Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c10.58

c10.58

He infused new blood into the literary world by his ardent promotion of literature, and liberal and open-handed patronage of learned men. Of the many literary men who flocked to his Court, the names of Shaikh Niẓāmī and Sayyid Ḥasan Ghaznawī (the former being the author of the *Makhzani-Aṣār* dedicated to the Sulṭān his patron and both of them being poets and philosophers of widespread fame), are worthy of note. The Sulṭān caused several works in foreign languages to be translated into Persian, among which was the Indian book *Kalilah-Damnah*.¹ This work along with a chess-board had been sent as a present by an Indian king to Naushīrawān, the Persian monarch, by whose wazīr Buzurchimihr it was translated into Pahlawī from the Sanskrit original. It was afterwards rendered into Arabic by Ibn-ul-Muqliyā in the reign of the famous king Hārūn-al-Rashīd; it was from this Arabic version that Sulṭān Bairām ordered it to be translated into Persian. The work was accomplished, but it bristled with Arabic words and was full of Arabic poetry for which it had to undergo a subsequent transformation at the hands of Maulānā Ḥusain Wā’iẓ Kāshifī in the reign of Sulṭān Ḥusain Mīrzā Khwārizmī, and it then got the new title of *Anwari-Suhailī*.²