The Deccani Schools of Painting

Written and reviewed by Subhra Gupta, Humanities faculty at UniDrill (M.A. Sociology, University of Delhi · 7 years teaching Humanities). Based on NCERT Fine Arts Class XII (An Introduction to Indian Art Part II), Chapter 4.

Is it Persian, Mughal or something new?

For a long time, art historians filed Deccani painting under "Indo-Persian art". They called it Middle Eastern, Safavid, Persian, Turkish or even Mughal in origin. They admired its uniqueness but did not accept it as a full school. This chapter argues the opposite: the sultans of the Deccan had their own political and cultural vision, they hired and trained their own artists, and they commissioned paintings to suit their tastes and the needs of governing their kingdoms. The result is a distinct, strong school with a personality all its own.

The big picture: where and when

Deccani painting is built from the late sixteenth century to the 1680s, when the Mughals conquered the Deccan. It continued into the nineteenth century, under the Asafiya dynasty and finally in the provincial courts of rajas and nawabs of the State of Hyderabad under the Nizam.

The Deccan is the plateau region of southern India beyond the Vindhya range. The great painting centres were Ahmadnagar, Bijapur, Golconda and Hyderabad.

Their painting had a unique sensuality and intense colour, with a strong link to regional aesthetics. It liked dense compositions and tried to create an aura of romance, in an idiom that was natural and vivid.

Two views. For the exam: Deccani painting is a distinct school of the southern sultanates, not a copy of Persian or Mughal painting. Another reading: older studies grouped it with Indo-Persian art because of clear Persian elements in the landscape, such as the high horizon and gold sky. The textbook accepts those debts but argues that the borrowing was reworked in a regional style.

Portraiture. Portraits and images of historical and religious figures appear in other schools too, such as the Safavid and Ottoman schools, so Mughal portraiture was not wholly unique. The documentary nature of the portraits is a feature of Asian Islamic art, seen also in Mughal India.

Ahmadnagar: the earliest

The earliest Deccani paintings are in a volume of poems celebrating the reign of Hussain Nizam Shah I of Ahmadnagar (1553 to 1565). Most of its 12 miniatures show battle scenes and are of little artistic interest. The ones that show the queen and her marriage, however, are lovely, with gorgeous colours and sensuous lines.

The women follow the northern tradition of pre-Mughal painting seen in Malwa and Ahmedabad. They wear a modified northern costume with a choli (bodice) and long braided pigtails ending in a tassel. Only the long scarf passing round the body below the hips is a southern fashion, seen in the Lepakshi frescoes. Their hair is rolled into a bun at the nape of the neck, also like the Lepakshi murals.

Pause and predict: in an Ahmadnagar painting a woman wears a choli and a braided pigtail, but also a long scarf wound below the hips. Which parts are northern and which southern?

Check your answer: the choli and braided pigtail follow the northern tradition. The scarf below the hips is the southern element, found in the Lepakshi frescoes. This mixed costume is a good example of how Deccani painters blended regions.

The Persian debt shows in the high circular horizon and gold sky, and the textbook says all Deccani kingdoms owe Persia their landscape idiom. In a series of Ragamala paintings the horizon vanishes. It is replaced by a plain coloured ground patterned with small stylised plants, or by symmetrical domes over arcades. Male costume is also northern: the jama with pointed tails and a small pagri, close to the earliest Akbari miniatures.

The palette here is richer and more brilliant than in the northern manuscripts of the Mughal atelier. A page titled Tarif i Hussain Shahi: King sitting on the Throne (1565 to 1569) is an example from Ahmadnagar.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: the Ahmadnagar women show a southern element, the Lepakshi style scarf and hair bun. In reality: Lepakshi is a village in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh, famous for the wall paintings of its Veerabhadra temple from the Vijayanagara period. Those paintings were the local visual tradition on which Deccani court artists could draw, which is why southern details turn up in sultanate court painting.

Bijapur: the school of books and music

Nujum al Ulum (The Stars of the Sciences), dated 1570, is a richly illustrated encyclopaedia with 876 miniatures. Many illustrate weapons and utensils and others the constellations. Its women wear south Indian dress and are tall and slender, like those in the Ragamala paintings. The astronomical pictures may come from Ottoman Turkish manuscripts, since Bijapur had close links with Turkey.

The school was supported by Ali Adil Shah I (1558 to 1580) and his successor Ibrahim II (1580 to 1627), both patrons of art and literature. Ibrahim II was an expert in Indian music and the author of a book on it, the Nauras-nama. He owned the Nujum al Ulum manuscript and may have commissioned the Ragamala series of the 1590s.

The Throne of Prosperity. This page is a symbolic diagram of a lucky throne with seven stages. Each stage is held up by different beings, from elephants and tigers to palm trees, with storeys of peacocks and tribal people. Its structure recalls the wood carved doorways and façades of Gujarati homes, or the temples of the Deccan. The colouring is Persian Islamic, especially the arabesques on top of the throne, and it is crowned with Deccani foliage against a deep blue sky. The stylised plants on either side recall margin decoration in Gujarati manuscripts of the early sixteenth century. It is a good example of a strong Indian visual tradition structuring a miniature.

Yogini (seventeenth century). A Yogini is a woman who leads a disciplined life of physical and emotional training, pursues spiritual exploration and renounces worldly attachments, which was unusual in practice. The painter is unknown. The composition is vertical: the tall standing Yogini is balanced at the top by a group of white structures that taper upward. She is busy with a myna bird, as if talking to it. She wears jewellery, her hair bun lengthens her figure, and long scarves swirl in a rhythmic circle around her body among fine flowers and plants in a landscape.

Ragini Pathamsika of Raga Hindola (about 1590 to 1595). Three women in rich dress and jewellery: two in a pavilion and one outside. The central woman plays what looks like a veena, while the others sway in rhythm. Two domes at the top carry arabesque decoration with letters written in Devanagari script, a sign of Persian influence blended with Indian writing. Red dominates, balanced by green. The figures are stylised and formulaic, with dark outlines on nearly all forms, as in the Ajanta murals. A small dark elephant with a raised trunk in the left corner is a sign of welcome and breaks the formal structure.

Golconda: gold, diamonds and bold colour

Golconda became independent in 1512 and by the end of the sixteenth century was the wealthiest of the Deccan kingdoms. Its wealth came from brisk trade through east coast ports (iron and cotton goods were shipped to South East Asia, and trade with Persia was also extensive), and from diamonds discovered early in the seventeenth century. Golconda art shows a great deal of gold jewellery on both women and men.

Its art became popular abroad when Dutch merchants carried portraits of the sultans to Europe in the late seventeenth century. The earlier paintings of 1635 to 1650 were sometimes as large as eight feet high and made as wall hangings, covered with pictorial designs of figures in architectural settings of varied origin.

The earliest five Golconda miniatures are bound into a Diwan of Hafiz. They show court scenes of a young ruler enthroned in the centre of a folio, holding a long, straight Deccani sword and wearing a white coat with embroidered vertical bands. All five pages are enriched with gold, and the sky is a deep azure. Dancing girls entertain the court. The symmetrical architecture, with several registers of flat screens one above the other, appears unfunctional, and the ground is covered with elaborately patterned carpets. No Mughal influence is seen. Purple is used generously and animals at times become blue, so you see blue foxes.

Pause and predict: a painting shows a young ruler with a long straight sword, gold lavishly used, deep azure sky, purple hues and even blue foxes, and no trace of Mughal style. Which Deccani school?

Check your answer: Golconda. These are the features of the earliest Golconda miniatures in the Diwan of Hafiz.

Muhammad Qutb Shah (1611 to 1626). A portrait of him early in his reign shows him on a diwan in the typical Golconda dress and a tight fitting cap. The composition is more skilled, though the strict symmetry of the 1590 pages stays. There is a marked plastic rendering in the drapery of the courtesans' and groom's clothes, a sign of some reference to Mughal painting.

A manuscript of a Sufi poem with paraphrased prose has more than 20 miniatures with gold freely used. Skies are painted in separate bands of gold and blue. The trees are Deccani, richly coloured with a tinted edge, and plants are silhouetted against a mass of dark foliage, another Deccani feature, as in the painting of a tall woman speaking to a bird.

Named paintings: what to notice

Composite Horse is surreal: a swirl of human bodies forms a horse in full gallop against a decorated background, with flying cranes and lions, Chinese clouds and big leaved plants. Everything seems to float, but rocky formations in the two bottom corners hold the picture to solid ground, which causes a pleasing dislocation of space.

Chand Bibi. She was the queen of Bijapur, one of the most prosperous and culturally refined Deccani states. She resisted the Mughal political attempts under Akbar to take over the state and was a great sportsperson. The painting in which she plays chaugan appears to be provincial and made much later.

Two views. For the exam: Ragini Pathamsika of Raga Hindola is a Deccani Ragamala folio of about 1590 to 1595. Another reading: the textbook notes that some scholars believe it to be from Bijapur, so its exact centre is not settled. It is placed by style, and the Persian arabesques, Devanagari lettering and Indian instruments show the mixture the Deccan is known for.

The three sultanate schools compared

Deccani and Mughal compared

Timeline

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Before: The Manuscript Painting Tradition explains the Persian currents entering Indian painting through the Sultanate courts.
• Alongside: The Mughal School of Miniature Painting is the compared school, and The Rajasthani Schools of Painting shows Deccani colour entering Bundi.
• Earlier murals: Later Mural Traditions covers the south Indian wall painting tradition behind the Lepakshi link.