monastery. In any case, no line of demarcation can be drawn between secular and religious painting in the Buddhist and Hindu period except as regards the choice of subject. Kings and queens, as sons and daughters of the gods, were endowed with all the physical and spiritual graces of divinity, and found easy access to the heavenly regions even in their lifetime.
It was different with the Muhammadan rulers, who patronised painting as a court accomplishment. The law of the Prophet condemned painting as a fine art, and a strict Musalman only indulged his artistic taste in calligraphy, transcribing the texts of the Kuran, verses of his favourite poets, or Persian quatrains of his own composition. Calligraphy was therefore the means of acquiring religious merit, and was valued higher as an art than picture-painting, even by the Shiahs, who had no puritan scruples. Some of the best Muhammadan painters were those who combined book illustration with calligraphy. But Muhammadan pictures, as distinguished from illuminated manuscripts, very rarely had a religious character, though scenes from the life of Muhammad and of Musalman saints are sometimes found. Muhammadan painting on the whole is realistic and matter-of-fact in its outlook, secular in subject, and wholly devoid of the spiritual emotion which inspired the work of the Buddhist and Hindu artist. Abul Fayl, Akbar's biographer, felt the difference when he noted that "Hindu pictures surpass our conception of things."
Before Akbar brought the Indian painter and the Persian and Arabian calligraphist together, there had been a great Muhammadan school of miniaturists, led by Bihzad, a famous master who flourished at the end of the fifteenth century at the court of Khurasan.
