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A Note on an Illustrated Manuscript of the Jog-Bāshisht

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Extract

The Spanish priest Fra Sebastian Manrique, who visited Agra thirty-five years after Akbar′s death, recorded that Akbar′s Library, consisting of books written mostly by “very ancient and serious authors”numbered twenty-four thousand. Many of these must have been illuminated and illustrated ;nearly all, like most of the frescoes with which the Emperor caused his artists to adorn his palaces at Lahore and at Fathpur Sikri, have now perished. Ivan Stchoukine in his careful study of Indian miniature painting, surveying the principal illustrated manuscripts of the reign, enumerates only fourteen, though his list might have been rather larger. It would, had Stchoukine known of it, certainly have included the manuscript with which this note is concerned, for Mr. Chester Beatty′s Jog-Bāshisht is unquestionably one of the leading documents of the book art of the formative period of Mughal painting, and deserves to rank with two other celebrated manuscripts, both in this country, of the latter part of Akbar′s reign, the Bahāristān belonging to the Bodleian Library, and Mr. Dyson Perrins′s Khamsa of Nizāmī.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1948

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References

page 684 note 1 The Editor gratefully acknowledges Mr. Chester Beatty's kindness in permitting these reproductions to be published

page 693 note 1 I am grateful to Prof. J. Brough for help in this summary.

page 693 note 2 Bieu, Persian Catalogue, p. 61.