Digital Book:
Depiction of Middle Classes in Mughal Miniatures
By Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi

A study of the Mughal society with the help of the Mughal miniatures. The paper tries to analyse the various elements of Mughal society which can be nomenclated as comprising the middle classes like the physicials, surgeons,architects, engineers, painters, artists etc.

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Image:
The painting shows two men seated on the ground in a landscape. They sit among little clumps of green plants behind which rises a hilly and wooded landscape in front of a stretch of water. In the far distance white buildings including a bridge and a minaret are seen between a row of rounded hills set against a golden sunset rising to a blue sky under which flocks of birds in wavy skeins are seen flying. Boats with schematic figures and a number of swimming deer have been painted on the water and a group of buildings on the left side of the the hills in the middle distance have been sketched in.
The men are similarly dressed in white robes buttoned down the front with large shawls spread around them. The older darker-skinned man on the left has an orange shawl with gold patterning while his younger, fairer companion has a pink shawl with gold flecks. Both have rounded striped turbans wound round a respectively dark pink and red circular core.
The lower edge of the painting has a blue inner border decorated with a gold foliated scroll. As a whole the painting is framed with a pinky-brown strip of collaged paper decorated with a foliated and floral scrolling pattern outlined in white with a further gold line and outer dark blue outline which is ruled on the main border..
The outer border has an ivory-coloured ground and is decorated with alternate red poppies and pink lilies picked out in gold. The margins of the page, which are now in a somewhat abraded condition, have strips of red paper collaged to them with a white ruled line along the inner edge There are also remnants of a gold line on the border next to these red paper strips. A further strip of plain crimson paper has been stuck on the right hand edge to act as a gutter for the album binding.

18th Century

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