Indians are Just Marvellous: Wisdom, Eros, Idolatry, and other Painted Tropes from Early Modern Wonder Manuscripts

Drawing on his forthcoming book Wonders of Hindustan, Vivek Gupta (British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, History of Art at UCL) queries what it meant to be a gharib (rare) Indian in the Islamicate cosmos. 

Taking the densely illustrated Wonders of Creation manuscript genre as his focus, Vivek Gupta examines how artists in Hindustan visualised and replicated popular tropes: the wisdom, eros, and idolatry of Indians. 

Given that images of idolatry marked an Indian’s difference in medieval and early modern Europe, the lecture reflects on the vast literature on Europeans making of wonders out of the world around them. Why continue writing books about how people exotified Indian practices of idolatry without ever asking what people in India themselves thought? The lecture ends by pointing to the stakes of Wonders of Hindustan: to decentre power and understand what constituted difference as repeated tropes of the Indian circulated.

This event is part of the Indian Art Circle Lecture series.

Image: 'Relations with women, Wonders of Creation of Qazwini', Shiraz, 1545, 32.5 x 19.3 cm, Chester Beatty Library, Per 212, f. 340a, public domain.