Mughal Administration c12.s7.5

c12.s7.5

We may conclude our remarks about learning in Mughal India, by referring to the allied subject of the Court poets. These were Persians born in Iran. By all the Emperors except the puritanical Aurangzib they were highly patronised and well rewarded for their odes. Such odes had to be written to order to celebrate victories, royal marriages, coronation, birth-day and other Court festivities, and to supply inscriptions (*kutaba*) for the Emperor’s favourite buildings or chair of State. One of these poets received a purse of Rs. 10,000 for a four-line epigram describing how a trained leopard struck down a wild buffalo before the Emperor Jahangir. [*Tazkira-i-Sarkhush.*]