Islamic Culture July 1947

The travellers were handicapped by ignorance of the language laws customs and institutions of the country by the very immensity of the land and the diversity of its poplation by an alien inchoate synthetic culture still in process of evolution as a result of the impact and fusion of Islam and Hinduism. [...] The fickle-mindedness of Jahangir the intrigues of the Portuguese and the hostility of Muqarrab Khan and later of Prince Khurram rendered nugatory the efforts of Hawkins and Roe to conclude a commercial treaty with the Mughal. [...] In the grim clutches.of grinding poverty unable to afford a piece of linen to cover their nudity perpetually on the verge of starvation and driven from the soil by the exorbitant demands of an extravagant exchequer and a tyrannical and -oppressive government—such according to Bernier was the condition of the people of India.3 The travellers found Indians living in mean dwellings and with mea [...] The elaborate etiquette that was enforced in the court and the various duties which the nobles at the metropolis had to carry out in the service of the Emperor were intended to bring home to the nobles the authority of the Emperor. [...] Sometime in the summer of 1944 I had a talk with Gulchin about the present tendencies in Persian poetry and put to him the idea which I had long had in mind that the time had come for the old classical themes of the Persian epic to be used again in idylls after the manner of the nilteteenth and twentieth century poets of Europe.