Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c9.5

c9.5

encouragement. On the other hand, if the Emperor were devoid of literary tastes and addicted to low pleasures and licentiousness, there was a corresponding set-back in learning. We find his Court deserted by the literati, and learning languished as a rule. The reason for this is not far to seek. The sovereign was the largest fountain from which the educational institutions, professors and literary men drew a very large portion of their sustenance, a slight change in his literary taste producing a corresponding change in the literary world. Centralized as all power was in the Emperor alone, the changes in his will and desire made themselves felt in all directions of national activity: the Emperor's taste was, so to speak, a barometer of the then literary atmosphere. We find, however, in the case of 'Alāuddīn Khiljī, that the literary life of the day was in a vigorous state though the Emperor had no literary taste and even did positive harm to the cause of learning in the beginning of his reign by confiscating the endowments that fed the literary institutions and learned men. Such a state of things is surely abnormal, which we cannot explain unless we bear in mind that private munificence played not a small part in the sustenance of learning. So if literary life appeared to flourish in spite of the Emperor in the early part of his reign, it was owing to the momentum it had already acquired, and the encouragement it obtained