Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c21.8

c21.8

In the present case, to get at a correct knowledge of the truth or degree of the Emperor's literacy or illiteracy was not very easy for foreign missionaries in the environment of distrust and suspicion in which they lived and moved in the Court of a Mughal monarch surrounded with his peculiar "pomp and circumstance," which did not at all favour curious inquiries into a personal question of the present kind relative to the Emperor. At best, remarks on such a question would be based on hearsay evidence, and not at all on first-hand, and would be valued as such. In holding this opinion on the present point, I am but following Monserrat himself, who does not say that all the information garnered in his work is first-hand. Says he: "As to the particulars concerning Cinguiscan, Temurbeg, the Scythians and the Mongols