Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c18.s1.21

c18.s1.21

“Collectors (of books) complain of the exorbitant prices they are called upon to pay for Persian munuscripts, and yet the highest prices now paid are small in comparison with the sums they cost their former owners. The manuscript for which Jahāngīr paid 3000 gold rupees—a sum equivalent to £10,000—would not fetch £2000 at a sale in Paris to-day. From notes and calculations I have made, miniatures by Bihzād (the famous Persian painter) were worth hundreds of pounds each, and certain of his manuscripts were then worth ten times more than now. Some decades ago, when bibliophiles still existed in the East, far higher prices were paid there than in London or Paris to-day. Through the following centuries, the same love for old books prevailed, and ridiculous prices were paid for them, as high in proportion as Americans now pay for Rembrandts and Van Dycks. The Mongols, the Timurides, the Mughals, Emperors and Amirs, all paid prices which we hardly understand, and it was not unusual for a celebrated manuscript of the *Qur’ān* to realize a sum that would be equivalent to about a million francs in modern currency.”²