The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c19.31

v4.c19.31

His puritanical rigour grew with age. In the eleventh year of his reign (1668) he forbade music at his court and pensioned off the state musicians and singers, many of whom had enjoyed honour and high rank under the preceding sovereigns. The royal band was, however, retained. The ceremony of weighing (*wazan*) the emperor’s person on his birthday against gold and silver, which were then given away in charity, was discontinued; and so also the custom of the emperor applying a spot of sandal paste (*tīkā*) to the foreheads of the great rajas when newly investing them (1679), and the ceremony of the emperor showing himself every morning at an outer balcony of the palace for his subjects to look at him (*darshan*)—because all these were Hindu practices.