Hindu texts should be translated into Persian and thus rendered more accessible.  The texts chosen were the two epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and of these Persian abridgements were duly prepared.  The abridgement of the Mahabharata, known as the Razmnama, was probably completed in 1588 but illustrated copies, including the great folios now in the palace library at Jaipur, were probably not completed before 1595.  As part of the project, its appendix, the Harivansa was also summarized and a separate volume with fourteen illustrations all concerned with Krishna is part of the great version now at Jaipur.[75] In these illustrations, it is Krishna the prince who is chiefly shown, all the pictures illustrating his career after he has left the cowherds.  There is no attempt to stress his romantic qualities or to present him as a lover.  He appears rather as the great fighter, the slayer of demons.  Such a portrayal is what we might perhaps expect from a Mughal edition.  None the less the paintings are remarkable interpretations, investing Krishna with an air of effortless composure, and exalting his princely grace.  The style is notable for its use of smoothly flowing outlines and gentle shading, and although there is no direct connection, it is these characteristics which were later to be embodied in the Hindu art of the Punjab Hills.

Such interest by the Emperor may well have spurred Hindu members of the court to have other texts illustrated for, ten to fifteen years later, in perhaps 1615, a manuscript of the Gita Govinda was produced, its illustrations possessing a certain fairy-like refinement.[76] Krishna in a flowing dhoti wanders in meadows gay with feathered trees while Radha and her confidante appear in Mughal garb.  Romance is hardly evident for it is the scene itself with its rustic prettiness which is chiefly stressed.  Yet the patron by whom this version was commissioned may well have felt that it was sensitively rendered and within its minor compass expressed to some extent the magical enchantment distilled by the verses.  That the Emperor’s stimulus survived his death is plain; for in about the year 1620, two manuscripts of the Bhagavata Purana appeared—­both in a style of awkward crudity in which the idioms of Akbar’s school of artists were consciously aped.[77] The manuscripts in question are at Bikaner and it is possible that one or two inferior Mughal artists, deprived of work at the central court, travelled out to this northerly Rajput state, daring the desert, and there produced these vapid works.  It is likely that in the early years of the seventeenth century, many areas of India possessed no artists whatsoever and if a Hindu ruler was to copy Mughal fashion, the only artists available to him might be those of an inferior rank.  And although exact data are wanting, such circumstances may well explain another document of Krishna, the first illustrated version of Keshav