Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c7.s5.19

c7.s5.19

3. *Material comforts.*—The last and the most important point which Babur has raised concerns the standard of material comforts and social refinements in contemporary Hindustan. An idea of the luxury and comfort as well as the social pleasures of the Sultans of Delhi and the nobility can be gathered from the pages of such contemporary chroniclers as Amir Khusrau, Ziya-ud-din Barani and Shams-i-Siraj, ‘Afif, and from the accounts of travellers given in *Masalik-ul-absar* and Ibn Batuta. We have dealt with it somewhere else. Here we shall confine ourselves to a few illustrations from Hindu society and the provincial kingdoms of Malwa and Bengal. In all these cases, the standard of comfort was decidedly lower than that achieved under the Sultans of Delhi.