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Jahangir as Francis Bacon's Ideal of the King as an Observer and Investigator of Nature*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2009

Ebba Koch
Ebba Koch*
Affiliation:
University of Vienna
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Abstract

The Mughal Empire is paradigmatic in many of its formulations, and it is epitomised in the persons of its first six padshahs or emperors. The Great Mughals, Grao Mogor, Grand Mogul, Großmogul or Groote Mogul, as the padshahs were known in Europe, have been considered as paragons of rulership. In critical appraisals, which were the prevailing view in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they were the quintessential Oriental despots, held up as a warning to those rulers in Europe with similar aspirations. One thinks here especially of Francois Bernier's letters of the Mughal court to his French contacts which included Colbert, the minister of Louis XIV (r. 1643-1715). In more sympathetic (and more recent) eyes, such as those of the world-traveller, philosopher and enthusiastic inter-culturalist Count Hermann Keyserling, who was in India in 1911, they were “the grandest rulers brought forth by mankind”. Keyserling came to this conclusion because the Mughals “combined in their personalities so many divers talents: they were men of action, refined diplomats, experienced judges of the human psyche, and at the same time aesthetes and dreamers”. He felt that such a “superior human synthesis” (grossartige Menscheitsynthese) had not shown itself in any European king. Here I discuss to what extent the emperor Jahangir fulfilled Francis Bacon's ideal of the perfect ruler.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , July 2009 , pp. 293 - 338
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2009

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References

1 Rubiés, J.P., “Oriental Despotism and European Orientalism: Botero to Montesquieu”, Journal of Early Modern History, vol. 9, nos 1–2 (2005), pp. 109–180CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Keyserling, Graf H., Das Reisetagebuch eines Philosophen (Darmstadt, 1923), i, pp. 233–235Google Scholar.

3 Babur, Zahir-ud-Din Muhammad, Babur-Nama (Memoirs of Babur), trans. by Beveridge, A. S. (1921, repr. New Delhi, 1970)Google Scholar; Baburnama, Chaghatay Turkish Text with Abdul-Rahim Khankhanan's Persian Translation, Turkish Transcription, Persian Edition and English Translation by W. M. Thackston, 3 vols (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor, trans., ed. and annotated by W. M. Thackston (Washington, D. C./ New York, 1996).

4 Jahangir, Tuzuk-i Jahangiri or Memoirs of Jahangir, trans. by A. Rogers, ed. by H. Beveridge, 2 vols (1909–14, repr. Delhi, 1994); The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India, trans., ed. and annotated by W. M. Thackston (New York, 1999)

5 The Advancement of Learning and New Atlantis by Francis Bacon with a preface by T. Case (London, 1605 and 1627, 1906; rpt 1966), p. 47.

6 Ibid., Bacon cites this Proverb of Solomon (25,2) also in his New Organon, see Neues Organon, Latin text of the ed. of J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis and D. D. Heath of 1858 with German translation of R. Hoffmann, ed. by G. Korf, ed. M. Buhr, (Berlin, 1962), newly edited with an introduction by W. Krohn, 2nd ed. (Hamburg, 1999), vol. 1, pp. 268–69; cf. Francis Bacon: The New Organon, ed. by L. Jardine and M. Silverthorne (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 99–100.

7 S. Rauschenbach, “Wissenschaft zwischen politischer Repräsentation und gesellschaftlichen Nutzen. Über den Traum vom gelehrten Herrscher in der Frühen Neuzeit [Science between Political Representation and Use by Society: About the Dream of the Scholarly Ruler in the Early Modern Period]”, in R. van Dülmen and S. Rauschenbach, Macht des Wissens: Die Entstehung der modernen Wissenschaftsgesellschaft, (Cologne, Weimar, Vienna, 2004), pp. 295–318, citation from p. 307.

8 Bacon, Advancement of Learning and New Atlantis, (1966), p. 274.

9 Bacon, Advancement of Learning and New Atlantis, (1966), p. 276.

10 Bacon, Advancement of Learning and New Atlantis, (1966), p. 277.

11 Bacon, Francis, New Atlantis and The Great Instauration, (1980); rev. ed. ed. Weinberger, J. (Wheeling, Illinois, 1989), p. 6Google Scholar.

12 . Bacon, New Atlantis and The Great Instauration, (1989), p. 6

13 Bacon, Advancement of Learning and New Atlantis, (1966), p. 52.

14 Rauschenbach,“Wissenschaft zwischen politischer Repräsentation und gesellschaftlichen Nutzen”, p. 310.

15 This has been pointed out by C. Lefèvre-Agrati, Introduction Pouvoir et élites dans l'empire Moghol de Jahangir (r. 1605–1627), Doctoral dissertation, Écoles des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, (Paris, 2005). Another study on Jahangir is by H. Franke, Akbar and ahangir: Untersuchungen zur politischen und religiösen Legitimation in Text und Bild (Bonn, 2005) which represents her dissertation in Comparative Religious Studies at the University of Bonn, Germany.

16 On this point see Koch, E., Introduction, Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology: Collected Essays (New Delhi, 2001), pp. xxiii–xxviiGoogle Scholar.

17 Alvi, M. A. and Rahman, A.Jahangir the Naturalist (New Delhi, 1968)Google Scholar; The famous Indian ornithologist Salim Ali acknowledges the pioneering contribution of Jahangir to the study of Indian birds with these words: “His memoirs reveal him not only as a remarkably observant but also as an extraordinarily rational student of birds”, see his “Ornithology in India: Its Past, Present, and Future”, in Salim Ali's India, ed. A. S. Kothari and B. F. Chhapgar (Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta, Madras, 1996), p. 19.

18 See in particular Skelton, R., “A Decorative Motif in Mughal Art’, in Aspects of Indian Art: Papers presented in a symposium of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, October 1970, ed. Pal, P. (Leiden, 1972), pp. 147–152Google Scholar; Das, A. K., Mughal Painting During Jahangir's Time (Calcutta, 1978)Google Scholar; Verma, S. P., Mughal Painter of Flora and Fauna Ustad Mansur, (New Delhi, 1999)Google Scholar, this publication suffers from an erratic placement of badly printed illustrations; and the articles by Verma, S. P., and Alvi, M. A. in Flora and Fauna in Mughal Art, ed. Verma, S. P. (Mumbai [Bombay], 1999)Google Scholar.

19 The pioneering work is Ettinghausen, R., “The Emperor's Choice”, in De Artibus Opuscula XL: Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, ed. Meiss, M. (New York, 1961), text, vol. 1, pp. 98–120 vol. 2, pp. 27–35Google Scholar. After that: Das, “Abu'l Hasan, Bichitr and the Iconographical Drawings”, in Mughal Painting During Jahangir's Time, pp. 213–228; R. Skelton, “Imperial Symbolism in Mughal Painting”, in Content and Context of Visual Arts in the Islamic World, Papers from a colloquium in memory of Richard Ettinghausen, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, ed. P. P. Soucek (University Park and London, 1988), pp. 177–187; E. Koch, “The Influence of the Jesuit Mission on Symbolic Representations of the Mughal Emperors”, Islam in India: Studies and Commentaries, 1: The Akbar Mission & Miscellaneous Studies, ed. C. W. Troll (New Delhi, 1982) pp. 14–29; revised ed. in The Phenomenon of “Foreign” in Oriental Art, ed. Annette Hagedorn (Wiesbaden, 2006), pp. 117–134; eadem, “Jahangir and the Angels: Recently Discovered Wall Paintings Under European Influence in the Fort of Lahore”, in India and the West, ed. J. Deppert (New Delhi, 1983), pp. 173–195 both reprinted in E. Koch, 2001, Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology, pp. 1–11, and 12–37; (the volume contains also other studies which discuss Jahangir's patronage); and eadem “My Garden is Hindustan: The Mughal Padshah's Realization of a Political Metaphor”, in Middle East Garden Traditions: Unity and Diversity: Questions, Methods and Resources in a Multicultural Perspective, ed. M. Conan, papers presented at the 31st Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture, held at the Freer and Sackler galleries April 27–28, 2007 (Washington, 2007), pp. 158–175; Franke, Akbar and Ǧahangir.

20 Goa was one of the places from where European collectors would get their exotica from through agents placed at Spain and Portugal. See Exotica: Portugals Entdeckungen im Spiegel fürstlicher Kunst-und Wunderkammern der Renaissance, ed. H. Trnek and S. Haag, Jahrbuch des kunsthistorischen Museums, vol. 3 (2001).

21 Jahangirnama, trans. Thackston, p. 133.

22 See e. g. Carboni, St., “The Arabic Manuscripts”, in Pages of Perfection: Islamic Paintings and Calligraphy from the Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, exhibition catalogue (New York, 1995), pp. 86–91Google Scholar; Saliba, G. and Komaroff, L., “Illustrated Books May be Hazardous to Your Health: A New Reading of the Arabic Reception and Rendition of Materia Medica of Dioscorides”, Ars Orientalis 35 (2008), pp. 1–65Google Scholar, with extensive bibliographical references on the subject of medieval Arabic scientific illustration.

23 There is a group of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Deccani works dealing with science, not all of them easy to place and to date because of the conventional schematic character of the illustrations; they consist in particular in copies of Qazwini (see Schmitz, B. and Desai, Z., Mughal and Persian Paintings and Illustrated Manuscripts in the Raza Library, Rampur (New Delhi and Rampur, 2006), cat. no. II.1)Google Scholar; and the Nujūm al-ʿulūm (‘Stars of Sciences’) (1570–71), (see: L. Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library (London, 1995), vol. II, pp. 819–889. Carboni attributes to this group a copy of a new Persian translation of Dioscorides done for the Safavid Shah cAbbas I (ruled 1588–1629) with the title Kitab-i hasha'ish (Herbarium); see Carboni (previous note), pp. 89–91.

24 Verma, Mughal Painter of Flora and Fauna Ustad Mansur, pp. 21–23.

25 The Medici sponsored the universal scholar Ulisse Aldovrandi (1522–1605), active at Bologna who tended a large botanical garden and wrote inter alia a Historia animalum which was next to the one of Conrad Gesner the foundation work of modern zoology. See inter alia K. Seidl, cat. nos 2.38, 2.39, 2.40 and 5.7 in the exhibition catalogue Die Entdeckung der Natur: Naturalien in den Kunstkammern des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Vienna, 2006).

26 I have consulted in particular L. Hendrix, “Natural History Illustration at the Court of Rudolf II”, B. Bukovinska, “Die Kunstkammer of Rudolf II: Where it Was and What it Looked Like”; P. Findlen, “Cabinets, Collecting and Natural Philosophy”, P. Gouk, “Natural Philosophy and Natural Magic”, all in Rudolf II and Prague: The Court and the City, ed. by E. Fucikova et alii, exhibition catalogue (London, 1997), pp. 157–71, 199–208, 209–219, 231–37; Die Entdeckung der Natur (previous note); and Arcimboldo 1526–1593 exhib. cat., ed. S. Ferino-Pagden, (Vienna, 2008).

27 S. Ferino Pagden, “Arcimboldo as conterfeiter der Natur” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, p. 104; K. Rudolf, “Die Kunstbestrebungen Kaiser Maximilians im Spannungsfeld zwischen Madrid und Wien. Untersuchungen zu den Sammlungen der österreichischen und spanischen Habsburger im 16. Jahrhundert”, in Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, 91 (1995), pp. 165–256

28 Rudolf was not only interested in nature studies, he was open to all scientifique activities which characterised late Renaissance intellectual life. A steady stream of learned visitors came to his court, the English alchemists John Dee and Edward Kelley, the Italian mystic and Neoplatonist Giordano Bruno, and the physicians and occultists Oswald Croll and Michael Maier. The Danish astronomer Brahe, assisted by Kepler, were in residence. See Findlen, “Cabinets, Collecting and Natural Philosophy”, in Rudolf II and Prague, pp. 209–219 especially pp. 13–14.

29 Findlen, as above.

30 Kaufmann, T. DaCosta, The School of Prague: Painting at the Court of Rudolf II (London and Chicago, 1988), p. 215Google Scholar; Hendrix, “Natural History Illustration at the Court of Rudolf II”, Rudolf II and Prague, pp. 157–171.

31 DaCosta Kaufmann, The School of Prague, pp. 202–203.

32 Hendrix, L. and Vigneau-Wilberg, T., Nature Illuminated: Flora and Fauna from the Court of the Emperor Rudolf II (Los Angeles, 1997)Google Scholar.

33 Th. Vignau-Wilberg, “Le ‘Museum de l'empereur Rodolphe II’ et le Cabinet des arts et curiosités” in the splendid French facsimile edition: H. Haupt, Th. Vignau-Wilberg, E. Irblich, M. Staudinger, Le Bestiaire de Rodolpe II: Cod. min 129 et 130 de la Bibliothèque nationale d'Autriche (Paris, 1990), pp. 55–59.

34 DaCosta Kaufmann, The School of Prague, pp. 228–248

35 H. Haupt, Th. Vignau-Wilberg, E. Irblich, M. Staudinger, Le Bestiaire de Rodolpe II, p. 40; DaCosta Kaufmann, “Arcimboldos Kompositköpfe: Ursprünge und Invention”, S. Ferino-Pagden, “Arcimboldo als `conterfeter’ der Natur”, M. Staudinger, “Arcimboldo und Ulisse Aldovrandi”, in Arcimboldo 1526–93, pp. 97–117, and pp. 124–167. See also below, Fig. 25.

36 Cod. min. 129 (88 folios 40,5 × 30 cm) and Cod. min 130 (92 folios, 40.1 × 30.3 cm) published in Le Bestiaire de Rodolpe II. A third manuscript Cod. min. 42 contains animal studies of various artists and of various periods, such as by Arcimboldo, several of which were copied in a more elaborate form in the Museum of Rudolf. See also Staudinger in Arcimboldo, pp. 113–117, cat. nos. IV. 24, and S. Pénot, cat. no. IV.25–26, pp. 165–68.

37 Findlen, “Cabinets, Collecting and Natural Philosophy”, p. 209; H. Bredekamp, Antikensehnsucht und Maschinenglauben: Die Geschichte der Kunstkammern und die Zukunft der Kunstgeschichte (Berlin, 1993), p. 63 says that Bacon's organisation of natural knowledge in his writings corresponded to the inventories of Rudolf's collections according to naturalia, artificalia, and scientifica

38 Bacon lashes out against the philosophy of the alchemists which “hath the foundation in imposture, in auricular traditions and obscurity” in a speech which praises “the worthiest power (knowledge)” held on 17 November 1592 at a court entertainment for Queen Elizabeth to celebrate the anniversary of her accession, Francis Bacon, The Essays, edited with an introduction by J. Pitcher (London, 1985), Appendix 2: Counsels for the Prince, p. 260.

39 Artists from continental Europe worked also in England where the iconoclastic tendencies of the Protestant Reformation suppressed indigenous art practice. An exception was portrait miniature, with Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver.

40 R. Skelton, “A Decorative Motif in Mughal Art”; V. A. Rich, “The Origins of Mughal Painting and its Development with particular Reference to the 17th and 18th Centuries”, submitted for a PhD degree, School of Oriental and African Studies, London (1981); eadem, “Mughal Floral Painting and its European Sources”, Oriental Art, XXXIII, 2 (1987), pp. 183–189.

41 Gulistan Palace Library No. 1663, p. 103. Das, Mughal Painting, pp. 64–65 has outlined the research on the Gulshan album until 1978. A comprehensive study of the Gulshan album is carried out by M. C. Beach. See his “The Gulshan Album and its European Sources”, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Bulletin, 63, no.332, 1965, pp. 63–91; idem, “Jahangir's Album: Some Clarifications”, in Arts of Mughal India: Studies in Honour of Robert Skelton, edited by R. Crill, S. Stronge and A. Topsfield (London and Ahmedabad, 2004), pp. 111–118; Shahkarha-yi nigarkari Iran/Masterpieces of Persian Painting, published on the occasion of an exhibition with the same title by the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (Tehran, 2005) pp. 405–466. I had the opportunity to study and photograph the folios of the Gulshan album in October 2004 and in April and May 2005 and thank the director of the Gulistan Library Mrs Parvine S. Seghatoleslami for the permission, and librarian Mr Hasan Alae-ni for his assistance and help in reading inscriptions. Since then S. Stronge has published p. 103 in “The Gulshan Album, c. 1600–1618” in Muraqqa': Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library (Alexandria, Virginia, 2008), pp. 76–81, see also eadem, “The Minto Album and Its Decoration, c. 1612–1640”, ibidem, pp. 82–105, especially 95–98.

42 Verma, Mughal Painter of Flora and Fauna, Fig, 2, pp. 54, 134 with further literature. Verma does not even try to identify the botanical species.

43 For a detailed investigation of which plant appears in which work and in which edition see Rich, “The Origins of Mughal Painting”, pp. 154–160.

44 Koch, “The Influence of the Jesuit Missions”; G. A. Bailey, Chapter 5 “A Bright Assembly: The Jesuit Mission to ‘Mogor’, 1580–1773”, Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America (Toronto, Buffalo, London, 1999, reprint, 2001), pp. 112–143.

45 The 1613 edition is available on the internet under http://www.illustratedgarden.org/mobot/rarebooks/author.asp?creator=Vallet,%20Pierre&creatorID=57 (accessed, 29 Jan 2007). Skelton in his “A Decorative Motif” drew attention to the connection between Valet's Le Jardin du Rois and the Small Clive Album in the Victoria and Albert Museum I. S. 48–1956; Rich further explored the connection, see “The Origins of Mughal Painting”, and “Mughal Floral Painting”.

46 Both titles mean the same, with the Persian zaman instead of the Arabic casr.

47 Rich, “Mughal Floral Painting”, p. 183.

48 Verma, Mughal Painter of Flora and Fauna Ustad Mansur, Pl. XI, p. 116–117, identifies the flower as Tulipa clusiana but it clearly fits the description of Tulipa linifolia better.

49 Pavord, A., The Tulip (New York and London, 1999), p. 318, illus. on p. 319Google Scholar.

50 Jahangirnama, trans. Thackston, pp. 327–328.

51 Falk, T. and Archer, M., Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library (London, Delhi, Karachi, 1981), cat. no. 68, fol. 62, pl. on p. 397Google Scholar.

52 Under Shah Jahan such botanical illustration made its way into the applied arts and architecture and Fritillaria imperialis became a distinct motif of Mughal flower ornament. It is translated into marble relief on the dados of the Taj Mahal, in commesso di pietre dure, called parchin kari by the Mughals on Shah Jahan's cenotaph in the Taj Mahal, see E. Koch, The Complete Taj Mahal and the Riverfront Gardens of Agra (London, 2006), pp. 175, 221. The plant appears also on a type of imperial Mughal carpet, patterned with rows of botanically recognisable flowers and trees, see D. Walker, Flowers under Foot: Indian Carpets of the Mughal Era (New York, 1997), p. 104.

53 Jahangirnama, trans. Thackston, pp. 266, 269, 270, 274, 277; Alvi and Rahman, Jahangir the Naturalist, pp. 68–74.

54 Jahangirnama, trans. Thackston, p. 266.

55 There were several printed editions with varying numbers of plates. I thank Robert Skelton for referring me to this work and for letting me use his facsimile of the Antwerp edition of 1640 (in which the plates are not numbered) (Brussels, 1967).

56 I. M. 137–1921; see S. Stronge, Painting for the Mughal Emperor: The Art of the Book 1560–1660 (New Delhi, 2002), pl.101

57 Unnumbered plate of the 1640 edition, facsimilie reprint 1967.

58 E. Koch, Shah Jahan and Orpheus: The Pietre Dure Decoration and the Programme of the Throne in the Hall of Public Audiences at the Red Fort of Delhi (Graz, 1988) (repr. without intro. in E. Koch, Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology: Collected Essays (New Delhi, 2001), pp. 61–129. See also below.

59 Jahangirnama, trans. Thackston, p. 314.

60 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, No. 14.683. Verma, Mughal Painter of Flora and Fauna Ustad Mansur, Pl.VIII, p. 114. Collaert's “Falco” is placed to the left of another bird on an unnumbered plate of Avium vivae icons, 1640 edition, facsimile reprint 1967.

61 Welch, S. C., Schimmel, A., Swietochowski, M. L., Thackston, W. M., The Emperor's Album: Images of Mughal India (New York, 1987)Google Scholar, cat. no. 40. For other bird and animal studies of Mansur in this splendid album see cat. nos 41 (Great Hornbill), 44 (Diving Dipper and other birds), 45 (Vultures), 47 (Nilgai). Cat. no 50 shows a Black Buck probably by the artist Manohar.

62 Welch, S. C., in The St. Petersburgh Muraqqa': Album of Indian and Persian Miniatures from the 16th through the 18th Century and Specimens of Persian Calligraphy by `Imad al-Hasani, (Mailand and Lugano 1996), p. 98, pl.147, fol. 80aGoogle Scholar.

63 Salim Ali, “Dodo” in Alvi and Rahman, Jahangir the Naturalist, pp. 15–17.

64 A remark of Peter Mundy that he had seen in 1633 or 1634 two dodoes at Surat which had been brought there from Mauritius was adduced as evidence that Jahangir's dodo was taken from a live bird kept at Surat. P. Mundy, The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia, 1608–1667, ed. by R. C. Temple, 3 vols (London, 1911–19); vol. 2 1914, (repr. Nendeln, Liechtenstein,1967), (new repr. 1991) p. 318.

65 I have consulted: H. E. Strickland, and A. G. Melville, The Dodo and Its Kindred or the History, Affinities, and Osteology of the Dodo, Solitaire, and Other Extinct Birds of the Islands Mauritius, Rodriguez, and Bourbon (London, 1848) and I thank Andrea Kourgli, director of the library of the Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna for very kindly taking photographs of the pages of Introduction and Part I (dealing with the historical descriptions of the bird) of the fragile Book; V. Ziswiler, Der Dodo: Fantasien und Fakten zu einem verschwundenen Vogel, exhib. cat. Zoologisches Museum (Zürich, 1996), a thorough study of the depictions and reconstructions of the bird; H. Haupt, Th. Vignau-Wilberg, E. Irblich, M. Staudinger, Le Bestiaire de Rodolpe II, pp. 244–349; and Rajith Dissanayake, “What did the dodo look like?” Biologist 51/3 (2004): pp. 165–168; he undertakes also a digital reconstruction of the dodo, mainly informed by the Mughal dodo, see his Fig. 2.

66 Salim Ali, in Alvi and Rahman, Jahangir The Naturalist, p. 17; Ziswiler, Der Dodo, p. 22; Dissanayake; the citation is from Welch, The St Petersburg Muraqqa', p. 98.

67 Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Vienna, Cod. Min. 130, fol. 31a. The authorship of the painting is still unresolved, it has been attributed variously to the Hoefnagels, Froeschl and Dirck de Quade van Ravesteyn. See Da Costa Kaufmann, The School of Prague, pp. 212–213, cat. no. 10.4; H. Haupt, Th. Vignau-Wilberg, E. Irblich, M. Staudinger, Le Bestiaire de Rodolpe II, Planche 120, pp. 344–349; Paula Findlen, “Cabinets, Collecting and Natural Philosophy”, p. 216, Fig. 15.7; Ziswiler, Der Dodo, p. 44; Dissanayake, Fig. 1.2.

68 See e.g. Dissanayake, Fig. 1.7.; Ziswiler, Der Dodo, pp. 24, 26–31, 47–50.

69 Bialostocki, J., “Les bêtes et les humains de Roelant Savery”, Bulletin des Musées des Beaux Arts de Belgique 7, 1958, pp. 69–92Google Scholar; Ziswiler, Der Dodo, pp. 51–55; Ute Kleinmann, cat. no. 111 in Die flämische Landschaft 1520–1700, exihib. cat. Vienna 2003–2004.

70 Jahangirnama, trans. Thackston, pp. 279–281. The drawing is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Frances Bartlett Donation of 1912 and Picture Fund, 14. p. 679, the painting in the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Ouseley Add. 171b, fol. 4 a. For the attribution to Balchand see Ellen Smart, “The Death of cInayat Khan by the Mughal Artist Balchand” Artibus Asiae, 58, 3/4 (1999), pp. 273–276.

71 Thackston, Jahangirnama, p. 208; the additions in square brackets are my own. See also Alvi and Rahman Jahangir the Naturalist, pp. 119–120.

72 Koch, “My Garden is Hindustan”, especially pp. 165–166, Fig. 11.

73 Jahangirnama, trans. Thackston, p. 331.

74 cAbd al-Qadir Bada'uni, Muntakhabu-t-Tawarikh by cAbdu-l-Qadir-ibn-i Muluk Shah known as Al-Badaoni, vol. 2, trans. W. H. Lowe (2nd edn Calcutta, 1924; repr. Delhi, 1973), p. 296; Abu'l Fazl cAllami, The Akbar Nama of Abu-l-Fazl, trans. by H. Beveridge, (Calcutta, 1902–39, 2nd repr. Delhi, 1979) vol. 3, pp. 581–582.

75 Herodot reports at the beginning of the second book of his Histories that the Egyptian King Psammetichus had children raised in isolation to find out which race and language was older, Egyptian or Phrygian. I have discussed Akbar's experiment and its antecedents in “The Intellectual and Artistic Climate at Akbar's Court”, in Seyller, J., The Adventures of Hamza: Painting and Storytelling in Mughal India, exh. cat. (Washington, D.C./London, 2002), pp. 23–24Google Scholar.

76 Jahangirnama, trans. Thackston, pp. 207, 274–275, pp. 143–144. My attention to this passage was drawn by Lefèvre-Agrati in Pouvoir et élites . . .

77 Jahangirnama, trans. Thackston, pp. 302–303. Cf. Ali and Rahman pp. 23–24 who describe the markhor goat as Capra megaceros Hutton.

78 “In Bensalem –the model of scientific destiny –the natural scientists labour in the shadow of secrecy whose roots they do not grasp and whose master they do not recognise. The scientists’ oath of secrecy points beyond the scientists’ knowledge to someone learned in political science and thus able to rule with clear understanding of nature and mankind”. J. Weinberger in his introduction of Francis Bacon, New Atlantis and the Great Instauration, pp. xxx–xxxi.

79 See C. Lefèvre-Agrati, Pouvoir et élites dans l'empire Moghol de Jahangir, p. 125.

80 DaCosta Kaufmann, at. no IV.38 in Arcimboldo 1526–93.

81 There is quite a body of literature on the issue of composite figures/heads and where they occurred and where they might have had their origin. Zykan, J., “Der Tierzauber”, Artibus Asiae, 5 (1935), pp. 203–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar gives an overview and traces composite heads back to Hellenistic gems and Persian seals of the fourth century B. C.; C. W. Welch, “Composite elephant with demons”, cat. no 11 in Indian Drawings and Painted Sketches: 16th through 19th Centuries, exhib. cat (New York, 1976), pp. 40–41 mentions tao tie masks of ancient China of the second millennium B. C, the “animal style” of the first millennium B. C., Seljuk sculpture from Anatolia, fifteenth-century drawing of Turkman Tabriz, south Indian wall painting and sixteenth-century miniatures from Khorasan. R. J. Del Bonta, “Reinventing Nature: Mughal Composite Animal Painting” in Verma, Flora and Fauna in Mughal Art, pp. 69–82, focuses on Indian examples and draws attention to a life size stone sculpture of Rudra Paśupati of the sixth century excavated at Talagaon in Madhya Pradesh (published in Indian Archaeology 1987–88 A Review, pl. 52, p. 137) which, because it is made up of human heads/masks, animal heads and birds, reminds him of Arcimboldo. For the debate about whether India or Iran inspired Arcimboldo, or whether it was the other way round or whether these were independent parallel phenomena see J. Strzygowski, Asiatische Miniaturenmalerei im Anschluss an Wesen und Werden der Mogulmalerei (Klagenfurt, 1933), pp. 223–224, who suggests Asian sources; and DaCosta Kaufmann, “Arcimboldos Kompositköpfe” in Arcimboldo 1526–93, pp. 97 –101 who tends to see here independent developments. In an e-mail of 20 January 2008 Robert Skelton has kindly given me his views on composite figures.

82 See especially S. Ferino-Pagden, “Arcimboldo as conterfeiter der Natur”, Arcimboldo1526–93, pp. 103–111.

83 For a basic discussion of this painting and a reading of its inscriptions (based on Sir Thomas Arnold who first studied them) see L. Y. Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, 2 vols (London, 1995), vol. 1, cat. no. 3.25, though she ignores the meaning of the bull standing on the fish. For a detailed analysis see Robert Skelton, “Imperial Symbolism in Mughal Painting’, in Content and Context of Visual Arts in the Islamic World, papers from a colloquium in memory of Richard Ettinghausen, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, ed. by P. Soucek (University Park/London 1988), pp. 177–187.

84 For a discussion of this cosmology see Skelton, “Imperial Symbolism”, pp. 177–187, p. 182, he refers to what Farid ad-Din Attar has to say about it in The Conference of the Birds: Mantiq Ut-tair (trans. C. S. Nott, London 1954), p. 3 “At the beginning of the centuries God used the mountains as nails to fix the Earth; and washed Earth's face with the water of the Oceans. Then he placed Earth on the back of a bull, the bull on a fish, and the fish on the air”; see also Sumathi Ramaswamy, “Conceit of the Globe in Mughal Visual Practice”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 2007, XL/4, pp. 751–782, especially p. 779. I thank Karin Rührdanz for kindly drawing my attention to the medieval picture of the cosmic bull supporting earth and standing on the world fish, from at-Tusi Salmani, Aja'ib al-makhluqat, 1388, Départment des Manuscrits, Division orientale, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, supplément persan 332, fol. 249a; and for his advice on Islamic cosmology.

85 See e.g. the terrestrial globe by Jacob Floris and Arnold Floris van Langren, 1589/1614, University Library, Innsbruck, in Die Entdeckung der Natur, cat. no. 4.25 by Peter Zerlauth.

86 The fish studies attributed to Giorgio Liberale, undertaken for Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol (1529–95) are in the Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Cod. Ser. n 2669. See V. Sandbichler, cat. nos. 5.2 and 5. 3 in Die Entdeckung der Natur; M. Staudinger, cat. nos. IV.23 in Arcimboldo.

87 As a symbol of rule, his artists made the terrestrial globe “his own” and rendered it Mughal, and it became a leitmotif of his portraits, where he quite literally appears as world-gripper, world-seizer, world-holder, the world–king. S. Ramaswamy, “Conceit of the Globe in Mughal Visual Practice”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2007, XL/4, pp. 751–782.

88 K. Lippincott, “Globes in Art: Problems of Interpretation and Representation”, in Globes at Greenwich: A Catalogue of the Globes and Armillary Spheres in the National Maritime Museum (Oxford, 1999), ed. E. Dekker, p. 83, observes that in a large number of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Dutch paintings, “artists tend to position the globe in their compositions so that the northern hemisphere faces the viewer”. My attention to this publication was drawn by Ramaswamy, especially p. 755, note 8.

89 I am adducing here the interpretation of P. Veyne in his introduction to G. Degeorge, Palmyre, métropole caravaniere (2001) to explain the “Hellenisation” of the Palmyrenian elite. Veyne suggests that those concerned always felt like themselves (“ils se sentaient toujours eux-mémes”), and, in assimilating the foreign and becoming modern they still remained themselves (“rester soi-même tout en devenant soi-même, c’ était se moderniser”). My attention to it was drawn by A. Schmidt-Colinet, Palmyrenische Grabkunst als Ausdruck lokaler Identitä(ten): Fallbeispiele, Lokale Identitäten in Randgebieten des römischen Reiches: Akten des internationalen Symposiums in Wiener Neustadt, 24. – 26. April 2003, ed. A. Schmidt-Colinet (Vienna, 2004), p. 194. I have cited Veyne's French quotations from Schmidt-Colinet because I was only able to consult the German translation where the passage appears on p. 14.

90 If they refer to artistic borrowing they represent it as offering, a tribute from another culture which they deigned to accept See Koch, The Complete Taj Mahal, p. 68, p. 267, note 207.

91 Abu'l Fazl cAllami The A'in-i Akbari (Persian text) vol. 1, 2nd ed. by H. Blochmann (Calcutta, 1872), p. 111.; trans. vol. 1 by H. Blochmann, 2nd edn rev. and ed. by D. C. Phillot (Calcutta, 1927; repr. New Delhi, 1977–78), pp. 102–103. I retranslated the full passage in Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology, p. 35, because (as I explained there in more detail) the often quoted translation of Blochmann misses an important point, namely the argument of Abu'l Fazl considering the potential of paintings as a means to recognize a higher truth. I retranslated it again and discussed it in E. Koch, “The Intellectual and Artistic Climate at Akbar's Court,” The Adventures of Hamza: Painting and Storytelling in Mughal India, exhibiton catalogue, ed. J. Seyller (London and Washington DC, 2002), p. 30. I discuss it again in my forthcoming “The Mughal Emperor as Solomon, Majnun and Orpheus”, Muqarnas (2009).

92 B. Latour, We have never been modern, trans. C. Porter (Cambridge MA, 2007).

93 E. Koch Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology.

94 Discussed in the literature cited in note 19 above.

95 Qanun-i Humayuni (Also Known as Humayun Nama) of Khwandamir, trans. and annotated by B. Prasad (Calcutta 1940), p. 7. Cited E. Koch, “The Influence of the Jesuit Mission”, in Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology, pp. 2–5.

96 E. Koch, Shah Jahan and Orpheus, reprint in Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology, pp. 112–129, for the Mughals as new Messiahses, see p. 128, for Majnun as Solomonic figure, see p. 116, for Majnun as iconological bridge to introduce Orpheus into Mughal Solomonic imagery, see my forthcoming “The Mughal Emperor as Solomon, Majnun and Orpheus”.

97 Bodleian library, Douce Or. a.1 fols 51b, 58 a, 36b. Of these, only the last mentioned image has been published, namely Salim with a shaikh and animals in the wilderness, ascribed at the border to Muhammad Sharif (‘Amir ul-Umara’) by A.Topsfield, Paintings from Mughal India (Oxford, 2008), pl. 24, pp. 56–57; I discuss and illustrate all three images in Koch, “The Mughal Emperor as Solomon, Majnun and Orpheus”.

98 Karla, Langedijk. “Baccio Bandinelli's Orpheus: A Political Message”, Mitteilungen. des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 20, 1976, pp. 34–52.

99 Bacon, Advancement of Learning and New Atlantis, VII.2, pp. 51–52, for further citations of this passage see p. 4 above. This makes it likely that also Savery's Orphic landscapes were intended as an allegory of harmonious rule. DaCosta Kaufmann, The School of Prague, p. 230, discusses J. Spicer's views on this but is critical of his interpretation of Orpheus as an image of Rudolf II and his good government. In my forthcoming “The Mughal Emperor as Solomon, Majnun and Orpheus” I discuss further European uses of Orpheus as a symbol of the ruler.

100 Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning and The New Atlantis, pp. 276–277.

101 I am not sure what Francis Bacon thought of India. In a passage of The New Organon he refers to “the wild and barbaric parts of New India (Nova India)” as the opposite of cultivated Europe to show the potential of difference in the human condition, see Neues Organon, vol. 1 pp. 268–269.; cf. Francis Bacon: The New Organon (see n. 6 above), p. 100.

102 Koch, Shah Jahan and Orpheus; and “The Mughal Emperor as Solomon, Majnun and Orpheus”.