"There is no God but God," said the Apostle of Arabia, but the poet reflected awhile, and his rejoinder was: "The Ways of God are as the number of souls of men."
The Prophet's religion was rational, its principles attainable; it secured for the poet social amelioration and physical comfort, but there was a voice from the depth of his soul that he could not silence. It was the voice of mystery; he was concerned with the problems of the "Wherefore, the Whence, and the Whither".... Was he not a Son of the land which Plotinus visited to learn mystery of the Orient of Old?[9]
We have to look therefore to the Religion, "The Ways" of whose God "are as the number of Souls of Men", to perceive the true nature of the evolution of the artistic expression of these people.
Souls with irresistible cravings for Mysticism, poets, artists, philosophers and the like, discovered for the first time from Muhammad's formal teachings, which contained certain esoteric elements, that the senses, unreal and phenomenal, have yet an important mission to fulfill in the task which aims to escape from Self (which is an illusion and the root of sin, pain, and sorrow) and to attain the height where the eternal beauty,
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"PORTRAIT OF MEHDI ALI GULI KHAN, COMMANDER OF FORTRESS, BY RAMDAS"—A.D. 1630.
A leaf from the National Portrait Album conceived by the Emperor Akbar, and amplified and executed by Jahangir and Shah Jahan. The volume consists of portraits of the Royal Family of the Great Moguls and their principal supporters. These historic personages are represented in the centre as single individuals, with their chief officials and retainers in the border around them.
Ramdas, a Hindu artist, was one of Akbar's artists who worked under Jahangir and Shah Jahan. His signed works include the following:
Baburnama in the British Museum and South Kensington Museum.
Akbarnama in South Kensington Museum.
Razmnama in the State Library, Jaipur, India.
Timurnama in the Oriental Public Library, Bankipur, India.