Religious Change and Colonial Rule By: Shalaka and Dun McDunarrun

India  Viewers usually kept Indian paintings as books or albums. Indian paintings after the thirteenth century are divided into several schools, including Mughal and Rajput. The Hindu kings and their courts in Rajasthan and the Punjab Hills patronized Rajput painting. The Mughal emperors commissioned Mughal paintings.

Bichitr, Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings  The Mughal court, especially under Akbar,  Jahangir, and Shah Jahan, lavishly patronized  the arts. The artist BICHITR (active early  seventeenth century to late 1650s) painted  a portrait of Jahangir seated on an hourglass  throne. Bichitr's picture states Jahangir's  supremacy over time, the secular, and the  sacred. The Mughal artists learned realistic  techniques from Western models, available  at the court in European books and  engravings.

Bhadrakali within the Rising Sun  The bold areas of color, stylized  figures, and flat picture plane of  a work produced in Basohli, a  Hindu court in the Punjab Hills,  contrast markedly with the Mughal  work's realism. The painting,  accompanied by a poetic stanza,  depicts Bhadrakali as the force  activating the world matter. A  comparison of Devi's positioning  with Jahangir's placement in Bichitr's  Mughal painting reveals a contrast  between the Hindu court's deity-centered  world and the deified but human emperor  as world center.

Great Temple, Maduri  The Hindu Nayak rulers in south India  during the seventeenth and eighteenth  centuries oversaw construction of some  of the largest temple complexes in India.  The builders expanded the temples  outward by erecting ever-larger  enclosure walls with monumental  gopuras. Late temples also typically  include numerous large mandapas and  great water tanks. Such temples  continue to sponsor many yearly  festivals, attended by thousands of  pilgrims, worshipers, merchants,  and priests.

Wat Mahathat, Sukhothai  Wat Mahathat was the city's most  important Buddhist monastery.  The central monument, a stupa,  although not a circular mound,  housed a relic of the Buddha.  A central lotus-bud tower and  eight surrounding towers stand  on the stupa's lower podium. Only  a small portion of the brick  structure's stucco decoration  remains. The halls (vihan) in front  do not survive, but the stone pillars  still stand. Two monumental  standing Buddha images flank the stupa,  each enclosed in a brick building (mondop).

Walking Buddha  The Sukhothai Buddha images were the  city's crowning artistic achievement. In  the unique Sukhothai walking-Buddha  statuary type the artists intended to  express the Buddha's beauty and  perfection. A flame leaps from the top of  the head, and a sharp nose projects from  the rounded face. A clinging robe reveals  fluid rounded limbs. The handling of the  bronze is well suited to the forms' elasticity.

Schwedagon Pagoda  Burma, like Thailand, is overwhelmingly  a Theravada Buddhist country today.  One of the largest stupas in the world is  the Shwedagon Pagoda, which houses two  of the Buddha's hairs. The great wealth  encrusting the stupa was a gift to the  Buddha from the Burmese laypeople to  produce merit. The stupa is centered in  an enormous complex of buildings,  including wooden shrines filled with  Buddha images.