one of the finest genre pictures of the Mogul school. It was the custom in hunting black buck to let loose a trained decoy buck to fight the leader of a herd. The picture shows the sleek, well-fed animal—a little reluctant, it seems, to perform the role of betraying its own species—being led out by its keeper when the herd came in sight. It is a magnificent study of animal life, and the coaxing attitude and expression of the keeper, as if trying to overcome the hesitation of his well-trained pet, is perfect in characterisation and technique.
Pl. LXXIV, b, is by one of Shah Jahān's court painters. It can be correctly described as Indo-Persian, a name often indiscriminately applied to all Indian miniature paintings. This is distinctly of the calligraphic school. It is a coloured drawing rather than a painting. There is little surface modelling; the forms are expressed almost entirely by the clearly marked outlines, by flat washes of colour, and fine stippling of the details. The subject is Mīān Shah Mīr of Lahore, Dārā Shikōh's spiritual guide, conversing with his disciple, Mulla Shah of Badakshan.
Many of the Mogul miniatures of the calligraphic school are only highly finished drawings, differing generally from the style of the Persian school by the cameo-like precision of the delicate brush outline. This is a characteristic which exactly expresses the technical distinction between all Indian scripts and the easy flowing curves of Persian and Arabic—the former being derived from the use of the stilus, and the later from a flexible pen or brush writing.
An interesting historical example of the calligraphic artist's work is shown in Pl. LXXVI, representing Shah Jahān in Durbar. The original is in the National Art Museum, Copenhagen.
