When a Mughal Prince asked Pardon from HIS LADY

Hi Friends,

Today, i am sharing 2 paintings, one from Mughal Court, and other from outside the court. The painting is not so important as such, but one thing which caught my eyes was the message it was trying to convey. Hope you all will decode it. :D

In the painting a Mughal prince (name unknown) was asking pardon from his lady. 

Explanation:

I. A prince approaches his lady. The placement appears to be that of a terrace. The lady is attended by her maid. The prince is bowing in petition. But the reaction from the lady was that of an anger/resentment. She turns her face away despite the maid trying to mediate of behalf of the prince. It seems she has been wronged/hurt by some action of this prince, and here he trying to persuade her to forgive him, but she seems NOT to be in a mood to forgive him easily. Looks like a scene from an Old Hindi Movie. Or, a normal scene where a lover tries to make-up with the beloved.?. Isn't it ? :-P

II. This is another painting. This was drawn outside the Mughal Court, but here also a similar message is conveyed. Here the lady is showing more visible signs of her resentment, only if one is able to analyze the facial expressions properly. :-P The prince begs forgiveness, this time even genuflecting at the feet of the lady he has wronged, either through his neglect or perhaps through straying with another. His hands are raised in supplication, but she is still angry and withnot turning her face away from him, she is drawing her veil across her face in rejection, and looking at him through her veil. This scene is also set on a terrace outside a white pavilion. 

The lady is sitting on her bed placed outside in the hot weather, under a beautiful red shamiana which hangs from underneath the heavy chajja or eave of the pavilion. The couple’s clothes and the details of the pavilion are painted in brilliant colours against an almost entirely white scenario, the bamboo blind with a design of repeating poppies with a brocade cover with irises rolled above it. This painting is not as beautiful as the previous one, where we could see many more details. Hope you all, will point it out.


Conclusion:

The portraits depicting angry / neglected ladies is one of the most reflecting and telling portraits of the Hindustani past. There have been such tales in the reign of Humayun also and in the case of Akbar we have real incidence, add to this the ample amount of folklores.!!

One such incident is narrated by Gulbadan Begum in Humayun Nama, where she tells us about the anger of Bega Begum towards Humayun. Bega Begum complained that - while Humayun spent ample time with all the ladies, like his mother, foster mothers, aunt, sisters, etc. and talked with them , but not with her. On one occasion she even taunted him and expressed her anger by asking - "If the way to her home was full of prickles which stopped him from coming there.!!" 

Finally, Humayun was compelled to call a meeting of harem ladies to sort out these issues.!!!!.


What interests me here is the normal accepted trend in today's time that no one could raise her opinion against the wrong being done in medieval age. But that is not the writing on the wall. There were exceptions here and here one such case of Humayun has been mentioned, where Bega Begum showed her "nakhraS" to Humayun. These paintings, after a critical study do reflect many such happenings of those times. 

The "basics" of the relationships of a couple were same those days also, like it is in present times. They may be King-Queen for the outsiders, but for each other they were just human beings also. Isn't it.? In my opinion, these portraits try to paint the normal "anger-reconciliation" scenarios which happen even in today's times.!. 

Afterall, times may have changed, world can change from medieval to modern, but the human emotions remain the same. :)

This article has been posted under the Miscellaneous topics section of history_geek's Blog.