Bullocks Dragging Siege-Guns up a Hill
| Support Type: | Paper |
| Paint Type: | Watercolor |
| Current Location: | Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London |
| Location History: | This page of the Akbarnama depicts a battle scene in which bullocks are dragging cannons uphill during the siege of Ranthambhor Fort, Rajasthan. Akbar set out from Agra in December, 1568, pausing on the way to visit sacred places in Delhi and the tomb of his father, Humayun. The campaign began in February 1569 and was won by the end of March when the ruler, Surjan Hara, submitted. See IS.2:74 and IS.2:76 for other paintings of this battle. The Akbarnama was commissioned by the emperor Akbar as the official chronicle of his reign. It was written by his court historian and biographer Abu'l Fazl between 1590 and 1596 and is thought to have been illustrated between about 1592 and 1594 by at least 49 different artists from Akbar's studio. After Akbar's death in 1605, the manuscript remained in the library of his son, Jahangir (r. 1605-1627) and later Shah Jahan (r.1628-1658). The Victoria and Albert Museum purchased it in 1896 from Mrs Frances Clarke, the widow of Major-General John Clarke, who bought it in India while serving as Commissioner of Oudh between 1858 and 1862. |
What strikes me most about this painting is that it shifts attention away from the heroic image of conquest and toward the immense labour required to make conquest possible. The bullocks, soldiers and workers are crowded into a steep and difficult landscape, all of them engaged in the exhausting task of dragging enormous siege guns uphill. The composition makes warfare feel physical rather than abstract: empire does not advance effortlessly, but through strained bodies, animal labour, machinery and the transformation of landscapes into military routes. The diagonal movement of the hill intensifies this sense of struggle and makes the cannon itself appear almost too heavy for the people and animals attempting to move it. I also find the painting revealing because, although it belongs to an imperial chronicle celebrating Akbar’s reign, it unintentionally preserves the labour hidden beneath imperial triumph. The final conquest may belong to the emperor’s historical narrative, but this image reminds us that power is materially produced by the effort of countless human and animal bodies. Its extraordinary detail therefore makes it both a record of Mughal military achievement and a visual document of the labour and violence that sustained territorial expansion.