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BYSTANDERS WATCH THE EXECUTION OF THE ABYSSINIAN JUJHAR KHAN BY ELEPHANT, A SCENE FROM THE AKBARNAMA OF 1597, LATER MOUNTED ON A LEAF FROM THE FARHANG-I JAHANGIRI OF 1608
THE PAINTING ATTRIBUTED TO HIRANAND, MUGHAL INDIA, LATE 16TH/EARLY 17TH CENTURY Recto with ink, colours and gold on paper, the right-hand side of a double-page composition, the painting mounted onto the illuminated manuscript leaf, verso with 35ll. fine red and black nasta'liq in blue frame of gold floral meander, margins with black-outlined gold figures and floral sprays Painting 9 1/8 x 5 in. (23.2 x 12.7cm.); folio 13 ? x 8 5/8in. (33.7 x 21.8cm.)
The Mughal Emperor Akbar (r.1556-1605) commissioned his prime minister and close friend, Abu’l-Fazl, to write a history of his reign in the spring of 1589. The completed text known as the Akbarnama (The Book of Akbar) was presented to the Emperor in 1598, nearly ten years later. There are two known illustrated copies of the Akbarnama dating from the reign of Akbar. A ‘third’ royal Akbarnama manuscript has recently come to light, dating from circa1595-1600 and thought to have belonged to Akbar’s mother, Hamida Banu Begum.
The first copy in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum is in larger format and can be dated to circa 1590-95. The dating suggests that work on this illustrated copy had begun even before the final text of the Akbarnama had been presented to Akbar. A slightly later copy, by the famous calligrapher, Maulana Muhammad Husayn Kashmiri, known as Zarrin Qalam, is divided between the British Library (OR.12988) and the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. Volume I of Abu’l-Fazl’s text which is in the British Library deals with the history of the Mughals up to Akbar and Akbar's childhood, covering events up to the death of Humayun in 1556. The Chester Beatty Library has volumes II and part of III which are concerned with Akbar's reign itself, beginning with Akbar’s coronation and ending in 1579. It is uncertain whether the final portion of the manuscript is missing or was never completed. The British Library has 163 folios with 39 paintings and the Chester Beatty Library has 268 folios with 61 paintings and seven additional folios from volume I. The seven additional leaves are all mounted on Farhang-i Jahangiri folios (Leach, 1995, no.2.154-2.160, p.294-300). Art historians have variously dated this Akbarnama from either the last years of the 16th century or the first years of the 17th century depending on the precise reading of an inscription. John Seyller has suggested a corrected reading of the date on f.134b of the British Library volume as 12 Isfandarmuz mah-i Ilahi sana 40/22 February 1596. Corroborating this date is a second inscription on a painting near the beginning of the Chester Beatty Library volume with another date, 19 Urdibihisht RY 42/30 April 1597 (Seyller, 1987, 247-77.)
Our painting is an illustration from the Akbarnama of 1597, associated with volumes II and III in the Chester Beatty Library. Like several other known folios from the same Akbarnama, it was mounted on a folio from the Farhang-i Jahangiri of 1608 in the early 20th century. For another similarly mounted Baburnama folio, see lot 82 in the present sale.
The painting depicts a crowd of figures, including a couple of Europeans, most of them gazing leftwards at an occurrence, seemingly outside the borders of this work. This is the right half of a double-page composition, originally painting no. 128. It falls in the gap of the Chester Beatty Library Akbarnama after folio 178. The other half, which depicts a gruesome execution, attributed to Hiranand, is in the Walters Art Museum (W.684A; Beach, 1978, no.4, pg.43). The Walters painting depicts the execution of Jujhar Khan by an elephant. Jujhar Khan Bakshi, a military chief of Gujarat, was punished by Akbar for the murder of Changez Khan. The mother of the deceased filed a complaint with Akbar as he was passing through Bharoach in Gujarat. An official enquiry was ordered and when Jujhar Khan confessed, he was thrown under the feet of an elephant named Manmil.
The painting has been attributed to the artist Hiranand whose style is well-documented. His facial depictions with large, long faces on the main portraits and minimum differentiation among the minor figures, as visible here, can also be seen in two Akbarnama pages in the Freer Gallery of Art (F1952.34 and F1952.31), published in Beach, 1978, 12 e, f, pp.114-117. The rendition of the curved tent panel in 12e is also very similar to our painting. The Freer pages are thought to have been worked on by Hiranand alone. For a list of other Mughal manuscripts with inscriptions to Hiranand, see Beach, 1981, pg.116. For a brief overview of Hiranand’s career, see Leach, 1995, p.1105. A Mughal hunting scene from the De Luynes album, also attributable to Hiranand, circa 1600, sold in these Rooms, 4 October 2012, lot 167. For another Akbarnama illustration mounted on a Farhang-i Jahangiri folio which sold in these Rooms recently, see 26 October 2017, lot 183.
We would like to thank John Seyller for his assistance with cataloguing this lot.
