This is study of stone sculptures of birds, beasts, mythical animals, human beings and deities in Mughal architecture. This is the first book on this new subject which, though these sculptures were all the time there, had been consistently overlooked owing primarily to the fact that a life-time’s experience of this discipline was needed to take it up. Some masterpieces of Mughal sculpture were produced during the age from Babur to Jehangir (c. 1522 to 1627 A.D.). The latter’s reign (1605-27) was certainly the golden era of Mughal sculpture when emphasis was given on full, round, free-standing sculptures. His sculptors not only made life-size, but also true-to-life sculptures which were conceptually, as much as artistically, superior even to the earlier sculptures of the Hindu period. His sculptures are as realistic as are the subjects depicted in contemporary painting. They vibrate with life. Mughal sculpture developed as a court-art. The Mughals secularised it and freed it from all restrictions, compulsions and affiliations. A novel development of Mughal sculpture was that it no longer remained dependent and subservient to architecture, and it could stand independently, by virtue of its own force. It developed into a perfect discipline.
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