Himalayan Connections with Early Mughal-era Shawls from Kashmir

This was how Jahangir delighted in the flora of the Kashmir valley in March of 1620 CE. He was so enchanted with these beautiful, scented, Himalayan flowers, that he ordered his court painter Ustad Mansur to record large numbers of them in minute detail.

IMAGE: Jahangir hunting with hawks on a lake, dated to the late seventeenth century, British Museum, 1920,0917,0.1

Journeying to the northern-most reaches of the Mughal empire was a significant part of Jahangir's lived experience. He travelled with his court, and with his favourite wife Nur Jahan in a moving city of tents, and together they transformed this distant territory into a fashionable holiday destination suitable to escape the heat of the Indian plains. The importance of such experiences for the visual repertoire of subsequent Mughal art has been questioned by some art historians who rightly point out that floral motifs were present in Mughal painting before these formative experiences.[2] However, it is from about this time that flowers begin to feature more prominently in a number of different media, and not merely from copying European herbal diagrams, whose 'influence' is often overstated and neglects the agency of the Mughals themselves.[3] With reference to Jahangir's recorded experiences in the valley, this article hopes to connect this enduring motif with some of the earliest extant Kashmir shawls, whose material, as well as their designs, were directly informed by the world around the emperor and his court.

The reign of Jahangir (1605-1627 CE) saw a new and enthusiastic interest and engagement with the 'garden of perennial spring', the Valley of Kashmir. Nestled within the foothills of the Himalayas, this region has throughout history been seen and enjoyed as a paradise on earth, owing to its favourable climate and abundant flowers, scenic lakes and lush forests. The city of Srinagar is set beneath the towering sub-Himalayan Zabarwan mountain range, whose view localises the experience below, and offers breathtaking, sweeping views that stretch into the distance. With this backdrop, Jahangir, his court, and his son Shah Jahan after him, beautified the idyllic Dal Lake with numerous Persianate gardens. These gardens embodied the sites of pleasure during their reigns, when the city of Srinagar was enjoyed as a cool holiday resort set around a body of glittering water, enjoyed visually and on boats, and surrounded by forested mountains.

The Kashmir valley had been added to the Mughal Empire in 1586 CE, by Jahangir's father Akbar. In Srinagar he built a fort at Hariparbat, complete with a no-longer-extant enclosed garden, on the hill overlooking Dal Lake. Though this first contact was an important turning point in Mughal historiography, extending the empire into the Sub-Himalayan region, it was Jahangir, and his favourite wife Nur Jahan, who established Kashmir and especially Srinagar, as a seasonal Mughal 'capital'. This was the place that they loved and sought to enjoy for extended periods of time.

Jahangir's memoirs, the Jahangirnama, offer his own personal accounts of journeys and experiences from his reign. Within these, he talks extensively of the wildlife and in particular the flowers that he saw on one of his journeys into the region. In one section, we are able to get an understanding of Jahangir's love for the flowers in the foothills of the Himalayas:

Literally put into the turbans of Jahangir's courtiers, these flowers entered the realm of textiles. Their dress was populated with beautiful Himalayan blossoms, animated as they moved and enjoyed visually, and sensorially through touch and scent.

As was mentioned above, Jahangir was so enamoured by the flora of the Kashmir valley that he commissioned his famous court artist, Ustad Mansur, to paint many of them. Of this extensive album of flowers only a handful survive. One of the very few extant of these paintings made by Mansur dates to Jahangir's Kashmir tour of 1620 CE.

IMAGE: Habibganj Collection, Maulana Azad Library, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, No. 60-1-ba-3.

Scholar Ebba Koch has suggested that it shows a ‘Tulipa lanata Regel and/or Tulipa linifolia Regel.’[5] Unlike those derived from engravings of European herbal diagrams, the red tulip represents an observed image potentially inspired by such engravings only in its isolated composition.[6] As stated above, the presence of floral motifs in Mughal art has been noted to date to earlier than Jahangir's experiences in Kashmir, however, it is important to consider these journeys as one of the major factors that led to the rapid and enduring popularity of floral motifs in Mughal artistic output. To understand this phenomenon, this article will focus on the case of the Kashmir shawl, an object woven within the valley using fibres from the neighbouring regions in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan Plateau, and designs inspired by its natural beauty.

Generally speaking, the decorated Kashmir shawl is not known to have existed widely before the reign of Akbar. Though the pashmina fibre was already being used to make shawls there, during his reign, dying fibre was an innovation of the emperor himself. Decorated shawls were first recorded during Jahangir's reign and would become fully developed with floral motifs as a main form of decoration during the reign of Shah Jahan. The decorated parts of shawls would come to occupy defined areas of the textiles, the pallus (end sections), hashiyas (side borders), and the zanjirs (cross borders). As has been discussed by Jeffrey Spurr, this format is likely to derive from other textiles such as patkas (waist sashes), which follow a similar pattern. [7] As also observed by Spurr, Jahangir’s love of nature would explain the attraction of herbal imagery brought by Jesuits and Europeans to the Mughal court - they were an additional form of information to an already expanding pool of inspiration and fascination for floral motifs. This broader appreciation of flowers and nature included not only plants but also exotic animals brought as diplomatic gifts, many of which were also painted by Ustad Mansur.

IMAGE: Zebra, Ustad Mansur, 1621 CE, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, IM.23-1925

European herbal imagery may have partly informed the isolated asymmetrical flowering plant motif on a plain background in artwork that was subsequently produced, but they were only a small part of a much richer, sensorially intense appreciation of the natural world that arose out of direct contact with and exploration of the Mughal world.

A lack of extant early examples makes the dating and identification of such shawls challenging. Very few textiles of any kind survive from before the eighteenth century from Mughal India, and therefore just because there are no examples securely dated to Jahangir's reign, it does not mean that they did not exist. Indeed, the presence of floral motifs in other media such as recorded in painting, confirms this. However, concentrating on a selected group of these early examples showing asymmetrical floral motifs is particularly helpful for understanding the kinds of things Jahangir was so inspired by when touring the Kashmir valley.

IMAGE: Mughal period, early 17th century, and one made by Kashmir Loom

One example dated to the early seventeenth century demonstrates the sophistication of the floral motif as woven in kani from an early period. Frank Ames notes the repetition of the bud motif in the hashiya border of the original.[8] The blooming flower has been painstakingly recreated today by the master weavers employed in the Srinagar workshops of Kashmir Loom. A complex combination of petals in hues of deep pink, blue and yellow articulate the fully open blossom, elsewhere partly open and described as a closed bud. Its gentle sway animates the design, and when worn such a motif, animated physically, would dynamically sway with the movement of its wearer. The pallu is contained by floral zanjirs, just as in the original, formalising this field of pattern within the wider context of the shawl.

IMAGE: 17th century Mughal shawl, and one made by Kashmir Loom

In another example dated to the late-seventeenth century, an elongated form of the floral motif is more sparsely positioned along the pallu. With six open or opening buds, and around eleven closed buds, the more linear design of the flower is complimented again with a sway that animates its design. Here, Kashmir Loom took inspiration from the historic shawl and developed it into a new design that omits the hashiyas (side borders), and the zanjirs (cross borders), and instead introduces a field of tiny flowering buds based on the original form. In the absence of the central field of the original owing to its fragmentary state, this innovative design builds on its historical precedent. It transforms it into something that can be worn today, filling every thread with the beauty of Kashmir's Mughal gardens, and recalling the rich history of the motif from within the 'garden of perennial spring.

Citation

[1] Jahangir, The Jahangirnama, Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India trans. Wheeler M. Thackston (Oxford University Press, 1999), 328.

[2] Asok K. Das, Wonders of Nature: Ustad Mansur at the Mughal Court (The Marg Foundation, 2012), 139-140.

[3] Janet Rizvi and Monisha Ahmed, Pashmina: The Kashmir Shawl and Beyond (The Marg Foundation, 2009), 86. Seen most recently in the 'Great Mughals' exhibition and accompanying catalogue, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

[4] Jahangir, The Jahangirnama, 72.

[5] Ebba Koch, "Flowers in Mughal Architecture" in The Weight of a Petal: Ars Botanica ed. Sita Reddy (The Marg Foundation, 2018), 28.

[6] Das, Wonders of Nature, 148.

[7] Jeffrey B. Spurr,"The Kashmir Shawl: Style and Markets" in Kashmir Shawls: The Tapi Collection ed. Stephen Cohen (The Shoestring Publisher, 2012), 33-34.

[8] Frank Ames, The Kashmir shawl and its Indo-French influence (The Antique Collectors’ Club, 1997), 257.