1869.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 191 



on the 25th Beth/man [of Ahbar's Era], corresponding to the Sth Jumdda 

 II, 1037 A. H., which is the auspicious day of my accession. This 

 has been written by Shih&buddin Muhammad Shdh Jahdn Padishah, 

 son of Jahangir Pddishdh, son of Akbar P ddishah-i~ Ghdzi . The 

 value of this booh has been fixed at three thousand rupees. 



Jahangir's handwriting looks childish and stiff ; Shahjahan's auto- 

 graph, which corresponds to the autograph in the Padishahnamah 

 of the Society, is written in a clear and current hand. 



Jahangir had early commenced to read. u He got his first lesson," 

 says Badaoni, " on the 22nd Rajab 981 [when the prince was four years 

 old]. His teachers were the pious Maulana Mir Kalan, the Hadis 

 collector (muhaddis) of Harat, an angel in human shape, and Miran 

 Shah, son of Mir Jamaludclin Muhaddis. The first lesson consisted 

 in learning and writing the formula — 



In the name of God, the merciful, the clement, he has taught the 

 Qordn." 



The difference in the headings of the autographs is noticeable. 

 The use of the formula Alldhu Akbar has been explained in the Ain 

 (vide p. 166). Jahangir's religion was an extraordinary compound of 

 Islam, Hinduism, fire-worship, and their superstitious ideas and usages. 

 In his "Memoirs," he sometimes speaks of his father as a saint or 

 prophet, and of the sun as God ; he confirmed the Hindu practices 

 introduced at Court by Akbar; he uses of dying Muhammaclans the 

 phrase dar jahannam raft (he went to Hell)— which Muhammaclan 

 writers apply to Hind lis ; he had been for forty years an opium eater, 

 and was a drunkard from his sixteenth year.* 



* Jahangir says in his Memoirs that at first he drank sweet wine, then 'araq 

 idudtishah, or doubly distilled arrack, increasing his daily quantum, in the 

 course of nine years, to twenty phjdlahs or six Hindustani sers, when he was 

 saved from death by Humam, the Court doctor, who during the following seven 

 years limited the allowance to seven piydlahs. The daily quantity of* opium 

 which Jahangir took, was subsequently limited to 8 ratis. 



Akbar' s two younger sons died of delirium tremens. The native Historians of 

 India reveai an amount of drunkenness among Muhammaclan and Hindu, 

 courtiers, before the arrival of Europeans in India, which, from the sober habits 

 of the middle classes of both races, one would scarcely expect. 



Shahjahan was no drunkard. When twenty -four years old he drank, for the 

 first time in his life, a cup of wine, ' to oblige his royal father.' Tuzuh, p. 150. 



