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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture—From
Hedonism to Kingship


Meera Khare 
The Medieval History Journal 2005; 8; 143 
DOI: 10.1177/097194580400800108 


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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture—
From Hedonism to Kingship


Meera Khare* 

This article traces the trajectory of a commonplace object, the wine-cup 
in Mughal court culture, using painting as a source. Initially associated 
with hedonistic pleasure alone, the wine-cup came to be represented, in 
allegories of wineandverse,as alocus fortherealisationof divinereality, 
having gnostic values. The imagery of mystical intoxication further imbued 
the object with a political meaning, in which the cup became a world in 
miniature and the wine in it, the elixir of life, thereby legitimising the 
Mughal monarchy in a cosmological framework of universal and immortal 
rulership. However, the imagery came a full circle, when in the course of 
the eighteenth century, from its association with male rulership, it came 
to be exclusively associated with female eroticism and pure hedonism. 

It is common knowledge that wine and intoxicants are prohibited in the 
Kuran and other Islamic religious texts. The adth and Muslim jurists 
cite wine to be the key of all evil and drinking of wine among the gravest 

Acknowledgements: This article is drawn from my doctoral thesis, Sovereignty and 
Images: An Analysis of Imperial Mughal Painting during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth 
Centuries, Department of History, University of Delhi, Delhi, 1999. I am grateful to 
my supervisor, Monica Juneja, for persuading me to write this article and for her helpful 
suggestions thereafter. To Dr Chander Shekhar, Department of Persian, University of 
Delhi, I owe thanks for having acquainted me with Persian language and poetry. 

* Department of History, PGDAV College, University of Delhi, New Delhi 110065. 
E-mail: kharemeera@yahoo.com 
The Medieval History Journal, 8, 1 (2005) 
Sage Publications t New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, London 
DOI: 10.1177/097194580400800108 

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144 t Meera Khare 

of all sins.1 However, despite this juridical constraint, drinking was widely 
practised by all Muslim courts of pre-modern Islamic societies. And praise 
of wine, not uncommon in pre-Islamic poetry, was a favoured theme of 
the early Muslim poets. Later, the genre of khamriyya (bacchic or wine 
poem) reached new heights in Persian literature.2 

In the realm of visual arts as well, wine-drinking imagery with wine-
cups, bottles, ewers and flasks was often depicted on the walls of palaces, 
inlaid metal ware and later in miniature painting depicting celebration 
scenes from the Islamic lands. Princely figures, in different visual media, 
are often portrayed holding the wine-cup surrounded by attendants, 
who are shown in the act of pouring wine to offer them. The imagery 
comes from as diverse areas of visual arts as the frescoes of the Abbasid 
palaces (7501258), the art of metalwork of the Mamluks of Egypt and 
Syria (12501517), to the paintings of the Mongol rulers of Il-Khanid 
Persia (12561335).3 Later Persian painting, under the Timurids (1387 
1502) and the Safawids (15021737), frequently portrayed the serving 
and drinking of wine in court celebrations and picnic scenes.4 The depic­
tion of youthful figures standing languorously with wine-cups and flasks 
from the late sixteenth-century Safawid ateliers only confirmed what 
was in reality the court culture of the times. 

Wine-consumption or use of intoxicants was an integral part of Indian-
Timurid court culture as well. Nearly all the rulers of the dynasty, more 
popularly known as the Mughals (15261858), indulged in it, and their 
court painting unhesitatingly depicts wine-drinking scenes. A good num­
ber of Mughal wine-cups, made of metal or carved in quartz or nephrite 
jade are extant in various museum collections today.5 These finely carved 
jade pieces, pale translucent or delicately stained in light celadon green, 
are of exquisite shapes that imitate plum blossoms and lobed gourds. 
Most of these have the rulers names, titles, monograms and dates in­
scribed on them. This article attempts to analyse the representation of 
this commonplace objectthe wine-cup in Mughal miniature painting. 

1 In a sequence of revelations, wine came to be prohibited in Sura v, 92 of the Kuran. 
The prohibition is unanimously accepted by all the juridical schools, as also the Shias 
(Wensinck, Khamr: 99495). 

2 Bencheikh, Khamriyya. 

3 Soucek, S : 88586. 

4 For some representative examples of wine-drinking imagery from the Timurid ateliers, 
see Lentz and Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision: 26061, 286, cat.no. 146; 312, fig. 
103, and from the Safawids (Atil, The Brush of the Masters: no. 23; Robinson, Persian 
Paintings: nos 155, 206, 210 and 594). 

5 A good inventory is available in Skelton, Decorative Arts: nos 350, 351, 355a, 
356, 357 and 372; Nigam, The Mughal Jades. 

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 145 

It seeks to explore the social, cultural and political context in which the 
object appears in court painting, done under the patronage of the dynasty 
through the late sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. A perusal of these visual 
images suggests that the wine-cup, apart from its apparent function of 
giving pleasure, is at the same time imbued with a plurality of meanings 
meanings that go much beyond its use as a material object associated 
with hedonism. It would seem that in the pre-modern world of the 
Mughals, the wine-cups functional role often overlapped with its 
symbolic meanings, so that this object can simultaneously be inscribed 
within political life and cultural practices. 

The wine-cup as a painted motif can be read as a bearer of meanings 
that transcended the intent of the court artist. Its representation in Mughal 
miniaturesproduced in the ateliers of Emperors Jahangir (r.160527) 
and Shahjahan (r.162857)goes beyond portraying hedonism to signify 
a larger cosmological framework of Sufi unitive metaphysics of mystical 
Islam. The wine-cup, as argued in this article, emerges both as an agent 
and an object that could shape the very political ideology of the empire, 
when it acts as a symbol for the legitimisation of Mughal kingship 
seen not just in its immediate arena but in eclectic universal terms. The 
representation of the cup is a sign that draws its meaning from its social 
function. At the same time, as part of painting as a discursive practice, the 
sign engages autonomously in the production of a universe of meaning. 

Visual Culture at the Mughal Court 

Mughal painting, while showing its indebtedness to its Persian, Central 
Asian and indigenous pre-Mughal antecedents, went through a mutation 
of forms under the patronage of Emperors Akbar (r.15561605) and 
Jahangir. By the late sixteenth century, the distinct character acquired 
by this art can be seen, above all, in an interest in the living as subjects of 
painting, leading to an unparalleled mastery of illusionism and naturalism 
of forms. Under the discerning eyes of the active patron Jahangir, the 
genre of human and animal portraiture became the most celebrated hall­
mark of this new pictorial language. Imperial portraiture reached unpre­
cedented heights, imbued with the power to convey notions of kingship 
through a deft use of pictorial formulae and various allegorical symbols 
in a way that defied the Islamic codes of human representation, unpre­
cedented in other Perso-Islamic civilisations of West or Central Asia. 

This shift in the structure and meaning of Mughal images after the 
1580s cannot be explained in terms of patronage alone, nor can this be 

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146 t Meera Khare 

understood in terms of the legitimising function of visual representations; 
further, it cannot be accounted for simply by the presence of more natural­
istic European engravings and prints at the court, which would have 
served as models. The transformations within the genre were certainly 
carried out in relation to these factors, which in themselves, however, 
could not account for the changes in pictorial conventions, had not a 
different way of seeing the world come into being. Visual ideology is 
not shaped by political, economic or social factors alone; it is equally 
formed by a not-so-strikingly apparent intellectual terrain of the times 
Panofskys higher order of knowledgefor works of art or components 
in a painting are a natural correlate of contemporary cosmologies and 
modes of perception.6 The specific mind-world relation of the patron, 
artist and the viewer that unconsciously coheres to produce characteristic 
images in a specific culture, or the Rieglian concept of the Kunstwollen 
that underlies the rationality and development in arts, are the epistemo­
logical tools that help us to understand this new character and meaning 
of Mughal illusionism.7 In view of our specific concern here, it helps us 
to comprehend the semantics of the wine-cup in Mughal painting and its 
changing vicissitudes in the cultural world of the Mughal court. 

The speculative thought of the times at the Mughal court, as in other 
Persianate courts, leaned towards the eclectic gnostic dimension of Sufi 
Islam, having similarities with Hindu Vedantism, indigenous Bhakti and 
popular theosophy. Sufi esoteric speculation, derived largely from Greek 
philosophers, the flsf; and as practised by the Neo-Platonist meta­
physicists, Suhrawardi al-Maktul (d.1191) and Ibn al-Arabi (d.1240) 
from the Islamic lands, had already made strong forays into Mughal 
India, beginning with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate (1206).8 
When the Mughals came to power, the Suhrawardi school of illumination 
(ishr iyya) had come to influence many members of the regime, such 
as the family of Shaykh Abul Fazl, the courtierhistorian of Akbar. His 
familys influence at the Mughal court is well documented.9 In the course 
of the reign, thinkers like Shaykh Yakub Sarfi of Kashmir and Shah Amuli, 
who were influenced by the pantheism of Ibn al-Arabi, were held in 

6 Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Introduction; Podro, The Critical Historians: ch. ix. 

7 The concept of the Kunstwollen, translated as the artistic will, falls within the 
ambit of methodologies of art history that argue for the autonomy of formal development 
of arts in the structuralist formalist tradition (Podro, The Critical Historians: 7197). 

8 Rizvi, Muslim Revivalist Movements, ch. 1. 

9 Idem, Religious and Intellectual History: 4142, chs 2, 3 and 9. 

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 147 

very high esteem at the court.10 Some of them were associated with the 
court for many years and took part in religious discussions at the Ibadat 
Khana. Later, under Shahjahan, we have the well-known pantheistic 
thinkers like Mian Mir, Khwaja Khurd, Shaykh Ilahabadi and Mulla Shah, 
the preceptor of Prince Dara Shikoh and Princess Jahanara Begum. The 
prince himself, as evident from his treatise that reconciled the indigenous 
esoteric thought of the Upanishads with Sufi speculation was the very 
physical embodiment of the dominant cultural ethos of the times.11 
Aurangzeb, the last great Mughal (r.16581707) was not hostile towards 
Sufi mysticism either, and his daughter, Zib al-Nisa wrote a fair amount 
of mystical poetry as well.12 

The bent towards Sufi mysticism in Mughal court circles is also testified 
by the inventory of books that were kept in Akbars library and are es­
pecially mentioned by his historian, Abul Fazl in the n-i Akbar. Some 
of these books that were read out continually to the emperor include 
works like the mathnaws of Nizami, works of Amir Khusraw, Sharaf 
Manayri and Jami, the Mathnaw-i manaw of Mawlana Jalal al-Din 
Rumi, the Djm-i djam of Awhadi, the adka of Hakim Sanai, the 
Kabusnma of Kai Kaus, Sadis Gulistn and& Bstn, and the Dwns 

&

of Khakani and Anwari.13 All these works have a decidedly esoteric-
didactic content.14 Sadi, Hafiz, Rumi and Nizami, the great masters of 
Sufi mysticism from the Persianate world were favourite poets of the 
Mughals. Their works were present in Mughal libraries and counted 
among the emperors prized possessions, which they gifted to each other; 
Akbar and Jahangir often quoted from them, signifying that they had 
imbibed them to a great extent.15 The court poets as wellNaziri, Urfi, 

10 Siddiqui, Nuqav Thinkers; Rizvi, Muslim Revivalist Movements: 3132, 43ff. 
and 330. 

11 Rizvi, Muslim Revivalist Movements: 33050; Hasrat, Dr Shikh: 132, on Daras 
favourite being, Rumi, Jami, Sanai, Sadi, Attar, Khusraw, Ghazali and Ibn al-Arabi. 

12 Rizvi, Muslim Revivalist Movements: 375. 

13 Abul Fazl, n-i Akbar: 110. 

14 Browne, A Literary History, vols II and III; Arberry, Classical Persian Literature. 

15 An interesting autographed note of both Jahangir and Shahjahan on a copy of Sadis 
Gulistn states that it was their most precious possession (Soudavar, Art of the Persian 
Courts: 101, cat. no. 36ac). A gift of another Gulistn was made by Shahjahan to Jahanara 
Begum, an incident which is recorded by her with her signature (ibid.: 33238, Cat. no. 
136af). Shahjahan also considered the same work worthy enough to be sent as a gift to 
the king of England in 1628, the ms presently in the Sir Chester Beatty Library collection, 
Dublin (hereafter CB), see Verma, Mughal Painters: 418, for literature on it. For Akbars 
leaning towards Persian Sufi poetics, see Ghani, A History of Persian Language and 
Literature: Part III. For Jahangir, his memoirs, Tzuk: passim. The emperor often took 

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148 t Meera Khare 

Faizi, Khan-i Khanan, Zuhuri, Sanai, Kudsi, Talib-i Amuli and Abu Talib 
Kalimwere all masters imbued with a similar Sufi spirit, thus following 
the norms of any Persianate court.16 

This predilection towards the Sufi mystical is further seen when Akbar 
appropriated the sanctity of the tomb of Shaykh Salim Chishti, when he 
included it as a part of his main buildings in the new capital city of 
Fatehpur Sikri (1571).17 The frequent visits of the Mughal emperors to 
various Sufi shrines and their personal preferences, as discerned from 
the literature of the times further conforms to the dynastys esoteric 
concerns.18 

In the realm of visual arts, illustrated Persian Sufi poetry, as well as 
dynastic historical works or Persian classics like the Shh-nma and 
other miscellaneous subjects, formed a major component of the Mughal 
thematic repertoire. The illustrated manuscripts that were a prized 
possession of the Mughals included eclectic esoteric works like the 
Khamsa-i Ni m, Dwn-i fi , Sadis Gulistn and Bstn, Jamis 
Ysuf u Zulaykha, Bahristn and Tuft al-Arr, Dwns of Anwari, 
Amir Khusraw and Amir Shahi, Akhla -i Nir and an illustrated version 

out auguries from a copy of the Dwn-i fiz, belonging to his grandfather, Humayun. 

&

See Jahangir, Tzuk, vol. I: 214 and 381. One such incident is recorded in his own 
handwriting in the margins of a copy of the Dwn, presently in Khuda Bakhsh Oriental 
Public Library, Patna (Muqtadir and Ross, Catalogue of the Arabic and Persian 
Manuscripts, vol. I: 23159, no. 151). Prince Khurrams (Shahjahan) own specimen of 
calligraphic verses of Hafiz is in the Rampur Raza Library, Rampur (hereafter RL) 
(Siddiqi, Rampur Raza Library: pl. 24). 

16 For the influence of Rumis poetry on contemporary poetics, see Schimmel, The 
Triumphal Sun: 37478; for Mughal poetry, see Ghani, A History of Persian Language 
and Literature; Rahman, Persian Literature; Hasan, Mughal Poetry; Abidi, Tlib-i­
mul; idem, Qudsi Mashhadi; Nabi Hadi, Talib-i Amuli; Browne, A Literary History, 
vol. IV: 24167. 

17 Richards, Formulation: 255ff. 

18 See Koch, Mughal Art: 16379, passim., Appendix, 18182, for the visit of the first 
five Mughals till Shahjahan to the Chishti shrine of Shaykh Nizam al-Din Awliya at 
Delhi. For Jahangirs association with the Sufis, see his Tzuk, vol. I: 30, 46, 7172, 267 
(when he became an ear-bored slave of the master), 297, 304, 43940; vol. II: 
71, 102, 119. Pictorial evidence as well records the visit of the emperor to the Sufi 
shrine at Ajme; to cite a few, see a folio in the Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay (hereafter 
PWM), 1613 (Indian Art: pl. XXIII); and one in the Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata 
(Das, Mughal Painting: pl. 44). Akbar too is shown visiting the shrine in a folio from 
the Akbar-nma in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (hereafter VA), 1589 (Das, 
Dawn of Mughal Painting: pl. XI). For the pictorial record of Shahjahans visit, see 
Beach et al., King of the World: pls 4142.

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 149 

of the lives of saints, the Nafat aluns.19 Besides these Persian classics, 
Mughal albums often depict the universal eclectic world of dervishes, 
ascetics and Sufis.20 Sufi thinkers, both dead and contemporary, were 
frequently painted.21 The reign of Shahjahan especially records dis­
coursing Sufis and Hindu ascetics.22 The Persian cultural ethos of the 
ateliers is further strengthened by the fact that Persian masters, Mir Sayyid 
Ali, Khwaja Abd al-Samad and later Farrukh Beg in turn headed Akbars 
studios.23 All these masters, as well as later artists like Aqa Riza, Mirza 
Ghulam and others, from the Safawid lands to the court of Jahangir, 
certainly brought in Persian aesthetics to the Mughal court.24 

19 For the present location of these manuscripts and the literature on them, see Verma, 
Mughal Painters: Bibliography, Part I. 

20 Margin painting from Jahangirs albums, the Mura a-i Gulshan (15991609, 
scattered, with the major bulk in the Imperial Library, Tehran) and the Berlin album 
(16091618, Staatsbibliothek, Berlin) often comprises figures of scholars and Sufi 
dervishes with rosaries and books, standing, contemplating or sitting. See Hajek, Indian 
Miniatures: illus. v and vi; Kuhnel and Goetz, Indian Book Painting: fols 6b (pl.40), 
and 13a (pls 40 and 41) for a few representative examples. 

21 To cite a few, an imaginary portrait of Mawlana Jami with his disciple, Mawlana 
Lari in the Goloubew collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (hereafter MFA) 
(Coomaraswamy, Catalogue: 8081, nos 126a and b, pl LXXIV and 40, no. LXVIII, pl. 
XXVI [detail]; of Mulla Shah sitting, the preceptor of the imperial family during 
Shahjahans time, wrongly identified as Rumi (ibid.: 40, no. LXVII, pl. LXVI). Sadi 
appears in an imaginary assembly of Sufis, done by the artist Bichitr in the CB (Arnold 
and Wilkinson, The Library of Chester Beatty, vol. I: 34, 7/24); of the portrait of Shah 
Dawlat (ibid., vol. I: 30, frontispiece) and another study of him (ibid., vol. I: 34, 7/25, 
vol. III: pl. 68). The last one is inscribed by Shahjahan, identifying the subject. Sadi is 
also the main figure that leads the group of religious personages who are presenting a 
book to Jahangir in a folio from the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore (Okada, Imperial 
Mughal Painters: no. 35). Sadi once again appears in an imaginary assembly of Timurid 
princes from the Johnson Album, India Office and Library Records collection, now in 
the British Library (hereafter JA, IOLR). See Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures: no. 83; 
for two portraits of Mulla Shah, see ibid.: 85, nos 86 (attr. 1650, illus. p. 402) and 87. 
Mulla Shah and Mian Mir appear in the company of Dara Shikoh (ibid.: 86, no. 92 for 
one of the many instances). For a lone portrait of Mian Mir, see ibid.: 8788, no. 96 ii, 
illus. 406; also a Standing Mulla Shah in the Musée Guimet, Paris (hereafter MG), attr. 
1660 (A La Cour: 61, no. 31); also see ibid.: pl. LIV of Shaykh Hussayn Jami with his 
attendant, identified by the inscription on the pictorial surface. 

22 The artists Govardhan and Payag painted many of these. To cite a few, The Four 
Mullas (c.1650) by Govardhan from the Nasli and Heeramaneck collection, Los Angeles 
County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (hereafter LACMA) (Pal et al., Romance of the Taj 
Mahal: 118, no. 117; ibid.: 116, no. 116 (c.1635); ibid.: 119, no. 118 [c.1635]). A very 
fine study of ascetics in a night scene, attributed to Payag is in the Indian Museum, 
Kolkata (Okada, Imperial Mughal Painters: 214, no. 252). 

23 Das, Mughal Painting: 35 and 176. 

24 Okada, Imperial Mughal Painters: 6275, 105124. 

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150 t Meera Khare 

In this Persian cultural milieu, where Sufi poetics constituted something 
like a hegemonic discourse, it was a norm, as in the larger Persianate 
cultural world, that the written word and the painted images were to be 
comprehended together. Calligraphic panels of Sufi poetry, written in 
Persian, always accompanied paintings from the albums. Extant examples 
show that often the painted leaves were framed by or interspersed with 
philosophic itas (extracts) and quatrains from Rumi, Jami, Sadi, 
Nizami or Hafiz.25 It is also evident that these painted images alternated 
with similar folios of illumined calligraphic verses of these masters. At 
times, two facing calligraphic folios followed two facing paintings.26 In 
all, words and images in the general visual culture of the time could not 
be treated separately and the painted folio was to be read, seen and com­
prehended together. An album of pictures in the Mughal vocabulary meant 
images and words (mostly esoteric Sufi verses) bound together.27 Abul 
Fazl too puts the arts of writing and painting under a single heading, as 
contiguous activities in the library.28 

This dominant cultural code of the Persian elite was juxtaposed with 
an equally high eclecticism of the indigenous saint tradition and the Nath 
yogic cult from the world of the common man. This is apparent once 
again from pictorial evidence. Mughal albums often include images of 
Kanphata yogis of the esoteric Shaivite Gorakhnath sect, who appear in 
idyllic settings.29 Works of Hindu gnostics were favoured at the court as 
well, as many of them were translated and some illustrated, like the Rdj 

25 For a few examples, see Sadis verses from the preface of his Gulistn, in a folio 
from the CB (Arnold and Wilkinson, The Library of Chester Beatty, vol. I: 45, vol. III: 
11A, no. X, pl. 80); from the MFA, see Coomaraswamy, Catalogue: 35, no. LVII, pl. 
XXVI for verses of Hafiz; from the Wantage Bequest collection at the VA, see Clarke, 
Indian Drawings: pl. 2, nos 2 and 3 and pl. 19, no. 28 for verses of Hafiz and Sadi, for 
Kasimis verses, pl. 5, no. 7 and pl. 15, nos 22 and 23 for quatrains from Hafiz. The 
calligraphic panels of the borders of the Kevorkian album at the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, New York, also comprise verses of Nizami, Hafiz, Amir Shahi, Kasimi, Amir 
Khusraw and Jami (Schimmel, The Calligraphy and Poetry: 37). 

26 Swietochowski, Decorative Borders: 45. 

27 This is also evident from an inscription on the first leaf of an album of Shahjahan 
that clearly states that the album (murakka) was made with the writings of (b khau)

&&

famous masters (ustdn-i mashhr) and pictures by painters of likenesses (tawr-i 

muauwirn-i shabh), Coomaraswamy, Catalogue: 5960, no. CXXI. 

28 Abul Fazl, n-i Akbar: 102115, n 34. 

29 To cite a few images of these ear split ascetics from the JA, IOLR, which specially 
abounds in these, see Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures: nos 25, 26, 45 and 145. From 
the Berlin Album, see Kuhnel and Goetz, Indian Book Painting: passim.

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 151 

Kunwr and Djg Bshishta,30 Jahangir, in particular, was attracted to 
the Vedantic scholar Jadrup, whom he visited many times, and the episode 
is pictorially recorded as well.31 Scholarship has shown similarities 
between the esoteric sects of the Kanphatas and Vedantism with Sufism, 
an observation also made by Jahangir in his memoirs and also seen in 
the writings of Dara Shikoh.32 

Finally, it was not just the court that fostered Persian Sufi works but it 
seems that by the mid-seventeenth century, masters of Iranian classics 
found an increasingly appreciative audience among the middle-order 
people in big and small towns where anthologies of Persian poetry came 
to be commonly sold. Persian classics were taught to madrasa pupils in 
Mughal India and Rumis Mathnaw; besides, the Akhl -i Nir and 
Kmya-i Sadat were a part of essential readings in the manual for the 
officials.33 

Mughal painting was part of a visual culture that interacted with 
domains of poetry, political and social behaviour, and court ceremonials. 
Visual images produced in the ateliers of the Mughals acted as social 
signs of an eclectic world. The depiction of the wine-cup in Mughal 
painting is seen within this semantics, where the material, spiritual and 
the temporal often overlap, as the object moves from hedonism to 
mysticism, and ultimately, to the legitimisation of Mughal kingship. 

Wine and Verse and the Ideal Prophet-prince 

Mughal painting, as a candid record of the lived life of its protagonists, 
often depicts wine-drinking imagery. In the painted folios of Mughal 
dynastic manuscripts from the early years of the school, scenes of royal 
feastings depict gold and silver wine-cups, decanters, caskets and pitchers 
of all sizes and shapes along with food, music and dancing; wine being 
integral to celebrations at courts and garden pavilions.34 Bottles and cups, 

30 Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings: 155232. 

31 Jahangir, Tzuk, vol. I: 35556, 359; vol. II: 49, 5253, 104106, 108; for the picture 
in the MG, see Okada, Imperial Mughal Painters: 40. no. 40. 

32 Rizvi, Religious and Intellectual History: 2939; for an analogy between Vedantism 
and Sufi poetry, see Choubey, Traces of Philosophy; Jahangir, Tzuk, vol. I: 356. 

33 Alam, The Pursuit of Persian: 328. 

34 For a few representative citations, see the celebration scenes of the various Bbur­
nmas: Tyulayev, Miniatures of the Babur Namah: no. 68 for the Moscow manuscript 
(1593); Randhawa, Paintings of the Bburnma: pls X and XII (1598, National Museum, 
New Delhi, hereafter NM). From the 

inghz-nma (Imperial Library, Tehran, 1598), 
Marek and Knizkova, The Jenghiz Khan Miniatures: illus. 1.
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152 t Meera Khare 

derived from Chinese prototypes, often studded with jewels, are frequ­
ently depicted in the wall niches of palace quarters.35 Wine-drinking, as 
an intrinsic aspect of court culture, is also apparent later in the reign of 
Shahjahan from the wedding celebration scenes of the Bdshh-nma, 
where wine-cups, chalices and flasks, among other things, are shown as 
gift objects.36 

Apart from these conventional crowded compositions, where the wine-
cup is an integral part of the Mughal court life, intimate private drinking 
scenes too were painted right from the early years of the school. In a rare 
private picnicking scene, dating to the later years of Akbars reign, his 
sons, Murad and Daniyal are shown drinking wine under a canopy in a 
landscape.37 In this beautiful miniature, of which many versions exist, 
wine is very prominently being poured into a golden cup that is held by 
one of the princes. In another painting, Murad is shown with his consort 
in an amorous mood with wine bottles and cups lying in the foreground.38 

Besides these representations, painting under Akbar unhesitatingly 
depicted scenes of the fallout of drunken revelry. The scene of Babur 
inebriated returning home on a horseback with a torch in hand forms a 
part of the painting cycle of the various manuscripts of the Bbur-nma.39 
From the Chester Beatty Akbar-nma, the scene of Akbar in combat 
with Amber Raja Man Singh, following a drinking bout is a frank repre­
sentation of what really happened in a select royal drinking party.40 The 
double page composition has wine-cups and bottles depicted in the wall 

35 Okada, Imperial Mughal Painters: 10, no. 2, for a folio from a Khamsa-i Ni m 
(15961597), British Library. A double-page illustration of a reception banquet from 
the Chester Beatty Akbar-nma (1604) in the CB (Arnold and Wilkinson, The Library of 
Chester Beatty, vol. II: pl. 17) shows wine-cups in the niches behind the throne. From 
the Djahngr-nma, see Okada, Imperial Mughal Painters: 147, no. 171; the audience 
halls of the Bdshh-nma (c.1640, Royal Library, Windsor Castle) depict wine-cups 
and flasks as well behind the throne (Beach et al., King of the World: pl. 5). However, 
the depiction of wine-cups and bottles in the interior of the tomb of Itimad al-Dawla 
(father-in-law of Jahangir) at Agra probably stands for recreating the ambience of paradise, 
where there are rivers of wine and wine is offered to the faithful. See Schimmel, The 
Celestial Garden: 1516. 

36 Beach et al., King of the World: pl. 14. 

37 Sotheby, 10 July 1973: lot 31 (c.1620), present location unknown. 

38 In the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (hereafter 
FGA), c.1597, attributed to Manohar (Beach, The Imperial Image: 195196, cat.no. 22). 

39 For an example from the British Library Bbur-nma (1590/91), see Suleiman, 
Miniatures of the Babur-Nama: fol. 314a, pl. 48. 

40 Arnold and Wilkinson, The Library of Chester Beatty, vol. II: pls 27 and 28.

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 153 

niches. Similarly, in a popular Mughal painting of c.1600, Babur is shown 
all inebriated, swaying with a bottle and cup in hand.41 

In all these depictions, the wine-cup is seen in an activity associated 
with the pleasures of life, as an intrinsic aspect of the material culture of 
the times. And being associated with social practices, it was painted by 
the artists of subsequent reigns as well, when princes were shown in the 
company of their consorts in amorous moods, holding the wine-cup or 
being proffered one.42 However, a difference in the imagery of the cup 
is seen when in the later years of Akbars reign and from the output of 
the studios of Jahangir as Prince Salim (15991604), young menun­
known princes and courtiersstanding or sitting in idyllic surroundings; 
strumming a mandolin or contemplating; holding a flower, a book, a 
bird or a wine-cup start appearing in the Mughal repertoire.43 At times, 
these youths, often unshaven, are shown offering the wine-cup to their 
lady consorts.44 But these pictures do not exude an amorous mood, nor 
one of revelry, but instead allude to a poetic mysticism. This is often 
supported by Sufi verses that are inscribed on to the pictorial surfaces, to 
be read as part of the act of viewing the image. 

These images of youths with wine-cups in the Mughal repertoire come 
inalongwith othertypical PersianthemeslikeYoungGroomandaHorse, 
Prince/Princes Hunting, Prince and the Hermit and Aged Dervishes.45 

41 Sotheby, 7 December 1970: lot 103, present location unknown. 

42 Two beautiful miniatures of young princes with their consorts drinking with the 
wine-cup prominently displayed are in the Minto Album, CB (Okada, Imperial Mughal 
Painters: nos 225 [161525] and 228 [c.1630, signed Govardhan]). Shah Shuja, the 
second son of Shahjahan is often depicted with the cup in amorous moods (ibid.: no. 227 
from the Kevorkian album, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, ascribed to the 
artist Balchand by Shahjahan himself [1632]; Pal et al., Romance of the Taj Mahal: 42, 
no. 31 [1633] by the same artist, private collection). Dara Shikoh too is shown with his 
consort and the cup in the MFA (Coomaraswamy, Catalogue: 48, no. LXXVI, pl. XXVI 

[c. 1630]). For another depiction of him from the late seventeenth century in the NM, 
see Daljeet, Mughal and Deccani Paintings: 7879. For a beautiful portrait of Prince 
Shahriyar, son of Jahangir, standing with the wine-cup (1606) from the Nasir al-Din 
album, Imperial Library, Tehran, see Godard, Un Album: 25253, planche no. 55, fig. 
101; for Prince Kamran being given a gold wine-cup by a stream (c.161520) from the 
CB, see Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings: 41213, 415, cat. 3.30. 
43 To cite a couple of these, besides the ones that are discussed in this article, Das, 
Farrukh Beg: figs 511; Okada, Imperial Mughal Painters: nos 69, 114 and 115; 
Coomaraswamy, Catalogue: 32, no. XLIV, pl. XXII; ibid.: 33, no. XLV, pl. XXIII; ibid.: 
33, no. XLVII. 

44 Coomaraswamy, Catalogue, 32, no. XLII: pl. XXII; ibid., 33, no. XLVI: pl. XXIV. 

45 Okada, Imperial Mughal Painters: nos 6264, 70, 95, 13132. For the Persian 
examples, see Simpson, Arab and Persian Painting: nos 22, 29, 30; Soudavar, Art of the 
Persian Courts: ch. 7.

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154 t Meera Khare 

Jahangir rebelled against his father before becoming emperor, and set 
up court at Allahabad (15991604), where he maintained his independent 
studio of painting.46 As a connoisseur with distinctive tastes, besides 
patronising two works of Hindu esoteric philosophy, the Djg Bshishta 
and the Radj Kunwr, along with a Sufi work, the Dwn-i Amr asan 
Dihalw47 for illustrative purposes, the prince collected images of Persian 
and European themes, which were bound in sumptuous albums for him. 
His Persianate repertoire at this time shows a preference for these typical 
images from the Iranian courts. These themes come from the brushes of 
such Mughal masters like Aqa Riza, Farrukh Beg, Mir Sayyid Ali, 
Muhammad Ali and Mirza Ghulam, artists who painted in a clearly 
Persianate style and brought in Iranian aestheticism. Safawid painting 
of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries under the school of Shah 
Abbas (15711629) often depicts young unshaven cup-bearers with 
flasks and cups standing coquettishly in idyllic surroundings.48 

The painting, Portrait of a Youth (c.16001604, Plate 1) is a typical 
example of this genre from the Mughal ateliers. Ascribed to the artist 
Mirza Ghulam, it comes from the studios of Prince Salim.49 A colourfully 
dressed youth sits on a box like high golden stool holding the wine-cup 
prominently in his right hand, while in the other, he has a blue ceramic 
wine-flask. He is dressed in a pair of blue tight pants, a pink fur-collared 
coat worn over a yellow long-sleeved tunic with a red lining and a white 
Safawid turbanan ensemble that stands out against the stark backdrop 
of uneven ground. At first glance, the painting appears to be a simple 
image of wine-drinking as pleasure. But a further reading would suggest 
more: the figure of the youth, to whom the artist draws attention through 
colourful attire, does not face the viewer, instead he looks down with his 
half-closed eyes at the ground, contemplating with the wine-cup in his 
hand, while he comfortably curls up one leg on the stool. The inscription 

46 Das, Mughal Painting: ch. 3. 

47 Dated 160203, Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore (Beach, The Grand Mogul: 3340). 

48 For a few examples from the FGA, see Atil, The Brush of the Masters: nos 15a, 19, 
20, 23, 31, 32, 36; from the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 
see Simpson, Arab and Persian Painting: nos. 20, 34, 37, in particular. Riza-i Abbasi 
painted these images. 

49 From the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck collection, LACMA (M.81.8.12) (Pal, Indian 
Painting: 25052, cat.no. 66); here, the painting is attributed to either Aqa Riza or Abul 
Hasan (ibid.: 250). Also see Beach, The Grand Mogul: 11718, no. 39.

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 155 

on the folio, a verse from Hafiz, as well gives us another rationale behind 
the composition, which reads as: 

I have seen my beloveds reflection in the cup,
O, ignorant man, you do not understand why
I am constantly intoxicated.50


It is obvious from these verses, as from the formal aesthetics of the 
image that it is imbued with an allegorical meaning that goes beyond 
simple hedonism. It is quite apparent that in the gazing, reflecting and 
pensive mood of the youth, so effectively captured by the artist, the 
reference of the poet/artist in the verse/composition is not to any amorous 
situation, as the beloved is not anyone on earth, but it is God/Reality/ 
Truth, and the wine or the wine-cup is the site of His revelation. And 
because the cup is a receptacle of His essence, the poet/our youth in the 
painting is constantly intoxicated. From an object representing pleasure, 
the cup has come to be associated with mystical intoxication in this 
painting. 

It is not difficult to corroborate this meaning with the poetic literary 
tradition of the Sufis, to which genre also belongs this fragment of Hafiz. 
We have seen that in the material culture of the Islamicate world, pro­
hibition of wine and wine-drinking was never adhered to. Sufi mystic 
literature also uses the imagery of intoxication, not in a bacchic way, but 
to explain the love, passion and ecstasy for God. The very fact that wine 
is forbidden in Islam in this life but promised to the faithful in paradise 
perhaps added to the power of its symbolism.51 Among the privileges 
and rukha (dispensations) that form part of the communal life of the 
Sufis, wine and the wine-cupthe kas al-maabba (the loving cup) 
is extolled in mystical language. The ghazals (odes) of Hafiz, various 
poems of Jami, and the long mathnaws of Attar and Rumi are especially 
concerned with the virtues of wine and use the metaphor of the cup, 
tavern, cup-bearer and drunkenness for the realisation of the Divine.52 

50 Pal, Indian Painting: 250. 

51 Wilson and Pourjavady, The Drunken Universe: 46. 

52 For use of wine in Amir Khusraw, Attar and Rumi, see Schimmel, As Through a 
Veil: chap. 3, 6061, 12426; for the poet Anwaris use, see Welch and Schimmel, Anvaris 
Divan: 7780, 101103. Among the Mughal poets, Kudsi Mashhadi (came to India in 
163132), Talib-i Amuli (appointed poet-laureate in Jahangirs court in 161819), Abdul 
Kadir Bidil (d.1720), all use the metaphor of wine (Abidi, Qudsi Mashhadi; idem, 
Tlib-i-mul); for Bidils verses from his S -nma on a metallic wine bowl from 
PWM, see The Indian Heritage: 144, no. 488. 

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156 t Meera Khare 

Plate 1 

Portrait of a Youth 


Source: Mirza Ghulam, c. 16001604, Los Angeles County Museum 
of Art, Los Angeles, acc.no. M.81.8.12. 

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 157 

The painting, however, is not just a simple visual adaptation of this 
literary theme, for the image is as much empowered to say something 
on its own. But before we move on to that, we need to look at larger 
epistemological issues of the aesthetic philosophy of the time to help us 
to better comprehend the meaning of the wine-cup through its pure visual 
forms. The speculation of Ibn al-Arabi and his school, the Mughal higher 
order of knowledge, centred on a pantheistic viewpoint that everything 
in this world is a manifestation of True Realitythat everything that 
exists is God.53 Ipso facto, the world of the outer form is a replica of the 
inner form or the world of the Divine, or the microcosm is the macro­
cosm. The implication of this principle of Wadat al-Wudjd (the unity 
of being) in the context of pictorial images meant that the contemplation 
of the outer painted form would lead one to the knowledge of the inner 
form of the object, that is, the inner world of the Divine being, since the 
outer form is an exact replica of the inner form. This speculation un­
consciously led to a rise of illusionism in painting from the Timurid-
Safawid lands as the human image became more secular,54 and at the 
same time it came to associate all artistic activity with spiritual-mystical 
connotations, since it is through the contemplation of the outer form 
that one would be led to the contemplation of the inner form of being. 

The discerning discourse of Safawid painterchronicler, Sadiki Beg 
in the technical treatise, Knn al-±uwar (15761602) precisely brings

&

out this contemporary ideal of painting, when the author writes, it is 
through the art of painting (ratgar) that what is intrinsically real within 
a subject (man) cou ld be represented, to all appearances, through its 
external form (rat)55the sole idea behind the whole process of artistic 
activity being to draw near to the objects real nature, the inner world of 
truth. Similarly, in the writings of poets Sadi and Rumi, this aesthetic 
philosophy meant that the painters work had didactic values in explaining 
God.56 In this context, Abul Fazl as well, while equating the form of a 
picture and the written word with an idea, draws attention to the fact that 
both (the picture and the word) are sources of wisdom and that the em­
peror looks upon the practice of painting both as a means of study and of 
amusement.57 Akbar himself seems to have believed in it when his 

53 Chittick, Taawwuf: 31718. 

54 This is seen in the school of late fifteenth-century Persian painter, Bihzad, and later 
in the works of Safawid painter, Sultan Mohammad in exploring the psychological 
nuances of human beings. 

55 Beg, The Canons of Painting: 261, ch. I (3135). 

56 Ettinghausen, Images and Iconoclasm: cols 81618. 

57 Abul Fazl, n-i Akbar: 102103, 113.

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158 t Meera Khare 

historian made him say that the painter (or the viewer), by practising his 
art (or by viewing art) has his own peculiar way of recognising God and 
increasing his knowledge.58 Jahangir too sent his portrait to the ruler, 
Adil Khan in the Deccan, so that he might see him spiritually from his 
picture.59 Painted forms in general then became a source of knowledge, 
of attaining reality, and for our immediate context herethe painted 
object of the wine-cupa visual space where the mysteries of the Divine 
could be comprehended; an object having didactic values in explaining 
God. In the light of this digression into contemporary aesthetics, let us 
now return to the figure of the youth in the painting, to continue our 
reading of its iconography and forms. 

As observed earlier, the image of a solitary youth gazing into his wine-
cup was intended to convey a meaning in which the wine-cup becomes 
a place for the appearance of divine theophanies. A closer reading of the 
image would show that the youth is not a member of the royal household 
norishean elite courtier, as he wears no jewels, in spite of the rich vibrant 
colours in which he has been portrayed. This idealised youth, detached 
but prominently holding the wine-cup and the flask, is actually a cup­
bearer, a s , who is in the act of pouring wine to the viewers. But far 
from being a mundane attendant cup-bearer, the artist has depicted him 
as a tranquil, ethereal figure, who is more a visual representation of divine 
beauty, than simply a conventionally handsome face.60 The youth, who 
is now a s as the face of the Divine beloved himselffurther seems 
to be bestowing the cup of wine of divine love to his lovers (viewers), 
arousing a sublime drunkenness and euphoria in the viewerreader. 

The representation of the wine-cup in this painting, therefore, has two 
meanings: in the first, the youth looks down in the cup to see the reflection 
of the Divine beloved/Truth/Reality, and the object is a means to the 
realisation of that Truth, as all painting was thought to be; in the second, 
as the cup-bearer, the youth is himself the Divine beloved who dispenses 
the cup of divine wine/love to his lovers (viewers). In both its meanings, 
the wine-cup and its associated cup-bearer imagery acquires a literary 
mystical connotation, a trope belonging to a cosmo-moral pantheistic 
viewpoint. 

Within this semantics, we now move on to further representations of 
the cup. Of a similar genre, where the cup is extolled, and once again 

58 Ibid.: 115.
59 Jahangir, Tzuk, vol. II: 37.
60 For this analogy in poetry, see Schimmel, As Through a Veil: 6768; also Okada,


Imperial Mughal Painters: 113. 

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 159 

through the inscriptions on the image, is a painting from a Berlin Museum 
depicting a young prince, identified as Prince Salim.61 The scene is one 
in which the future emperor is being offered a cup of wine by an attendant. 
The verses on the pictorial surface read to mean that one would give any 
wealth in the world for that azure cup of wine which would take one to 
Reality. Once again, the cup moves from its apparent function of depicting 
hedonism to poeticmystical allusions. 

In another painting of a similar theme, from the Naprstek Museum, 
that of a Youth with a Wine-Cup and a Hound, the mystical semblances 
are once again rendered by the artist, and this time even without the help 
of verses.62 In this folio from the Mura ai Gulshan, an album of 
Jahangir (15991609), the stylised figure of a youthful prince sits on an 
equally ornamental bough of a tree holding the wine-cup in his hands. 
But the presence of the hound beside the princely figure reminds us of 
his other royal activity of hunting and that is when the magic spell cast 
by the idyllic surroundings breaks down and the figure becomes a plain 
prince who is indulging in the hedonistic activity of wine drinking. In 
two more pieces, painted around the same time, unknown princes appear 
with the cup of wine along with their characteristic royal attributes of 
falcons and swords.63 

Mughal artists would appear to have worked to-ards the creation of 
autonomous visual forms to convey the link between hedonism and 
mysticism, without having to take recourse to verses, as certain folios 
from the Mughal ateliers show. The theme of learned discussions had 
been a long favourite of the Persianate world. As a matter of fact, in the 
didactic literature of all eastern lands, the visit of the prince to seek 
knowledge from the sages is a popular motif. The idea is associated with 
a particular notion of kingship, where the prince is a prophetphilosopher 
par excellence.64 It took varied forms, like prince and the hermit, king and 

61 Museums fur Indisch Kunst, Berlin (MIK I 5404) (Weber, Porträts: Abb. 24: 179 
183). 

62 Hajek, Indian Miniatures: 75, pl. 10, where attributed to Aqa Riza. 

63 Das, Farrukh Beg: fig. 5; Okada, Imperial Mughal Painters: no. 115. 

64 The concept of the philosopher-prince appears in the works of political theorists 
like Al-Farabis Aphorisms of the Statesman and in Ibn Rushd, where the ideal prince 
possesses all the knowledges to be the leader of a virtuous societyan ideal society 
that requires a philosopher-king to create order (Lapidus, A History: 18791). This 
speculation of the falsafa tradition (Hellenic scholastic philosophy which subsumed 
into re-valourised Sufism) formed the fabric of Mughal court culture as well. See Rizvi, 
Religious and Intellectual History: 355ff.; and more recently, Alam, Sharia and 
Governance: 22733. This motif occurs in the Hindu gnostic work, Djg Bshishta, 
illustrated for Jahangir, in the CB. See Arnold and Wilkinson, The Library of Chester 
Beatty, vol. II: pls 48b and 49a, where the king meets with the sages. 

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160 t Meera Khare 

the dervish, or master and pupil. In pictorial arts, wine imagery along 
with food and music, with/without books (standing for mystical-religious 
verses) forms an essential part of these discussing assembly scenes in 
serene settings. In what is perhaps one of the most elegant examples of 
the allegory of book and wine from the Persianate world, a Safawid 
folio from the sixteenth century depicts a dervish sitting on a leopard 
skin with a book tucked away in his cloth bag facing a prince, who has a 
wine-cup and a flask by his side.65 The serene setting of two beautiful 
birds on the top right and Chinese type clouds on the left completes the 
atmosphere of a learned discussion where wine-imagery is an integral 
part, as wine and the cup become the means to attain True Reality. 

However, it was Mughal India which experimented with the theme in 
an even more innovative way. In one of its earliest beginnings, the atelier 
of Akbar produced a scene of royal entertainment showing a young prince 
holding a wine-cup with attendants and musicians along with a book 
(c.1600).66 This painting, a typical Akbari folio, where animals are shown 
in front as comprising the court ensemble, sets the tone for future Mughal 
discussion scenes where wine and verse go together. 

The imagery is crystallised in a c.1610 folio depicting an unidentified 
Prince Visiting an Ascetic in his hermitage (Plate 2).67 The association of 
the prince with the book/sage and the wine-cup is beautifully brought 
out by the unknown artist here. The main theme of the picture centres on 
a royal figure, dressed in a Persian costume, proffering a cup of wine to 
a sage, who sits outside his dwelling on a raised ground. That the sage 
is a learned man is obvious from the book that he holds by his side. The 
ascetic expectantly stretches out his right hand towards the cup in a ges­
ture of accepting it from the prince, while at the same time he seems to 
be explaining a point to the seekerprince. The two main dramatis per­
sonae look solemnly engaged in a discourse, as another figure, that of an 
attendant, on the princes left, is also offering yet another cup of wine to 
the sage, with the wine flask lying by his side. The discussion scene is 
complete with food, drinks and music, as the musicians of the prince 
appear on the right side of the picture. 

The painting, however, in more than one way conveys this allegory of 
wine and verse, where the cup, as a locus for divine revelation, is integral 
to this scene. A second look at our folio shows it to be vertically divided 

65 Marteau and Vever, Miniatures Persanes: pl. CL, no. 211. 

66 FGA, 60.27, attributed to Sur Das. See Beach, The Imperial Image: 193, cat.no. 21 
and 88 (for a coloured pl.). 

67 Anonymous collection, Beach, The Grand Mogul: 164, no. 61.

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 161 

Plate 2 

Prince Visiting an Ascetic 


Source: Anon, c. 1610, anonymous collection. 

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162 t Meera Khare 

into two, each representing a different world. The left half, besides the 
ascetic, includes the figure of the dervish with his characteristic headgear, 
who sits besides the sage, counting a rosary. Two more figures appear 
on this side: these are the two young acolytes of the sage. One is shown 
behind him coming from inside with a bowl, and the other sits in the left 
foreground of the picture. This world of the ascetic on the left is juxta­
posed with the temporal world of the prince on the right, represented by 
the royal retinue of insignia bearers and musicians. A huge tree behind 
the two protagonists symbolically further divides the picture plane ver­
tically. But the wine-cup, depicted almost at the centre of the composition, 
held by the outstretched hand of the prince seems to link the seekers 
material world with the spiritual world of the ascetic, as the ascetic gets 
ready to accept the cup while he discourses with the prince. All others in 
the composition look up at these twothe prince and the asceticwith 
the wine-cup and the book in between them. The wine-cup with its 
mystical/poetic allusions becomes associated with the theme of Prince 
and the Hermit, where the prince sets out to seek knowledge from the 
sages, and the cup, an intrinsic aspect of these visits, is represented as a 
means to realise that knowledge. 

Of a similar vein from the same time period, is a folio from the Nasir 
al-Din album by the artist Manohar that once again focuses on the theme 
of the prince meeting up with the sage, this time a Sufi.68 Once again the 
two worlds, the spiritual and the temporal, are juxtaposed, with a tree 
behind that separates the two realms. And once again, the wine-cup in 
the hand of the prince, as in the earlier folio, is the centrepiece of the 
composition, again forming a crucial part of the learned discussion. 

The princely ensemble of wine and verse is again seen in an unusual 
painting of c.1610, An Allegorical Portrait of a Prince (Plate 3), attributed 
to the Mughal master, Farrukh Beg.69 The richly dressed prince with a 
sword and a shield stands here facing a pillar with a platter that has a 
glass bottle containing red wine and a cup on it. The verse or the world 
of knowledge in this curious painting is represented by a green parakeet, 

68 In the Imperial Library, Tehran, Godard, Un Album: 23839, planche no. 43 (fig. 
93). 

69 Sotheby, 7 April 1975: lot 109. Mark Zebrowski (Deccani Painting: 12328, no. 
92) calls this a Deccan work of a Mughal and a Bijapur artist and the portrait to be that 
of Sultan Mohammad Adil Shah of Bijapur and attributes it to 1635. The iconography 
of the painting, however, would remain the same. 

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 163 

depicted on the branch of a tree within hearing distance of the prince.70 
In a strange way, the bird and the prince seem engaged with each other. 
This is because of their close proximity, a visual nuance that is also 
buttressed by the fact that this particular bird is known for telling stories 
and mechanically repeating words. The point of the princes sword rests 
near a conch shell and a flowering shrub on the dark foreground. The 
conch shell, perhaps representing music, further adds to the riddle of the 
image. But the formal stance of the prince, as he stands in full military 
gearamidst his domain of a green foliage and a cluster of buildings behind, 
delinks the wine-cup or its imagery from hedonistic associations and 
makes it an integral part of the princely ensemble. 

By the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the wine-cup, along 
with food and music, formed an integral part of the learned discussion 
scenes between princes and sages. Leading Mughal artists like Bichitr 
and Govardhan painted folios like Salim in the Company of Sages (1630) 
and A Drinking Party in a Garden (c.1615), where two princes are shown 
engaged in a discussion from a book, accompanied by scholars, dervishes 
and a musician with wine-cups strewn around.71 Many folios from Shahja­
hans time belong to this genre.72 The Dara Shikoh album, whose paintings 
belong to c.1635, often depicts princes with wine-cups and bottles stand­
ing in idealised surroundings, where they are shown at times in the act 

70 This identification of the parakeet with the verse can also be seen in three almost 
identical tinted drawings of the Safawid artist, Shaykh Muhammad (active mid-sixteenth 
century till 1629, working in the Riza style). In two of these, a youth is shown holding 
a book with a pen and a penknife hanging from his sash, while in the third (from the 
FGA, 155575) the youthful prince instead holds a parakeet and a pen while the penknife 
still hangs from his waist on one side like in the other two drawings. See Simpson, 
Shaykh-Muhammad: 109, 111, no. 12. Interestingly in another nineteenth-century 
Persian example from the Mughal St Petersburg Album (Institute for the Peoples of 
Asia, Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, hereafter IPA), of a learned discussion scene, 
sages and musicians appear with a parrot in the foreground (Ivanov et al., Albom 
Indiyskikh: fol. 64, no. 77). 

71 Both of these are from the Minto Album, CB (Arnold and Wilkinson, The Library 
of Chester Beatty, vol. III: 7A, nos 7 and 8, pls 58 and 59); for the former, also see 
Okada, Imperial Mughal Painters: 173, no. 209, where the main protagonist is identified 
as Prince Salim. 

72 To cite a few, Daljeet, Mughal and Deccani Paintings: 5253 (c.1620); from the St 
Petersburg Album, Ivanov et al., Albom Indiyskikh: fol. 70, no. 23; here, a princely 
youth appears with an old man with a open book in hand, as the cups and flasks lie in 
front of them (c.1625). The picture at the bottom of the folio as well depicts a feast in a 
garden with a prince, sages and the wine-cup. 

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164 t Meera Khare 

Plate 3 

An Allegorical Portrait of a Prince 


Source: Attributed to Farrukh Beg, c. 1610, previously in the Kevorkian 
Collection, New York, present location unknown. 

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 165 

of pouring wine.73 The album at the same time contains many folios that 
depict ascetics and dervishes, or discoursing princes and sages, also in 
idyllic settings.74 In all these representations, the wine imagery brings 
together the search for the Absolute with a certain notion of Mughal 
kingship, that of an ideal philosopher-prince who visits and discourses 
with the sages to attain the knowledge,75 of which wine, food and music 
are an integral part. It is to such images, in which the wine-cup moves 
from being an allusive device to an active participant in a holistic notion 
of Mughal kingship, that I now move. These comprise mainly the portraits 
of Emperors Jahangir and Shahjahan. 

The Cup of Jamshid: The World in Miniature 

We have seen one example from a Berlin Museum collection, where as 
early as Jahangirs princehood days, he was depicted as being offered a 
wine-cup. The mood of the painting no doubt veered more towards the 
mystical, as apparent from the inscribed verses, yet ostensibly, the image 
carried notions of hedonism. And there is nothing surprising in this, for 
the emperor was in real life addicted to drinking from his eighteenth 
year, and many of his wine-cups have survived in various collections.76 
His memoirs as well as the accounts of Sir Thomas Roe, the English 
ambassador at the Mughal court (161419), and of other European 
travellers, all testify to this.77 The emperor drank regularly, with the 
exception of some days, and he often drank himself to sleep.78 His 
memoirs show that he was aware of the devastating effect of the habit, 
and struggled to reduce his intake of alcohol.79 He prohibited both tobacco 
and wine in court, but could not curb his own indulgence.80 

73 Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures: 69f.21v, pl. 7; 390, 68f.38; 192, 68f.43v. 

74 Ibid.: 392, 68f.44, for a dervish holding a jeweled bottle; ibid.: 388, 68f.33v, for a 
scene of a sage and a prince. 

75 For a further reading of this image in Mughal painting, see Khare, Sovereignty 
and Images: 25864, 293303, ch. IV. 

76 Jahangir, Tzuk, vol. I: 8; for a few of the emperors extant wine-cups, see Skelton, 
Decorative Arts: nos 350, 351, 372. 

77 Jahangir, Tzuk: passim.; Roe, The Embassy: 86, 99, 190, 226, 240, 32425, 345, 

353. Palsaert, Manucci, all testify to his excessive drinking (Findly, Nur Jahan: 83). His 
disrepute as being a drunkard was also carried abroad by travellers who took with them 
eyewitness accounts (ibid.: 316, fn. 138). 
78 Roe, The Embassy: 86, 190, 240.
79 Jahangir, Tzuk, vol. I: 20, 32, 3435, 306308, vol. II: 35, 21314.
80 Ibid., vol. I: 8, 157, 370.


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166 t Meera Khare 

In spite of this, it is surprising that in the entire Mughal visual repertoire, 
the emperor is never shown in an inebriated state. This is all the more 
puzzling, considering the fact that the paintings from his memoirs, the 
Djahngr-nma, often depict real-life events, and he does appear a 
few times with his women in wine-drinking scenes.81 But none of the 
images depict what his memoirs tell us or what the contemporaries have 
noted with regard to his drinking excesses. This is understandable, given 
the factor of royal patronage of painting, and it is unlikely that the emperor 
would have been portrayed in official representations in an inebriated 
state, more so after his accession (1605). Besides the painting from the 
Berlin collection already mentioned, commissioned by him as Salim 
(where the cup has more mystical meaning), a folio from the Dwn-i 
Amr asan Dihalw (16021603) depicts him being offered a cup while 
a game of polo is being played. This is portrayed as a part of a princely 
activity but without any sign of inebriation.82 This is true even of his 
scenes with the ladies, where he is shown with the wine-cup. 

In this context, we need to understand that the emperor, in any case, 
was not such an inefficient ruler who would have succumbed to his 
excesses and easy life. In fact, he seems to have meticulously conducted 
daily state business, as discerned from his memoirs.83 He regularly sat in 
the audience window, the djharka, to show himself to the public three 
times a day, and this he did even when he was ailing.84 He got a chain of 
justice put up for his subjects and promulgated 12 administrative edicts 
as soon as he ascended the throne.85 All this shows his organisational 
capabilities and an interest in the affairs of the state. He had his reverses 
though, in the loss of Kandahar (1622), and had his failings as he 

81 In all these, the wine-cup is depicted for its hedonistic qualities. See Martin, The 
Miniature Painting, vol. II: pl. 201, in which he offers the cup to a lady; in a folio from 
the collection of the royal house of Jaipur, he sits enthroned in a pavilion holding the 
cup as the ladies surround him (Gray, Painting: no. 680, pl. 131); also see a folio from 
the Minto Album, CB, where the emperor is shown celebrating the festival of Holi in 
the harem with wine-cups around (161525) (Arnold and Wilkinson, The Library of 
Chester Beatty, vol. III: pl. 56); the LACMA, where he embraces Nur Jahan as he holds 
a cup in his hands (c.1615) (Pal, Indian Painting: 25960, cat. no. 71); the FGA, where 
he and Shahjahan as Prince Khurram are offered wine by Nur Jahan (c.1617) (Pal et al., 
Romance of the Taj Mahal: 25, no. 16many copies exist of this. See Das, Mughal 
Painting: 15657); and the RL (early eighteenth century), where he is being offered a 
cup among a group of ladies, while he has a book in his hand (Siddiqi, Rampur Raza 
Library: pl. 53). 

82 Das, Mughal Painting: pl. 7. 

83 Jahangir, Tzuk: passim. 

84 Findly, Nur Jahan: 7071. 

85 Jahangir, Tzuk, vol. I: 78. on November 6, 2007 

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 167 

increasingly came under the influence of his consort, Nur Jahan. All the 
same, he was not fool enough to give in to the demands of the English 
ambassador, Sir Thomas Roe, and neither did he give up his claims on 
Mewar or the Deccan, despite the fact that he never personally went to 
battle after his accession and was certainly given to the pleasures of life. 
It is also noteworthy that it was under his patronage that the visual 
vocabulary of the Mughal painting was put to the service of legitimisation 
of the state to its maximum, as painting became the most effective medium 
to represent the divine nature of Mughal kingship. 

Given this background, it is therefore not surprising that Jahangirs 
artists, in certain pieces, represented him with the wine-cup in special 
select ways after his accession. From its continued depiction as a part of 
the theme of Prince and the Hermit, an object that accompanied the 
philosopher-prince, the wine-cup now came to acquire a whole set of 
meanings under Jahangir and his son and successor, Shahjahan. However, 
this was not a conscious agenda, since for all apparent reasons, the 
representation of the wine-cup in these images was still meant to stand 
for the portrayal of pleasure. Yet the wine-cup, as it appears in some of 
the formal appearances of Jahangir after 1605, became a repository of 
certain connotations of his rulership. 

The association of the wine-cup with Mughal kingship tended to follow 
a varied trajectory. As the visual rhetoric increasingly came to depict 
notions of power, with borrowings of symbols from European examples, 
the cup became an active motif in the broader framework of images of 
eclectic rulership. It became an object that could, in the first place, 
conceptualise Mughal kingship in universal and immortal terms, across 
all climes and realms, and in the second, could be a participant in the 
political and social articulation of that authority, as seen in the 
representation of the ritual of djharka-i darshan and in the presentation 
scenes where the imperial portrait appears. 

After the first decade of the seventeenth century, Jahangirs portraits 
tend to be more formal and stately as his artists moved from private inti­
mate group formats to more public and formal audience scenes. In the 
painted folio, attributed to the artist Manohar, the wine-cup appears in 
the formal setting of a closed audience scene with as many as 16 nobles 
within a garden in a hilly country (c.1614, Plate 4).86 The scene depicted 
in Prince Parwiz Received in Audience is a formal setting of a ritual of 
presentation, where the emperors second son, Parwiz, presents him a 

86 Minto Album, VA (IM 91925), Stchoukine, La Peinture Indienne: pl. 28; Das, 
Mughal Painting: pl. 46. on November 6, 2007 

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168 t Meera Khare 

jewelled gold wine-cup. The main theme of presentation is nothing 
new, since earlier too, as Salim, he had been depicted as being offered a 
wine-cup. Only now, the emperor sits with a book in his left hand. The 
book has been identified as a Dwn-i fi , for it was often a companion 
of the emperor and was illustrated many times by master artists from the 
ateliers.87 We have already seen the link between the imagery of 
intoxication and Sufi poetic allusions, of which the poetry of Hafiz is the 
most elegant example. So the coupling of Hafiz and the cup in the picture 
could be read as a visual allegory of the theme of wine and verse. Yet, 
the representation here belongs to the genre of a formal state portrait 
where the emperor, rendered in the profile, sits stately surrounded by the 
grandees of the empire, who see him with the wine-cup, which he is 
about to pick up. What could this imagerythe majestic emperor with 
the cup in a formal state portrait, enthroned amidst equally formally 
delineated 16 grandees of the empireconvey?88 

It is interesting that around the same time (161114), the emperor 
issued some gold coins with his portrait inscribed on them. In these 
portrait muhrs (coins) or bacchanalian coins, Jahangir appears once 
more with a book and a cup. In one variety, he sits cross-legged on the 
throne with only the goblet in his hand and in the other, he holds both the 
book (a Dwn-i fi or an anthology of some bacchanalian verse) and 
the cup.89 It is generally accepted that these coins were meant to be formal 
presentations to the close circle of his followers.90 Then, together with 
our example of the formal state portraitalso meant to be seen by the 
same close elite group, the imagery probably does mean to convey an 
official face of the emperor or some notion of his kingship. It is for 
certain that in the context of the formal audience scene in which the cup 
appears, it does not allude to the emperors drinking excesses, nor to his 
poetic leanings, apparent though these might seem. 

87 For the various copies of the Dwn, see Verma, Mughal Painters: 418; Das, Mughal 
Painting: 145. 

88 It is not that he was the first ruler to have been depicted with the cup. Safawid and 
Ottoman princes were shown with cups as well, sitting majestically, but not quite the 
way Jahangir appears in this painting (Martin, The Miniature Painting, vol. II: pls 108, 
113 [c.1530]). In the latter example from the Safawid ateliers, the prince sits with an 
unusually large cup in idyllic surroundings. Also see Welch and Welch, Arts of the Islamic 
Book: 3233, no. 6, for a majestic portrait of the corpulent Ottoman Sultan, Salim II 
(c.1570) holding a cup of wine with a drunken expression in his eyes. 

89 Lane-Poole, The Coins of the Moghul Emperors: 6364, pl. IX, nos 31215, 317 
19; Hodivala, Portrait Muhrs: 15862. 

90 Ibid. Downloaded from http://mhj.sagepub.com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY
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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 169 

Plate 4 

Prince Parwiz Received in Audience 


Source: Attributed to Manohar, c. 1614, Minto Album, Victoria and Albert Museum, 
London, acc.no. I.M.91925. 

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170 t Meera Khare 

Persian literature often equates the wine-cup with the cup of Jamshid, 
the legendary Iranian hero of the Pishdadi dynasty from the Shh-nma, 
a popular book at the Mughal court as in other Persianate courts.91 The 
legend of Jamshid in popular tradition and Persian poetry associates him 
with the new year festival of Nawruz and with the invention of weapons, 
perfumes, crafts and wine and a reign that lasted for 700 years, when he 
ruled over all men, demons, birds and fairies.92 But above all, he is as­
sociated with the possession of a magic cup (the djm-i Djam, the cup/ 
mirror of Jamshid) in which he saw the reflection of the universe. The 
cup/mirror of Jamshid was a world-revealing cup (djm-i djahn num 
or djm-i gt num) and was no ordinary cup, for when he filled it up 
with wine and gazed into its still surface, he beheld the seven climes of 
the earth and saw its events from past and future.93 The character and 
ideas of the Shh-nma are echoed in the works of poets like Nizami, 
Rumi, Sadi and Hafiz. The poets speak of Jamshids cup of seeing as 
containing the beverage of divine intoxication, in which the truth can be 
seen, as the cup is both the world of outer and inner being. The desire 
for Jamshids cup where all existence can be seen is echoed in Hafizs 
poetry.94 The Sufi wine-cup, which is a locus of revealing the Divine 
(Plate 1), is just like the goblet of Jamshid, for both are world-revealing 
chalices; in the former, the spiritual domains can be comprehended and 
in the latter, the temporal. 

As a world-revealing cup, therefore, the cup of Jamshid/Sufi is associ­
ated with universal rulership, since the goblet helped the legendary king 
rule over all the seven spheres and planets, demons and men, when he 
sat holding it on the throne. In a different time and space, this cup of 
seeing also helped other legendary heroes like Iskander (Alexander of 
the Occident), who was a prophetic wise man and a model ruler, in 
penetrating the problems and mysteries of the world.95 Some, like Kai 
Khusraw from the Shh-nma, consulted it to locate lost people in the 

91 That the book was a prized and a favourite one is evident in the mark of the seals of 
first six Mughals on a copy that belonged to Timurid Prince Juki (copied around the 
1440s), in the Royal Asiatic Society, London, MS.239 (Stchoukine, Les Miniatures: 
5556, no. 38). Abul Fazl (n-i Akbar: 110) too writes that the mathnaw was one of 
the books that was continually read out to His Majesty. Many illustrated versions of the 
book exist as well. See Verma, Mughal Painters: 419. 

92 Browne, A Literary History, vol. 1: 11214. 

93 Massé, Djamshid: 438; Hafiz, Diwan: 89, Lyric 97. 

94 Ibid.: 2, Lyric 2; 6, Lyric 7; 13, Lyric 14; 55, Lyric 61; 136, Lyric 149; 555, Lyric 
612; 545, Lyric 603; 567, Lyric 625; Avery and Heath-Stubbs, Hafiz of Shiraz: 67. 

95 Alexander found great use in the legendary Persian king, Kai Khusraws per-

manently filled cup of seeing, which came to him. Brend, Perspectives on Persian 

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 171 

seven spheres of the cosmos.96 Poets like Hafiz too relate the seven-
ringed gnostic cup of wine to the kingship of Jamshid.97 In all these liter­
ary citations, the cup is associated with the world-rulership of Jamshid. 
It is, therefore, not surprising that in the writings of court poets, other 
contemporary literature and Jahangirs own memoirs, kingship is equated 
with the figure of Jamshid himself, when it is called Djamshd.98 

The association of the Sufi cup/Jamshids cup with imperial rulership 
is also obvious from the verses that appear on various miniatures, as also 
from the inscriptions on the extant cups. Select verses on a dervishs 
metal begging bowl (kashkl) from the Safawid period (16061607), 
which for all purposes can be taken to be a cup, and which could equally 
represent the Mughal cultural world, can be summarised to mean that 
the kashkl resembles the cup of Jamshid, which wants to be in the hands 
of those who want to resemble Iskander.99 The verses further say that the 
holder of the cup is fit to be the ruler of China and Rome (the two flanking 
pinnacles of power for the Iranian world).100 From the Mughal court, a 
panel in nastal by Mulla Mir Ali of Herat (d.1518), containing the 
verses of Hafiz from the Wantage Bequest collection of Mughal painting, 
seems to carry the allusion further when it says, the person who holds 
the wine-cup in his hands is the possessor of the imperial kingdom of 
Jamshid and let the thread of life be guided by the cup, since only so it 
(life) can reach perfection.101 Again, in the painting, Portrait of a Euro­
pean Gentleman with a Cup (early seventeenth century), the mystical 
quatrain of the same poet appearing on the left of the painting clearly 
states that: 

nkas ki ba-dast djm drad 
Suln djm mudm drad 

Painting: 20, in the story, Ainah-i Iskandari, from the quintet of Indian poet, Amir 
Khusraw Dihalwi. 

96 The mythical king consulted his diving-cup for finding the lost Iranian hero, Bizhan. 
He gazed into the all-revealing cup to scan and behold the lost man in the seven climes 
of the earth, see Firdawsi, The Shhnma, vol. III: 31718. 

97 Hafiz, Diwan: 348, Lyric 364; 398, Lyric 423. 

98 To cite a few instances, Hasan, Mughal Poetry: 36, where the poet Kasim Arslan 
refers to Akbar as the king with the pomp of Jamshid after his victory of Bengal (982 
A.H.); during the course of his son, Khusraws rebellion, Jahangir chided him for wanting 
his placethe place of Jamshid (Jahangir, Tzuk, vol. I: 65); for poet Urfis equation of 
kingship with Jamshid, see Browne, A Literary History, vol. IV: 247. 

99 Welch, Shah Abbas: 70, no. 41. 

100 Ibid. 

101 In the VA (IM 1191921), see Clarke, Indian Drawings: pl .19, no. 28.

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172 t Meera Khare 

b ki Khir ayt az m yft 
Dar maykda dj ki djm drad. 

[He who has a cup in his hands,
Eternally possesses King Jamshids cup
The water, from which Khizr found life,
Is (seek it) in the tavern, where the cup is.]102


The bearer of the cup in this quatrain is equated with the one who has 
the eternal universal powers of Jamshid, for the wine-cup in his hand is 
like the magic cup that made Jamshid see the picture of the whole world. 
Further, the wine in the cup is symbolic of the immortal waters, the elixir 
of life, found by Prophet Khizr, another legendary figure from literature. 
We will come back to him later. 

The inscription on the upper band beneath the rim of Jahangirs own 
rock crystal drinking cup (inscribed 161213) reinforces the belief of 
the gnostic cup of Jamshid as all revealing. The writing goes like this: 

This is the cup of water (of life), nourisher of the soul,
O King Jahangir (son) of King Akbar,
Who can see from its shadow the dome of heaven,
(It is) the world-displaying cup (that is, Jamshids cup showing the
events) on the face of the Earth . . . .103


It is quite clear from these verses and the citations from literature that 
the wine-cup/mirror of the great king Jamshid is conceived as a world-
revealing cup or a world in miniature. It is also the site for the revelation 
of the Divine, a means through which Reality could be reached in its 
mystical connotation; and when transposed to a political meaning, it is 
associated with the universal powers of the rulers, since the legendary 
Jamshid could see in its still waters the whole cosmos and its events, 
past and future. Can we then infer that in this painting, Prince Parwiz is 
actually presenting a microcosmic world to the emperor, a world in 
miniature, where power extends to all arenas of past and future? 

Before we move on to other examples from this genre, where Jahangir 
appears with the cup, we need to look at a curious representation of the 
emperor as Salim (1635), inscribed to the artist Bichitr from the Minto 

102 In the MFA, see Coomaraswamy, Catalogue: 35, no. LVII.14.661, pl. XXVI, 
authors translation. 

103 Private collection, Skelton, Decorative Arts: 122, no. 372. 

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 173 

album.104 The imperial persona here is holding a mirror with a jewelled 
frame of a European design. The iconography of the painting has never 
been conjectured, but could it now mean that the emperor who is holding 
a mirror is actually holding the reflecting cup of Jamshid, the microcosmic 
world? We have seen that in the literary iconography of the legend, mirror 
is interchangeable with cup, because of its reflecting properties. Of a 
similar genre is a painting from the Raza Library collection where an 
unidentified nobleman is shown seated on a throne, holding up a large 
mirror shaped like round flask in which he sees his image, or now meta­
phorically, the image of the world.105 

This imagery makes sense because of the pantheistic viewpoint that 
the microcosm is the macrocosm, and hence the cup that is being proferred 
is a world in miniature. However, this topos of world-rulership is equally 
comprehensible from the fact that the emperor did give himself the regnal 
title of the One who seizes the World (Djahngr).106 Jahangir was the 
first Mughal ruler to have done so while the others before him only took 
honorifics. It was also under him that the symbol of the globe, derived 
from European allegories, was adopted by artists to depict his rulership 
of the world.107 

Further evidence of world-rulership comes from the inscription 
painted over the Elephant Gate of the Lahore fort (dated 163132) from 
Shahjahans time. The writing, while praising the buildings of the Shah 
Burj, compares the king to the prowess, dignity and grandeur of Jamshid 
and Solomon.108 In the Perso-Islamic tradition, Jamshid is sometimes 
identified with the Biblical/Semitic Solomon, the world ruler with powers 
of magic and divination, who ruled over all realms.109 

104 In the VA (IM 281925), Okada, Imperial Mughal Painters: 168, no. 201. 

105 RL, Album 4.f.2a (15901605), Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts 
(hereafter, IGNCA): SL2923839. 

106 Jahangir, Tzuk, vol. I: 3. 

107 Mughal repertoire depicts him as gripping the globe, standing on it, or when 
enthroned beneath his feet. To cite a few examples, Jahangir holding the globe (1635) 
by Bichtr in the Minto album, CB (Arnold and Wilkinson, The Library of Chester Beatty, 
vol. III: pl. 57); by Abul Hasan in the FGA (161314), where the orb is under his feet 
(Okada, Imperial Mughal Painting: 55, no. 52). In the same collection from the Kevorkian 
album, he stands holding the globe in full military gear (1623) (ibid.: 57, no. 55). The 
globe is also held by him in a djharka (see Okada, Imperial Mughal Painters: 14849, 
nos 17273 for two instances). 

108 Vogel, Tile-Mosaics: 19. 

109 Browne, A Literary History, vol. I: 11213; Gibb and Kramers, Shorter 
Encyclopaedia: 54951, Sulaimn; for Solomonic kingship of Mughal rulers, derived 
mainly through their wall paintings and inlay work, see the writings of Ebba Koch, 
compiled in her Mughal Art: 1237, 61129. 

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174 t Meera Khare 

As the reign of the innovative Jahangir advanced, the artists went on 
to paint him holding the wine-cup in even more expressive allegories of 
kingship. I pick up two more examples of this genre from his reign. The 
first, a Portrait of Jahangir (Plate 5), is a lightly coloured (nm alam) 
preparatory drawing for a more formal portrait, which shows him stand­
ing, resplendently dressed holding a jade wine-cup in an ornate fashion.110 
His other hand rests on the hilt of his sword. The ageing emperor, passive 
and stately in profile, though carefully delineated as most of his portraits 
are at this time (162025), looks into blank space, which engulfs him all 
around. From all accounts, it is a characteristic Mughal portrait where 
the imperial protagonists are depicted holding swords, falcons, flowers, 
turban ornaments or jewels against stark backgrounds. But here the em­
peror, standing out against an undefined, empty space, instead holds the 
cupthe micro-cosmic world, thus justifying his epithet. He holds the 
cup here in much the same way as he often held an orb, a more apparent 
symbol of the world. Mughal folios frequently depict the emperor holding 
the globe, an allegory of his world-rulership; only now, in this rare picture, 
he instead holds the cupa far subtler symbol of the world. 

The second, a more splendid example, from the Raza Library collec­
tion, depicts once again an ageing emperor, this time holding a small 
white crystal wine-cup with red wine in it (c.1620, Plate 6).111 The haloed 
emperor, attired in a red turban, sits cross-legged against a dark cushion, 
very much like on his earlier portrait coins; only now he is framed within 
an audience window, the djharka. This is a very unusual picture, first, 
because it is larger than any of his djharka portraits that are extant 
today and is the only djharka image where the emperor is shown sitting 
cross-legged and holding a cup; in the others, he holds an orb, a crown, 
an aigrette, a portrait of his father, Akbar, or an unopened scroll while 
standing.112 Second, this is the only depiction of the emperor where he is 
bare-bodied to the navel, wearing only three strands of large pearls, the 
longest strand ornamented by a jewelled cross. 

The representation of the wine-cupthe world in miniatureis ac­
companied in these two images by other allegorical meanings, so that its 
symbolism of universal kingship is further enforced. The figure of the 

110 From the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck collection in LACMA, M.83.1.5 (Pal, 
Indian Painting: 266, cat. 73; Beach, The Grand Mogul: no. 58). 

111 RL, Album 4.f.11a, IGNCA: SL29259. 

112 Stchoukine, La Peinture Indienne: pl. XXI b; Skelton, Indian Painting of the 
Mughal Period: V. 69, pl. 126; RL, Album 9.f.3b, IGNCA: SL29380; Okada, Imperial 
Mughal Painters: 29, no. 27; ibid.: 14849, nos 17273. 

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 175 

Plate 5 

Portrait of Jahangir 


Source: Attributed to Abul Hasan or Manohar, 162025, Los Angeles County Museum 
of Art, Los Angeles, acc.no. M. 83.1.5. 

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176 t Meera Khare 

Plate 6 

Jahangir in a Djharka with a Wine-cup 


Source: Anon, c. 1620, from a Mughal album, Rampur Raza Library, Rampur, India, 
Album 4, folio 11a. 

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 177 

emperor here looks formal and distant in profile, as one can detect no 
trace of mortal qualities on his passive face. In the second example, the 
naturalistically modelled bare torso, sporting a slight paunch, no doubt 
in the first instance brings out the emperors earthly materiality, but at 
the same time, the seemingly unfathomable imperial countenance gives 
him an iconic quality of a deified being. An effulgence exudes from the 
emperors bare body, embossed against a dark green background, and 
the radiance is further highlighted by the halo of the sun that seems to 
illuminate him with divine lights from the Heavens. As the godlike time­
less mien of the emperor gives the illusion of subsuming in itself all 
these elements of the celestial, as well as the earthly in the beautiful cor­
porality of the bare torso, the imperial persona comes out as the micro­
cosmthe most complete realisation of the macrocosmic Divine itself. 
As the reflection of divine beauty on earth, who holds a cup of wine 
the cup-bearer of the age113the transcendent emperor in this painting 
has incorporated all the attributes of the Divine essencebeauty (djaml), 
majesty (djall) and perfection (kaml): the cognisances of the Sufi Al-
Insn Al-Kmil (the Perfect Man).114 And as the microcosm of the macro-
cosmic, the Perfect Mans power, too, is understood not just in his im­
mediate arena but as encompassing all realms, seen here in the symbol 
of the cup. The veracity of this symbolism of universal rulership is further 
enforced when in many other representations, the emperor is literally 
shown as the lord of the cosmos, the seven spheres and seven climes,115 
or as he calls himself, the king of the seven worlds (kishwar).116 

In a further symbolism of the wine-cup here, the red wine in itan 
expression of Sufi ecstasy of union with Godis also the symbol of the 

113 In Persian poetry, it is often the patron-prince who is the chief protagonist of the 
verses, the s 


 or the Divine beloved, for instance, Nabi Hadi, Talib-i Amuli: 3335, 
where the poet in a 
ada (ode) to his patron (1612), Chin Qilij Khan, the son of 
Jahangirs noble, Qilij Khan, calls him the unique cup-bearer of the age. 
114 The Sufi doctrines of mystical unity reached their most final form in the concept 
of the Perfect Man. See Nasr, Sufi Essays, ch. 2; also, Gibb and Kramers, Shorter 
Encyclopaedia: 17071, Al-Insn Al-Kmil. For a further pictorial construct of the 
concept, see Khare, Sovereignty and Images: 24673, 27693, ch. IV. 

115 In one painting from the CB, the emperor is shown standing on a globe that is 
carried on the back of a ram and a fish (Arnold and Wilkinson, The Library of Chester 
Beatty, vol. III: pl. 62); in another, the globe rests on the shoulders of a bearded man and 
once again a fish (LACMA, Pal, Indian Painting: 26265, cat.no. 72). These motifs are 
taken from the SemiticPersian cosmology, defining the structure of the universe, the 
seven spheres of the earth that rest on the back of these elements (Lane-Poole, 
Cosmogony and cosmology: 174). 

116 These verses were inscribed on his thrones (Jahangir, Tuzuk, vol. I: 109, vol. II: 31).

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178 t Meera Khare 

elixir of life, thus associating the cosmic kingship of Jahangir with im­
mortality. This is also underlined by the verses that accompany the 
painting, Portrait of a European Gentleman with a Cup, a reference to 
which was made earlier.117 In the verses, the cup contains the water of life, 
which was found by Khizr, the prophet associated with immortality in the 
legends.118 In the writings of extant specimens as well, the cup is associated 
with the eternal waters of life. There is a desire in these verses for the 
perpetuity of the cup that brims with the munificence of the emperor.119 

The djharka image that stands for the divinity of the Mughal rulers 
was frequently painted during the reigns of Jahangir and Shahjahan.120 
The ritual was a political statement of the state, representing the kings 
official daily routine, his political and social behaviouran articulation 
of his imperial power. Interestingly, the representation of that power, in 
this particular visualisation of the ritual, is further highlighted by the 
representation of the extent of that powerthe extent that is symbolised 
by the wine-cup, the world in miniature. 

Besides the visualisation of the ritual of the djharka-i darshan, Mughal 
painting often depicts the ritual of presentation, also a part of the Mughal 
cultural world. The earlier painting of Prince Parwiz Received in Audience 
(Plate 4), which I picked up for the symbolism of the cup, is primarily a 
representation of the act of presentation, for the prince is actually shown 
in a ritual of presenting a cup to the emperor. There are three more known 
examples of similar representations: in one, Prince Khusraw, the em­
perors eldest son, and in the second, a courtier (both belonging to 1605 
1610) are shown presenting a wine-cup to Jahangir.121 In the third example 
from the Raza Library collection, coming from the later years of the 
reign (c.1620), once again a young courtier is shown presenting the cup 
on a tray to the emperor.122 In the first two examples, coming even earlier 

117 See fn. 102. 

118 Gibb and Kramers, Shorter Encyclopaedia: 23235, Al-Khair; Coomaraswamy, 
Khwaja Khadir. 

119 Skelton, Decorative Arts: 122, no. 372. 

120 Besides the examples cited in fn. 112, the St Petersburg Album, IPA, has many 
such images (Ivanov et al., Albom Indiyskikh: no. 71, fol. 23; no. 72, fol. 6); the well-
known djharka study by Abul Hasan in the Agha Khan Collection, Geneva, Welch 
and Welch, Arts of the Islamic Book: no. 69; Almost all the images of the Bdshh-nma 
have Shahjahan enthroned in a djharka (Beach et al., King of the World: passim). 

121 The first with Khusraw is in the British Museum and the second in the St Petersburg 
Album, IPA, both reproduced in Das, Mughal Painting: pls 43 and 42. 

122 By Fateh Chand, Album 1.f.4a, Siddiqi, Rampur Raza Library: pl. 45. There is a 
fourth example from the late eighteenth century in a horizontal format in the Virginia 

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 179 

in the reign than Plate 4, the emperor is already holding the cup in his 
hands after it has been presented to him. The significance of these four 
pieces, however, is not just in the symbolism that is associated with the 
cup, but also in the fact that these first three folios are some of the earliest 
visualisations of the theme of presentation in the Mughal repertoire. 
Paintings of this time, and increasingly under Shahjahan, depict princes 
and courtiers in acts of presentations of jewels, rosaries and falcons to 
the ruler, a visual articulation of their politico-social relationship that 
signified subordination and a vow of loyalty.123 Only now, in this earlier 
version of the theme, it is not the jewels or falcons that are being presented, 
but the wine-cup. Here, the cup, by being an object of presentation, 
besides its symbolic connotations of world-rulership, has become an 
active participant in a meaning of kingship that sees the emperor, the 
cosmocrat, as all encompassingincorporating the persona of all those 
who are in an act of presenting to him.124 

In the reign of Shahjahan, the wine-cup continued to be used in a 
hedonistic way, and some of the most sensually rendered amorous themes 
representing Mughal princes were painted. The artist Govardhan seems 
to have especially excelled in these. Also, wine, food and music continued 
to be a part of religious discussion themes, as mentioned earlier. In a 
reign otherwise known for some of the most formal state portraits, there 
is surprisingly a profusion of these themes (162857).125 However, the 
imagery of the wine-cup having connotations of rulership was not al­
together given up. Only now it lost its subtlety in conveying a meaning, 
as the imperial image under the ruler moved on to its rococo phase of 
pure formalism. 

A painting from the Late Shahjahan album (c. 1645) represents this 
most vividly.126 The emperor, in this painting, while standing on the globe, 
faces a prophetic figure offering him a wine-cup from a platter. The figure 
is identified as Prophet Khizr, because of his pale green robes and the 
fish that accompanies him.127 He is familiar to us through the verses on 
the folios, where he is synonymous with the elixir of life that he drank to 

Museum of Fine Arts, Virginia (hereafter VMFA), that shows Khurram presenting the 

cup to the emperor (Dye III, The Arts of India: 261, no. 93). 

123 Streusand, The Formation: 13848, quoting F.W Bucklers writings. 

124 On the incorporative nature of Mughal Kingship, see Khare, Sovereignty and 
Images: ch. V. 

125 See fns 42, 71 and 72. 

126 Ex-Vever collection, later sold at the Sotheby sale rooms (Sotheby, 1 December 
1969: lot 151). 

127 Gibb and Kramers, Shorter Encyclopaedia, Al-Khair.

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180 t Meera Khare 

become immortal.128 But here in this painting he offers the emperor, the 
ruler of the world, standing on the globe, the draught of immortal waters 
that is held in the cup. The emperor holds a key in his left handthe key 
to symbolically open the world that he stands on.129 The world-rulership 
of Shahjahan in this allegory, now acquires visual connotations of im­
mortality through the object of the cup and its contents. The meaning 
falls in place when in other paintings of the time, a timeless realmthe 
ever-present today, embodied in the concept of the ideal state was trans­
posed on to visual surfaces by artists of the court.130 

A second example from the reign is a more obvious allegory of the 
wine-cup and world-rulership. The folio, Prince Dara Shikoh meets 
Prophet Khizr, from the St Petersburg album, also belongs to the mid-
seventeenth century (Plate 7).131 Here, the nimbate heir-apparent, Dara 
Shikoh, rides with a key in his hands to open the universe of his king­
shipthe world-rulership that is now being offered to him by Khizr, 
who stands facing him on the left while holding the globe. The motif of 
saints and sufis offering the rulership of the world, symbolised by the 
globe, to kings is a common feature in Mughal iconography.132 However, 
what is interesting here is that the globe that Khizr offers to the prince 
has a cup perched on it. Not only does this symbolism identify the world 
with the cup, but it also means that the prophet, identified with the elixir 
of life, is at the same time bestowing the qualities of immortality with 
that rulership as well. However, except for these stray examples of dis­
guised and yet blatant imagery, the emperor is never shown with the 
wine-cup. 

Back to Hedonism 

By the mid-seventeenth century, at the time when these pictures depicting 
exclusive male-rulership were being painted for the emperor, wine-
drinking imagery tended to show an interesting variation. Increasingly 

128 See fn. 102; Hafiz, Diwan: 555, Lyric 612. 

129 The symbol of the key to unravel the mysteries of the world was earlier attempted 
by Jahangirs artists. To cite an example from the FGA by Abul Hasan, see Okada, 
Imperial Mughal Painters: 55, no. 52. 

130 For a notion of an infinite and eternised present in Mughal Painting, see Juneja, 
On the Margins. 

131 Ivanov et al., Albom Indiyskikh: no. 38, fol. 30. Here the figure has been identified 
as Aurangzeb, but from other likenesses of the Prince, he looks to be Dara Shikoh. 

132 For a few citations, Beach et al., King of the World: pls 37 and 41; Arnold and 
Wilkinson, The Library of Chester Beatty, vol. I, frontispiece. 

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 181 

Plate 7 

Prince Dara Shikoh Meets Prophet Khizr 


Source: Anon, c. 1650, St Petersburg Album, Institute for the Peoples of Asia, Academy 
of Sciences, St Petersburg, MS.E 14, folio 30. 

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182 t Meera Khare 

more women came to be represented holding the cup or as protagonists 
in wine-drinking scenes. This is not in the sense of those pictures where 
women were always a part of bacchanalian amorous dalliances, and 
indeed some of the finest pieces were painted of this genre during Shahja­
hans reign. But now in certain stray pieces, around the same time, royal 
ladies begin to take part in male-dominated learned discussion scenes. 
In some of these representations, which mostly depict night scenes, they 
appear with their male consorts with wine-cups and flasks, often in amor­
ous moods, while religious personages and their books occupy the other 
half of the compositions.133 Interestingly, they are also often shown as 
exclusively visiting sages and shrines.134 Even earlier, the Dara Shikoh 
album (c.1635) that comprised paintings of princes with cups and flasks 
and dervishes, included single portraits of women with wine-cups and 
bottles, set against idyllic landscapes.135 These folios from the princes 
album are almost reminiscent of the poetic cup-bearer images; however, 
their delineation, like the rest of the album, is more formal. 

During the course of the eighteenth century, and especially from the 
reign of Mohammad Shah (171948), this theme of wine, woman and 
verse was followed by the depiction of scenes from the harem, where 
exclusive womens groups came to be depicted with the wine-cup: drink­
ing, entertaining and frolicking. In these harem paintings, women are 
shown entertaining each other with the wine-cup in solitary groups of 
two or in large gatherings, but without the emperor.136 In an interesting 

133 Lugt collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris, LInde des Legendes: no. 29, pls 26 
(detail) and 27 (164060); a mid-seventeenth-century folio from the CB, attributed to 
Payag, showing a prince and his lady companion in amorous moods with the wine-cup 
at a camp, while three male guests, one of them a holy man, are seated on the left (Arnold 
and Wilkinson, The Library of Chester Beatty, vol. III: 11A no. XX, pl. 84). Of a similar 
composition is a c.1650 folio from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (hereafter 
NGA) (Brand, The Vision of Kings: 142, cat.no. 100); another painting of c.1675 is in 
the PWM, see Indian Art: pl. XXXVI; yet another example of this theme (c.1650) is in 
the collection of Terence McInerney, New York (Pal et al., Romance of the Taj Mahal: 
99, no. 94). 

134 Nasir al-Din Album, Godard, Un Album: 23637, planche no. 42 (fig. 92), c.1615; 
also, A Woman Visiting a Yogini and her Companions with two males (1800) in the 
VMFA (Dye III, The Arts of India: 262, no. 94). 

135 Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures: 387, 68f.28; 388, 68f.30. 

136 Two ladies Entertaining on a Terrace (c.1710) by Rai Anup Chattar from the JA, 
IOLR (ibid.: 419, no. 152, JA 21, no. 6); from the CB (Arnold and Wilkinson, The 
Library of Chester Beatty, vol. I: 54, vol. III: 11A no. LVII). A group of ladies enjoying 
wine, c.165060, from the NM (Daljeet, Mughal and Deccani Paintings: 7273); the 
FGA (Atil, The Brush of the Masters: no. 74, eighteenth century); and the MFA (Pal et 

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The Wine-Cup in Mughal Court Culture t 183 

example from the early eighteenth century, a lady dressed as a boy is 
shown offering a wine-cup to another lady.137 All this, however, need 
not mean that a space came to be given to women behind the veil, for all 
these depictions crystallised to achieve just the opposite. As a matter of 
fact, these vignettes from the haremwhere the wine-cup was as much 
a source of joy to the women, as to their menseem to have been painted 
more with an erotic flavour, rather than really standing for the spaces 
of these women. Also, these scenes came to be painted along with royal 
drinking parties, where the women were but just a part of the male 
revelries. Wine-drinking imagery, in fact, seems to have become ex­
clusively gender specific in a mould of pure hedonism and female 
eroticism, as seen in the numerous pictures representing women standing 
with wine-cups and flasks that came to comprise the late Mughal 
repertoire.138 In some of these, the royal ladies stand in postures that are 
very much like the portraits of seventeenth-century nobility, and some 
fine studies do seem to have come out of the ateliers. But these were 
painted along with pieces that show women simply as pin-up girls, 
standing coquettishly, exuding plain eroticism. 

The finest imagery appears to be over, even as early as the mid-
seventeenth century, when a c.1660 miniature by the artist Raghunandan 
represents a royal lady in a djharka standing with a cup and a wine 
bottle.139 Many examples from the imperial repertoire can be cited that 
depict haloed women framed in djharkas, holding the wine-cup in a 
stance that clearly conveys that both wine and women are only objects 
of desire.140 As the court artists began to disseminate the Mughal style in 
the provincial ateliers, after the first quarter of the eighteenth century, 
the same meaning of the wine-cup as an object of pure hedonism came 

al., Romance of the Taj Mahal: 45, no. 33), where two women entertain each other with 
wine, while the rest are shown sozzled. Of a similar genre is a group of women ascetics 
holding wine-cups in a landscape (162550). See Pal, Court Paintings: 167, M 50. 

137 Sotheby, 7 December 1977: lot 14, early eighteenth century. 

138 A beautiful portrait of a royal lady with a wine-cup and a flask (seventeenth century) 
by Bichitr is in the Nasir al-Din album. See Godard, Un Album: 263, planche no. 62 
(fig. 107); Pal, Court Paintings: 145, M 28, from a private collection, of a lady with a 
small golden cup. The large Clive album at the VA (IS481956) has many women standing 
with cups and flasks. See Art of India: Catalogue and Microfiche, ref. 30/B-532/D8. 

139 JA, IOLR. See Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures: 407, no. 99, JA 4, no. 5v. 

140 The portrait of a nimbated Zainat Afza Begum by Aqil Khan (1760), IOLR, 
Add.or.945, in ibid.: 428, no. 203; Pal, Court Paintings: 187, M 70, from a private 
collection, c.1750, where the lady is again haloed.

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184 t Meera Khare 

to be implanted in these courts as well.141 Even Nur Jahan, the able consort 
of Jahangir, who in his last years even ruled on his behalf, is shown 
standing with a cup and a bottle in an image from a provincial court.142 
As inthe case of the djharka, which had bythe eighteenth century become 
the standard motif to depict any royal portrait, the wine-cup too became 
gender specific, exclusively associated with pleasure in folios that at the 
same time came to increasingly represent drinking orgies of ascetics and 
tribals.143 

During these years, no more learned discussions were attempted, 
where the cup, as in the albums of Jahangir and Shahjahan, accompanied 
the prince when he went to meet the sages. No more were poetic mystical 
s s painted, nor was anyone depicted as the unique cup-bearer of the 
age, the reflection of divine beauty on earth. And finally, there was no 
one who would look into the still waters of the cup to see the face of the 
universe, like the legendary Jamshid. 

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