"Bahram Gur Hunts the Onager", Folio from a Shahnama (Book of Kings)

Bahram Gur Hunts the Onager

Bahram Gur declared that if any of his companions shot an onager the arrow should pierce its buttocks and come through the chest. The nobles exclaimed that only he was capable of such a shot, and when, indeed, Bahram Gur performed this feat, they all marveled. The illustration, in a stepped-up format at the center, has been damaged, with text pasted over the right half of the picture except at the very top, where the head of the mighty hunter is visible.

The onager has fallen just short of a tree. Its legs have buckled, its head is tucked under its body, and arrows protrude from buttock and shoulder, although, according to the poem, only one arrow was shot. The sympathetic drawing of the animal conveys nobility as well as pathos in death. The curve of the tree trunk follows the curve of the onager's neck, and the clusters of leaves filling the space above have central rosettes that are reminiscent of the blossoms found in later Indian painting.

Bahram is also pictured hunting onagers in the Great Ilkhanid Shahnama.[1] This is apparently a composite scene, combining Bahram's master shot at the buttocks of one onager with the branding and earmarking of the herd. The onagers are much smaller than the king or his horse and are less poignantly presented than the single onager in the Gutman Shahnama.

Mary Lukens Swietochowsky in [Swietochowsky and Carboni 1994]

Notes:

1. O. Grabar and S. Blair, Epic Images and Contemporary History. The Illustrations of the Great Mongol Shahnama. Chicago and London, 1980, no. 51 (Worchester Art Museum, 1935.24).

Ph. Walter Schulz, Leipzig, Germany (by 1914); Professor O. Moll, Düsseldorf, Germany ; Monroe C. Gutman, New York (by 1929–d. 1974; bequeathed to MMA)

New York. The Hagop Kevorkian Special Exhibitions Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Illustrated Poetry and Epic Images: Persian Painting of the 1330s and 1340s," February 1–May 1, 1994, no. 42.

Schulz, Ph. Walter. Die Persisch-Islamische Miniaturmalerei. Vol. vols. I, II. Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1914. vol. 1, pp. 74–75, ill. vol. 2, pl. 18.

Masuya, Tomoko. "The Condition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Small Shahnama and the Reconstruction of its Text." In Poetry and Epic Images, edited by Marie Lukens Swietochowski, and Stefano Carboni. New York, 1994. pp. 129–45.

Swietochowski, Marie, Stefano Carboni, Tomoko Masuya, and Alexander H. Morton. Illustrated Poetry and Epic Images : Persian Painting of the 1330s and 1340s. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994. no. 42, p. 120, ill. (b/w).