Mughal Administration c16.s1.3

c16.s1.3

Some of the later collections are professed textbooks illustrating the art of the writer. They begin with an eulogy of the pen or of the art of letter-writing (*inshā*) in verse and florid prose, followed by a discourse on the mythical origin and development of the alphabet, the various known styles of penmanship and their founders; then come the letters forming the body of illustrations. Such letter-books, however, belonged to a decadent age, when the Court had ceased to make history.