A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c20.s1.38

c20.s1.38

For example, the *Razmnāmah*, or Persian abridged translation of the *Mahābhārata*, with preface dated A. D. 1588, now at Jaipur, is said to have cost £40,000 sterling; and Colonel Hanna estimates that his copy of the *Rāmāyana*, now at Washington, must have cost quite half that sum.¹ The *Akbarnāmah*, from which 117 large paintings are preserved at South Kensington, was a similar work, and Abūl Fazl mentions many others.² According to the Spanish priest, Father Sebastian Manrique, who was at Agra in 1641, the imperial library at that city contained 24,000 volumes, valued by him at the astounding figure of 6,463,731 rupees, or £720,000 sterling, an average per volume of almost 270 rupees, equivalent then to about £30.³