Add Or 2776-2783

Add.Or.2776-2783

Eight leaves from a manuscript of the ‘Razmnama.’

Mughal, c.1598.

Purchased 1921.

Literature: Maggs Brothers, catalogue 452 (1924), no.252; Stchoukine (1929), pl.lxxiii; Cohn-Weiner (1938 and 1958); Ashton (1950), no.654; Meredith-Owens (1956); Welch (1959), 137-38, fig. 6; Gangoly (1961), pl.A; Binney (1973), no.25; Robinson (1976), V, nos.45-46; Beach (1979), nos.7-9.

Note: The manuscript to which these leaves belonged is dispersed, but the final volume still containing twenty-four paintings is in the British Library (Or.12076). The text was translated into Persian from the Sanskrit epic ‘Mahabharata’ at the order of the emperor Akbar in 1582, the work taking eighteen months to complete. The first illustrated copy of the translation is the famous Jaipur manuscript executed c.1585-86 (‘see’ Hendley (1884)). The colophon of the present manuscript gives the transcription date AH1007/AD1598. The scale is less ambitious than the Jaipur manuscript, suggesting that it may have been produced for a Mughal nobleman rather than for the emperor himself.

The British Library manuscript plus 125 illustrated leaves from the volume, including the present eight, was auctioned at Sotheby’s, 25 October 1921, lots 203-79. Leaves are now in many collections including the Baroda Museum; Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay; Victoria and Albert Museum; British Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Chester Beatty Library, Dublin; Royal Asiatic Society, London; Royal Ontario Museum; the Binney Collection; and the Keir Collection.