"Whose life laughs through and spits at their creed!
Who maintain Thee in word, and defy Thee in deed!"
A curiosity of the time is the way in which those who now follow the craft of the Persian limner and often boast Persian descent, have adopted Hindu notions in their work, though still remaining Muhammadan. Some of the best representations in the popular lithographs sold at fairs of the many-armed Hindu divinities are the work of Muhammadan draughtsmen. So in the time of the Mogul power the Court chroniclers were often Hindus who complacently wrote of the pillage and wreck of the temples of their own faith as triumphs over idolatrous infidels and officially lauded the deeds of Muhammadans in phrases of unctuous insincerity.
An official illuminator is attached to most native courts, an artist whose pride it is to work with "a brush of one hair," and to repeat carefully the types he has learned. There is a complete series of portraits of all the dynasties that have ruled at Delhi, Agra, and Lucknow. The persistence of the types is curious and interesting. The long nose of the Emperor Aurengzebe and the round face of Nūr Mahal are as familiar and constant as the characteristic features of Lord Brougham or Lord Beaconsfield in volumes of Punch. The English gentleman and lady were learned a hundred years ago in high-collared coats, tight pantaloons, frilled shirt-fronts, gigot sleeves, and high-waisted, short frocks. To-day in drawing English people the same pattern is faithfully followed. Animals are similarly sketched in obedience to a strict convention. The tiger is almost invariably of the short-bodied variety. This occurs in India at times, but is much less common than the Bengal tiger proper. In the Kensington Natural History Museum I recognised on a shelf the tiger of the Indian illuminator, and shortly afterwards met Colonel Beresford Lovett, R.E., by whom it was presented, who told me that he shot it in Mazanderan, in Persia. Perhaps it is rash to jump to the conclusion that the Persian artist imported his peculiar beast into a land with tigers of its own, but it is certain that the squareness of the Indian limner's tiger is entirely unlike the typical shape of the Indian animal.
The horse is always fat, with a tremendously arched neck and slender legs, resembling, as has been noted in another place, the horse of the painters of the European Renaissance; but lacking his learned display of loaded muscle. In Dr. Aitkin and Mrs. Barbauld's delightful Evenings at Home, a boy attempts a definition of the horse which has always seemed to me to embody very fairly the vague Oriental conception: "I should say he was a fine, large, prancing creature with slender legs and an arched neck, and a sleek, smooth skin, and a tail that sweeps the ground, and that he snorts and neighs very loud, and tosses his head and runs as swift as the wind." Herein, as the instructive book points out, are very few of the vital facts of the animal, but they have sufficed without much help from actual observation for many generations of Orientals. Carven horses are rare and seldom successful either as ornamental creations or as representations of nature.
The native of India is but now beginning to learn to care for accurate statements of fact, whether in a literary, scientific, or artistic sense. The Education Department, which, after all, is only the stress of the time brought to a point, and represents the will of the upper classes of the people as much as that of their British fellow-subjects, is determined that this reproach shall be removed, and imports the illustrated lesson-books and wall-pictures of Western schools. In all that concerns the well-being of animals and people, improved knowledge cannot but do good, but the extinction of the pictured horses of romance, the pursy steeds of Sohrab and Rustom, of the legendary Raja Rasálu and the fat chargers of many a Hindu Maharaja and Muhammadan Nawab will not be accomplished without regrets. With them will perish the Persian winged horses which have become naturalised among Indian draughtsmen, and there will be no place for the Yālis and other fantastic creations in which horse forms are traceable. Sūrya, the sun-god, is always represented in a chariot drawn by horses, invariably in profile: one horse being completely drawn and a long row indicated behind with a few repeating lines. Very admirable design is possible under these conditions, but few modern pictures of the Indian Phœbus are admirable either in suggestion or accomplishment.
On a very humble level are the little animals made in clay by the women of a household and often by potters for certain Hindu anniversaries. I write "humble" mechanically, but it must be said in fairness that the rustic classes in Europe do not produce for their amusement anything so good. We once had an elderly servant of serious demeanour, respectable appearance, first-rate testimonials as to character, and hopeless incapacity for his work. One evening, with all the shyness of a youthful artist, he invited me to see a little "picture" he had prepared in the court of the servants' quarters. I was delighted by a charming model of a fort with walls and bastions complete, in which there were camel-riders, dragoons, generals, colonels, and Rajas, all modelled in clay and painted; little lamps were lighted round the mimic scene, the children sat gazing in rapt admiration, and from the dark background of the yard sympathetic murmurs echoed my words of praise. The "bearer's" triumph was complete when his mistresses came to see and admire, but if he had been very wise he would have been content with the master's approval. For during the rest of the time he afflicted us I was often reminded that he had missed his vocation, and would be better employed in modelling soldiers, elephants, and camels, which he did well, than in trimming lamps, making beds, dusting furniture, and blacking boots in a half-hearted and wholly inartistic manner.
Figures of horses and cattle like the gingerbread "gee-gees" of country fairs in Europe, are all that are strictly required for these rustic celebrations, which are probably of great antiquity, representing the worship of domestic animals as part of the family prosperity in a pristine age, or the setting forth of the army of Rama, with an interweaving of obscure legends. But when the artist is clever the subject is naturally expanded and embroidered upon. When you see Mr. H. M. Stanley paraded as Guy Fawkes in London streets it is easy to understand how, with themes of a far more vague and shadowy character, Oriental fancy has free play.
SMALL WARES IN METAL
A regular part of the potter's business in many regions is the fashioning of toy animals in terra-cotta, gaily painted by his women folk for fairs and festival days. At Delhi, by way of compliment to the chief civil authority, the potters there have at times made small statuettes of the Commissioner and Deputy-Commissioner. These portraits were often amusingly like the originals. There is a legend indeed, that one distinguished officer was so much more than flattered by his clay images that he bought up the whole baking to be broken up. Fantail pigeons, peacocks, parrots, and the generic bird of Indian domestic decoration, akin to the "dicky-bird" of the British child's slate, are made as toys in great numbers. Crows and poultry seldom appear.