ZALIKHA in old age, broken and in poverty, meets YUSUF in the market
place in Egypt.
_"Where is thy youth, and thy beauty, and pride?"
"Gone, since I parted from thee," she replied.
"Where is the light of thine eye?" said he.
"Drowned in blood-tears for the loss of thee."
"Why is that cypress tree bowed and bent?"
"By absence from thee and my long lament."
"Where is thy pearl, and thy silver and gold,
And the diadem bright on thy head of old?"..._
--Quotation from YUSUF-OU-ZALIKHA (J'AMI).
Translation of R.T. GRIFFITH.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: CHISELLED SILVER BOWL, DECORATED IN FILIGREE AND
POLYCHROME ENAMEL. PERSIAN WORK OF THE XVITH CENTURY, PROBABLY
EXECUTED IN ASIA MINOR FOR A PRINCELY OTTOMAN PATRON]
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[PAGE 23]
and professed unqualified allegiance. A powerful political unity came
into existence and continued for a period of SIX centuries
uninterrupted. The nations of this united kingdom of ISLAM were thus
merged into one unit, under the stimulus of one formal religion,
freely transmigrating local ideas. Arts and culture were transformed,
but the evolution thus caused by the Religion was essentially
political in nature.
"There is no God but GOD," said the APOSTLE OF ARABIA, but the poet
reflected awhile, and his rejoinder was: "The Ways of God are as the
number of SOULS OF MEN."
The Prophet's religion was rational, its principles attainable; it
secured for the poet social amelioration and physical comfort, but
there was a voice from the depth of his soul that he could not
silence. It was the voice of mystery; he was concerned with the
problems of the "Wherefore, the Whence, and the Whither".... Was he
not a Son of the land which PLOTINUS visited to learn mystery of the
Orient of Old?[9]
[Footnote 9: "Il prit un si grand gout pour la philosophie qu'il se
proposa d'etudier celle qui etait enseignee chez les Perses et celle
qui prevalait chez les Indiens. Lorsque l'empereur Gordien se prepara
a faire son expedition contre les Perses, Plotin, alors age de
trente-neuf ans, se mit a la suite de l'armee. Il avait passe dix
annees entieres pres d'Ammonius. Gordien ayant ete tue en Mesopotamie,
Plotin eut assez de peine a se sauver a Antioche."--PORPHYRY ON
PLOTINUS: Translation of the Enneads of Plotinus (Bouillet; Paris,
1857).]
We have to look therefore to the RELIGION, "The Ways" of whose God
"are as the number of Souls of Men", to perceive the true nature of
the evolution of the artistic expression of these people.
Souls with irresistible cravings for Mysticism, poets, artists,
philosophers and the like, discovered for the first time from
MUHAMMAD'S formal teachings, which contained certain esoteric
elements, that the senses, unreal and phenomenal, have yet an
important mission to fulfill in the task which aims to escape from
SELF (which is an illusion and the root of SIN, PAIN, and SORROW) and
to attain the height where the eternal beauty,
[CONTINUED ON PAGE TWENTY-SEVEN]
* * * * *
"PORTRAIT OF MEHDI ALI GULI KHAN, COMMANDER OF FORTRESS, BY
RAMDAS"--A.D. 1630.
A leaf from the National Portrait Album conceived by the Emperor
AKBAR, and amplified and executed by JAHANGIR and SHAH JAHAN. The
volume consists of portraits of the Royal Family of the GREAT MOGULS
and their principal supporters. These historic personages are
represented in the centre as single individuals, with their chief
officials and retainers in the border around them.
RAMDAS, a Hindu artist, was one of AKBAR'S artists who worked under
JAHANGIR and SHAH JAHAN. His signed works include the following:
BABURNAMA in the British Museum and South Kensington Museum.
AKBARNAMA in South Kensington Museum.
RAZMNAMA in the State Library, Jaipur, India.
TIMURNAMA in the Oriental Public Library, Bankipur, India.
[Illustration: "PORTRAIT OF MEHDI ALI GULI KHAN, COMMANDER OF
FORTRESS, BY RAMDAS"--A.D. 1630]
[Illustration: SILK FABRIC--A RARE EXAMPLE OF THE KIND PRODUCED BY THE
ROYAL LOOMS AT ISPAHAN, WHICH FLOURISHED UNDER THE DIRECT PATRONAGE OF
SHAH ABBAS THE GREAT (A.D. 1588-1629)]
"Oct. 18th, 1666.--To Court. It being ye first time his Ma'ty
(CHARLES II of England) put himself solemnly into Eastern fashion of
vest, changeing doublet, stiff collar, bands and cloake, into a comley
dress, after ye Persian mode. I had sometime before presented an
invective against our so much affecting the French fashion, to his
Majesty, in which I took occasion to describe the comelinesse and
usefulness of the Persian clothing, in ye very same manner his
Ma'ty now clad himself."--JOHN EVELYN (A.D. 1666), celebrated
historian and diarist.
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[PAGE 27]
which is but ONE, reveals itself through countless phenomena which are
but reflections of ONE. "The PHANTASMAL is the BRIDGE to the REAL,"
says the mystic, and the immortal lines of J'AMI read:
_"Though in this world a hundred tasks thou tryest,
'Tis Love alone which from thyself will save thee.
Even from earthly love thy face avert not,
Since to the real it may serve to raise thee.
Ere A, B, C, are rightly apprehended,
How canst thou con the pages of the_ QUR'AN?
_A sage (so heard I) unto whom a scholar
Came craving counsel on the course before him,
Said, 'If thy steps be strangers to love's pathways,
Depart, learn Love, and then return before me,
For, shouldst thou fear to drink wine from form's Flagon,
Thou canst not drain the draughts of the Ideal.
But yet beware, Be not by form belated,
Strive rather with all speed the bridge to traverse.
If to the bourn thou fain wouldst bear thy baggage,
Upon the bridge let not thy footsteps linger."_[10]
[Footnote 10: "Religious Systems of the World" (Swan Sonnenschein,
1892).]
The unreality of things material, the illusion of Self and desires,
the perception that all living things and apparent phenomena reflected
but one all-embracing GOOD and BEAUTY, was the philosophy of Hindu and
all Oriental mystics of old; but they attempted to destroy the self
and desires (Source of Sin) uncompromisingly and unreasonably. It was
a philosophy "cold" and "bloodless", as Professor BROWNE points out,
in trenchant terms. The MUHAMMADAN mystic became conscious that the
stream cannot be crossed without the aid of the BRIDGE constructed for
this purpose.
Here (as it seems to us) lies the KEYNOTE, the mainspring of
inspiration of artistic expression, which (for the lack of better
designation) might be termed MUHAMMADAN ART: A merging of physical and
spiritual, of worldly magnificence and eternal bliss.
[CONTINUED ON PAGE THIRTY-ONE]
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