Picture Details
Landscape showing a small Muslim tomb and a lotus tank
Partner:
British LibraryImage reference:
BL.Add.Or.2516Origin:
Bihar, IndiaArtist / Date:
Unknown, c.1825Donor / Date:
Gilbert CollectionDescription:
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This water-colour painting done in the Calcutta style shows a Hazaribagh landscape with a Muslim tomb in the background and a lotus tank in the foreground. Hazaribagh, formerly a British military cantonment in the present state of Bihar, literally means 'thousand gardens'. The three distinct physical features of this place are the high central plateau in the west, the surface of which is undulating and cultivated, the lower or more extensive plateau in the north and the east, mostly well-cultivated and in the south, the central valley of the Damodar river. The landscape pictured here, which appears barren, uncultivated and uninhabited, presents us with the real ambience that pervades old and ruined tombs and lotus tanks of the kind depicted here. As for lotus tanks, the first Mughal emperor Babur (1483-1530) had one maintained near every mosque he built, for they represented the paradise, and also symbolised the triumph of light over darkness.
