This Magic Doe is an image related to the Mirigavati, 1503, by Qutb 'Ali Qutban of Jaunpur, a disciple of Suhrawardi sufi, Makhdum Buddhan of Bihar or Kalpa, a text referred to as Raj Kunwar in the Mughal copy of 1603/4 made for Prince Salim. It tells the story of the Prince Raj who falls in love with Mirigavat, a woman who can magically transform into a doe. 

The bells on the neck of this animal alert us that the painting is not simply an animal study, but relates to a favoured theme in Sufi thought even before Qutban penned Mrigavati. The literary genre of prem kahani marks the beginning of an Indo-Islamic literary tradition where Islamic religious traditions were absorbed and indigenized within the Indian cultural landscape. These narrative poems borrow ideas and conventions from Persian, classical Sanskrit and regional/local literary traditions, creating a new distinct genre in which eroticism and asceticism frequently blend seamlessly together.

Stylistically this painting is typical of the first decade of the seventeenth century, with its psychological focus on one main point of interest rather than a busy composition full of detail as favoured in Akbar's atelier. It has close affinities stylistically to two paintings in the Raj Kunwar manuscript made for Prince Salim at Allahabad 1603/4 (Chester Beatty Library, Ms 37, f. 6r The Prince loses Mrigavat, f. 23v The Prince begins his journey). In her catalogue of the Beatty collection, Linda Leach attributes f. 6r to Artist B and f. 23v simply to a ‘meticulous painter’.  The comparison with f. 23v is closer as the style of trees in f. 6v is different from this painting. 

The Magic Doe may have been made as a manuscript illustration (though no other imperial copies of the Mirgavati/Raj Kunwar are known other than the Chester Beatty copy) or as a standalone work for an album. A comparable single painting of animals, related to the narrative of the Anvar-i Suhayli,  is in the Fondation Custodia attributed to Sur Das Gujarati, an artist who may have also been present in Allahabad, 

The painting is clearly by one of the top artists working for Prince Salim, and almost certainly an artist who transferred from Akbar's atelier. It shows the more Europeanised style of Mughal painters working in Akbar's atelier through the late 1590s rather than the more Persianate style of artists who never worked for Akbar (e.g. Aqa Riza, the young Abu'l Hasan, Mirza Ghulam, Salim Quli). The zig zag line of the landscape with its deep step to the water in a brighter yellow-green is a typical feature of landscapes in the Allahabad manuscripts (e,g, Raj Kunwar f. 6r and Yog Vashisht, f. 128v by Kesu in Chester Beatty Library) as well as the Anvar-i Suhali (British Library, Add Ms. 18579, f. 280v by Nanha). 

Purely on stylistic grounds an attribution to Kesu Das is plausible in the lively characterisation of the doe, the fluid movement in the rock formations, the dark green highlighting of the edges of the land by the water (a feature that Leach notes as characteristic of the artist (see Leach Catalogue of CBL, vol 1, p. 167 and discussion of 2.11, 2.23, 2.24. Other possible attributions based on comparison with other known works around the same time, and their presence in Allahabad, are Bishndas and Nanha. 

 The very rubbed/partially erased inscription at the top may offer an attribution. This seems to end with a Nun. 

References 

Linda York Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, vol. 1, pp. 147-232.

Aditya Behl and Wendy Doniger, Love's Subtle Magic: An Indian Islamic Literary Tradition, 1379-1545 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

Tanvir Anjum “Vernacularization of Islam and Sufism in South Asia: A Study of the Production of Sufi Literature in Local Languages," Journal of the Research Society of Pakistan, vol. 54, No. 1, January-June, 2017, pp.209-26.