rajasthan and the Punjab hills.

Language and Literature

• By the time of Akbar, knowledge of Persian had become so widespread in north India that he dispensed with the tradition of keeping revenue records in the local language (Hindawi) in addition to Persian.
• Persian prose and poetry reached a climax under Akbar's reign.
• The leading poet of the age was his brother Faizi who also helped in Akbar's translations department. The translation of the Mahabharata was carried out under his supervision.
• Utbi and Naziri were the two other leading Persian poets.
• Though born in Persia, they were among the many poets and scholars who migrated from Iran to India during the period and made the Mughal court one of the cultural centres of the Islamic world.
• The dalliance of Krishna with Radha and the milkmaids, pranks of the child Krishna and stories from Bhagawat figure largely in lyrical poetry in Bengali Oriya, Hindi, Rajasthani and Gujarati during this period.
• Alaol composed in Bengali and also translated from Persian.
• In Hindi, the Padmavat, the story written by the Sufi saint, Malik Muhammad Jaisi, used the attack of Alauddin Khaiji on Chittor as an allegory to expound Sufi ideas on the relations of soul with God, along with Hindu ideas about maya.
• From the time of Akbar, Hindi poets began to be attached to the Mughal court.
• A leading Mughal noble, Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan, produced a fine blend of Bhakti poetry with Persian ideas of life and human relations.
• Thus, the Persian and the Hindi literary traditions began to influence each other.
• But the most influential Hindi poet was Tulsidas whose hero was Rama and who used a dialect of Hindi spoken in the eastern parts of Uttar Pradesh.
• Tuisi was essentially a humanistic poet who upheld family ideals and complete devotion to Rama as a way of salvation open to all, irrespective of caste.
• Marathi reached its apogee at the hands of Eknath and Tukaram.
• Asserting the importance of Marathi, Eknath exclaims: "If Sanskrit was made by God, was Prakrit born of thieves and knaves? Let these errings of vanity alone. God is no partisan of tongues.9' To Him Prakrit and Sanskrit are alike.
• Due to the writings of the Sikh Gurus, Punjabi received a new life.

Music

• Akbar patronised Tansen of Gwalior who is credited with composing many new ragas.
• There are many apocryphal stories about the burial of music by the orthodox Aurangzeb
• Recent research shows that Aurangzeb banished singing from his court, but not playing of musical instruments.
• In fact, Aurangzeb himself was an accomplished veena player.
• Music in all forms continued to be patronised by Aurangzeb's queens in the harem and by the nobles. That is why the largest number of books on classical Indian music in Persian were written during Aurangzeb's reign.
• But some of the most important developments in field of music took place later on in the eighteenth century during the reign of Muhammad Shah (1719-48).