This analysis of the Mughal imperial hunt and its pictorial representation focuses on a painting of Shah-Jahan's son Dara-Shikoh engaged in a drive hunt with decoy animals, a practice not before depicted by Mughal artists. From descriptions of this ancient hunting technique found in European as well as Sanskrit and Mughal Persian texts—where it is called shikar-i aim ba ahu (hunting antelope with antelope)—we learn that the principal hunter was brought into close, prolonged contact with his surroundings. This seems to have raised in the imperial patrons a greater interest in a more realistic pictorial rendering to which Payag, one of Shah-Jahan's leading artists, responded with the closely observed and strikingly naturalistic landscape of Dara-Shikoh's hunt, the first in a series of related images. This study draws attention to the connection between content and form as a characteristic phenomenon in the arts of Shah-Jahan.