The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c16.179

v4.c16.179

Again, in 1604, Rāi Rāyān, then entitled Rājā Bikramājīt (Vikramāditya), was sent in pursuit of the murderer but the operations were a pure formality. Except Akbar, and perhaps Shaikh 'Abdur-Rahmān, the son of the murdered man, nobody expected and nobody specially desired to catch the elusive Bīr Singh. Salīma Sultān Begam, Akbar's cousin and wife, interceded for her stepson, and she was permitted to visit him at Allahābād, with a view to recalling him to a sense of his duty. On her return, in February, 1603, she reported that Salīm was now well disposed, and wished to visit his father. The Khudā Bakhsh Library at Patna contains the copy of the *dīvān*, or collection of the odes of Hāfiz, the great lyrical poet of Persia, used in the East as the works of Virgil were used in the West, for the taking of omens, from which Salīm took an omen before setting out, and in a note it is recorded by him that the passage from which he took his omen was an ode beginning: