Babur, founder of the Mughal empire, invaded India in the sixteenth century. By this time, native Hindu craftsmen were already highly skilled at weaving a variety of sheer and lightweight textiles. These fabrics were appropriate and practical for India’s hot and humid climate. However, the Mughal emperors were accustomed to heavy wool carpets woven in Persia and Turkestan. At first, they brought carpets with them or imported them. Later, under Akbar, schools were established to teach Hindu weavers the techniques of rug weaving. The native weavers modified the traditional Persian designs, adding elements from their own artistic heritage. The Mughal carpets show the varied results of this synthesis.
Pattern
Pattern begins with a unit or motif that may be symmetrical or asymmetrical, simple or complex. This unit or motif is repeated over a surface according to a grid or plan. The possibilities of arranging or organizing the basic unit are endless. This is evident in the many ways in which flowers are incorporated into the designs of Mughal carpets.
The Mughal emperors were Muslims, followers of Islam. They had spent time in the Persian courts and were familiar with Islamic art in its varied forms. Pattern is an important element of Islamic art, and its use falls into four basic categories. The first two categories figure the most prominently in Indian carpets.
Symmetry implies a balance of proportions, that the size, shape, and position of parts on one side of an axis will correspond to the size, shape, and position of the parts on the other side of the axis. All of the carpets employ symmetry, in individual motifs, groups of motifs, or even in the allover pattern of the carpet. Asymmetry, or use of nonbalancing elements, is also employed. Some examples are:
Radial symmetry: The individual flowers of this carpet are an example of radial symmetry. The center point of the flower is the axis and all shapes and lines radiate from the center.
Symmetry:
Bilateral symmetry: The trees in the border of the same carpet are bilaterally symmetrical. The center axis is a line rather than a point, and the two sides mirror each other.
Asymmetry: This flower is asymmetrical. It does not have a central axis around which the shapes and lines are repeated.
Examples of pattern and symmetry in the carpet designs
Pattern and symmetry are seen in woven textile designs because the looms on which they are woven depend upon the raising or lowering of threads in repeated sequences. Because pile rugs are constructed on simple frame looms, one knot at a time, they are not dependent upon the design repetitions imposed by the more complicated textile looms. However, some of the rugs do contain repeat patterns. Why is this?
The weaver or weavers sitting at a loom probably had a cartoon, or drawing, to follow for the field of the rug, and possibly small designs plotted on paper for the border. These designs could have been created by manuscript illustrators, or they could have been copied from an existing rug. For reference, only the basic pattern unit would have been needed, with instructions on how to repeat it, reversed, flipped, or alternated with another unit for variety.
Field designs
The field is the center portion of the carpet, usually the largest area. Its design can be pictorial or based on an allover pattern, but it is always flat--flower petals may overlap or animals may be shown in three dimensions, but there is no attempt at creating the illusion of deep space. Examples of pattern and symmetry in the field of the carpet are given in the following carpets:
Lattice: The curving lines of this grid break the surface of the rug into small sections that can organize individual motifs, in this case, fantastic blossoms.
Rows: All these flowers are oriented to the same direction.
Pattern units composed of many single motifs: This landscape carpet shows a pattern unit of flowers, trees, and animals, and it is repeated 3-1/2 times over the field of the carpet. With each repeat the unit is flipped horizontally.
Bilateral symmetry: Although the design of this niche carpet is made up of a multitude of small-scale elements, they are all organized according to the rules of bilateral symmetry--one side is a mirror image of the other. Patterns in the borders of the carpets also vary in their design, orientation, and use of symmetry. Some examples are:
Guard bands are the long, thin areas of pattern that separate the field of the carpet from the border, or they may run along the edge of the border. They usually employ zigzags, simple repeated shapes, or wavy floral scrolls.
Guard bands are useful in identifying the origin of a particular carpet. While field and border designs traveled freely from area to area, the pattern of the guard bands usually followed local conventions.
Themes
The Garden
Although a love of nature permeates Hindu art, the theme of the garden in carpet designs came from sixteenth-century Persia. Persia is a dry, arid country where water is precious, and a garden of flowers with a fountain or pool is a luxury. Persian poets and painters used gardens as subject matter, and Paradise itself was considered to be a magnificent garden. (“Pairidaeza,” the Persian word for walled garden, traveled through Greek and Latin to become the English word “Paradise.”) Persian carpets sometimes reproduce the pathways and grid of a formal garden. Images of flowers and plants also adorn prayer rugs, whose niche design might be seen as a symbol for the gateway into Paradise.
The Mughal emperors were intensely interested in nature, and their affinity for flowers is evident in their carpets. The flowers are woven with such attention to detail that specific species can be identified--roses, lilies, iris, bellflowers, violets, carnations, and peonies.
Fantastic and complex blossoms show the influence of Hindu and Indian traditions.
Yarns were often used in a painterly fashion to shade the petals and leaves and to give them a three-dimensional quality.
Flowers also could be stylized, made up of tiny, rigidly organized shapes.
Animals in combat
In many cultures around the world, rulers have identified themselves with powerful beasts, real animals like lions or elephants, or imaginary animals like dragons and phoenixes. Sometimes the desirable attributes of individual beasts could be incorporated into one composite animal, symbolically representing the power, strength, and wisdom of the ruler. Scenes of men hunting animals or animals hunting each other also were symbolic of royal power.
The Mughal emperors enjoyed collecting exotic animals, hunting, and watching animals fight each other.
Animals were a popular subject of manuscript illustrators and the Mughal artists depicted animals in a more naturalistic manner. In the landscape carpet, the animals seem to move about more freely. Recognizable species native to South Asia--ibexes, tigers, and cranes--appear alongside exotic or mythological beasts.
Influences
Each Mughal emperor had an impact on the construction and design of the carpets woven during his reign. Because Persian carpets had originally been imported, Persian taste is strongly evident in the carpets, in the designs and the themes of gardens and animals in combat. Other influences exist as well, including motifs from China and Europe.
In all the arts, the Mughal legacy included a love of and respect for the natural world, an interest in the historical record, an insistence on high standards of workmanship, and a synthesis of Persian, European, and Indian tradition.
Many of the rugs from Akbar’s reign are adaptations of Persian designs in which Indian animals and birds, monster masks, vases and flowering plants are combined in an inventive and spirited style. A fragment from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art shows grotesques and composite-animal forms--some issuing from another's head--arranged as if they were scrolling vines.
This design may have originated from Indian traditions of symbolic and mythological animals or from European grotesques of the same period.
The reign of Jahangir, 1605-27
The carpets produced during Jahangir’s reign mirror his interest in the plants and animals of the natural world. Taking the Persian style as a point of departure, carpets continued to incorporate scrolling vines, flowering plants, and more naturalistic animals, either in a pictorial or overall pattern. In both cases, the designs reflected the influence of manuscript paintings. The carpets of Jahangir’s reign were marked by increased technical refinement, both in design and construction.
The reign of Shah Jahan, 1628-58
During the reign of Shah Jahan, flowers moved from being secondary design elements to being primary motifs. The carpets literally bloom with images of naturalistic or fantastic flowers, depicted in subtle shadings and great detail. The flower style predominated in all the arts, from the marble inlays and openwork screens of the Taj Mahal to jewelry, manuscript margins and bindings, textiles, metalwork, ivory, jade, glass, and wood.
The reign of Aurangzeb 1658-1707
During the reign of Aurangzeb, floral carpets continued to be popular. Their design changed to incorporate smaller flowers, rigidly executed so that the overall effect was fussier and busier. This millefleur style could be executed as an allover pattern or with a definite orientation, as in the niche rugs.
Chinese influences
Chinese influences found their way into Mughal carpets through Persian art. Wispy clouds, called tschi, sometimes appear in the rugs. Fantasy animals with flames streaming from their bodies, similar to those found in Chinese art, were depicted in both Persian and Indian carpets. The flames symbolized power.
European influences
Visiting emissaries and representatives from the Dutch and English East India companies brought European paintings, tapestries, and books to the Mughal court.
Compare this detail of a millefleur niche carpet with the millefleur design of the Unicorn in Captivity Tapestry.
Mughal manuscript illustrations were influenced by these contacts. Shah Jahan is sometimes depicted with a halo in the tradition of Renaissance religious paintings.
European herbals, books containing block-printed black-and-white images of whole plants in precise botanical detail, may have influenced Mughal paintings of plants and flowers. This example from a floral carpet is very much like an herbal representation. Compare this example from a floral carpet to the herbal illustration on the right.
