The Gods in Search for the Sacred Fire

The Gods in Search for the Sacred Fire is a miniature from the Mughal Empire that is a translation of the Sanskrit Mahabharata and was commissioned by the Mughal emperor Akbar. The painter is known as Narayan son of Khem Karan and he was an artist working at the imperial atelier of Akbar. It was made about 1598 when Mughal manuscript painting was emerging into a fairly sophisticated fusion of the elements of Persian, Indian and European art. The picture shows a group of gods looking for fire. They are collected under a large fruit-producing tree in a large rock area. There are several figures appearing, some of them are dressed and crowned, and there is a conversation going on, in the right side of the composition an elephant enters. The elephant is the only one to offer movement in a relatively quiet and ceremoniously set up scene. The figures are well differentiated, both by their attire and by their gestures and attributes, and the surrounding bush is also well drawn with a good degree of natural detail. The landscape illustrates the syncretism of the late sixteenth-century Mughal painting style. Indian elements such as the carefully observed tree, the flora and the religious imagery, all associated with the Hindu religion, shows influences from India, whereas the ornamentation of the rocks, the almond-shaped eyes and the angular composition are characteristic of the miniatures of the Persian style. Christie also provides some of the subtle modelling of drapery; the three-quarter portrait of the elephant; and the effect of spatial recession, all characteristic of the European prints that were being circulated in the Mughal court. The production of the Rasmnama was a significant cultural initiative of Akbar's time. The emperor commanded the translation of the Mahabharata to Persian, thus introducing the Sanskrit epic into the Persianate intellectual sphere of the Mughal court. It was an illustrated manuscript of Muslim, Hindu and European art influences, which involved the cooperation of many artists. Narayan's painting is important in this regard because of its intrinsic qualities, but also because of the documentation it provides of the sophisticated and collaborative nature of Akbar's imperial workshop. The painting is particularly valuable for its illustrative of Narayan's art style. He has presented himself as having an elegant color palette, an unerring precision in the arrangement of figures and in the treatment of landscape, according to Christie's. The attribution is particularly secure in this case, since the inscription names him as “Narayan son of Khem” – whereas most of the Mughal miniatures have been reconstructed from a workshop list of artists.