Five years ago, the Brooklyn Museum of Art picked 80 paintings from across India for an exhibition entitled "Realms of Heroism". This included four Mughal Hamzanama folios. Toni Owen, senior paper conservator at the museum, discovered that these folios were amazingly unique: each comprised four layers of fabric and paper, of which two were hidden.

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This discovery spurred the museum which, for long, had been trying to put together the surviving collection of these works of art dating back to the 16th century when the Mughal emperor Akbar was on the throne. The efforts have finally been realised and the museum has managed to reunite 58 paintings-acquired from public and private collections-of the 200 surviving from this collection in the exhibition "The Adventures of Hamza" (November 1 to January 26, 2003).

Amy G. Poster, curator and chair, Department of Asian Art at the museum, is ecstatic: "I have waited years for this collection to be put together. It is the first time ever and could probably only compare to the historic sacking of Delhi by Nadir Shah in the 17th century."

The paintings were about the larger-than-life exploits of a character named Amir Hamza and were intended as visual complements to public recitations. Historians hazard that the paintings, which were large, were probably held up when the storyteller recited the tale to the public "departing freely from the text, which varied from manuscript to manuscript".

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The collection of paintings is also an example of the secular flourish of Akbar's rule, where Hindu and Muslim painters together worked on the paintings that were put together over a span of 15 years. The epic is based on two characters, both named Hamza. One was a folk hero, a la Robin Hood, renowned for his world travels and extravagant exploits, and the other was an uncle of the Prophet, who was an ardent promoter of the Muslim faith and died a religious martyr in 625. Despite the Islamic overtones, it was never a religious epic. "Usually there would be a master painter, then other assistants would fill in and finish it. You would probably have someone who was a specialist in trees and rocks ... but I don't think any one painter did all the work on one picture," says Owen.

The two masters that Humayun, Akbar's father, brought along with him from Persia-where he had been exiled-were Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd al-Samad. They went on to head the workshop that created Akbar's Hamzanama. The image in front was on fabric, behind which was a hidden layer of paper, followed by another concealed layer of fabric on which came the calligraphy. Unlike other Indian paintings these were not made on paper and were big, unlike the miniatures of the period.

"The Adventures of Hamza" has drawn good press from the mainstream media, which is touting it as "the more spectacular manuscript shows of recent New York seasons". Holland Cotter, art critic of the New York Times, in his Sunday piece entitled "To the ancestors of Bollywood, art was slam-bang", wrote: "Indeed, one of the pleasures of the show lies in trying to identify the hands and minds of these artists from painting to painting. Another is in tracking the development of the workshop ... many of the surviving pictures are from later volumes-in which they flow seamlessly together in this strange new Mughal mix."

ADVENTURE: Umar sets sail in search of Hamza (left); Arghan Dev brings the chest of armour to Hamza (above)

The musuem is trying out innovative interactive techniques to draw families to the exhibition. According to Poster, the museum will also hold a day-long series of events celebrating the exhibition, including an artist demonstration, story-telling sessions in the Hamzanama tradition and a project to design one's own sari or turban. The activitities will conclude with a sitar recital.

Coincidentally, Sotheby's will also be holding its largest-ever auction of Indian miniatures this week. Comprising nearly 100 works, the Paul F. Walter collection features paintings from the Rajput School which are distinctly Hindu in subject matter and based on national epics and religious texts. They are expected to return record prices with some estimated at a starting price of $150,000.

As for the Hamzanama exhibition, Brooklyn is only the starting point. It will be shown at the Royal Academy of Art, London (March 15-June 8, 2003), and the Museum Rietberg, Zurich (June 28-October 20, 2003). Indian art has had an incredible summer in America this year.