Volume 2

The Tūzuk-i-Jahāngīrī, or, Memoirs of Jahāngīr ... / translated by Alexander Rogers .. ; edited by Henry Beveridge.

  • Jahangir, Emperor of Hindustan, 1569-1627.
Date:
1909-1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Tūzuk-i-Jahāngīrī, or, Memoirs of Jahāngīr ... / translated by Alexander Rogers .. ; edited by Henry Beveridge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of perplexity and alarm. As the care and guardianship of the Great and Glorious God is ever and in all places the protection of this suppliant, both elephants crossed the bridge in safety.”* On Thursday, the 25th, a wine-feast was held on the banks of the Mahi, and some of my intimate servants who had admittance to such assemblies had their hearts delighted by brimming cups and ample favours. Certainly it was an entrancing halting-ground. I stayed here four days for two reasons—first, because of the beauty of the spot, and secondly in order that the people might not be confused in crossing the river. On Sunday, the 28th, I marched from the bank of the Mahi. On Monday I marched again. On this day a strange sight was witnessed. The pair of saras that had had young ones had been brought from Ahmadabad on Thursday (the 25th). In the Court of the royal enclosure, which had been placed on the bank of a tank, they were walking about with their young ones. By chance both the male and female raised a cry, and a pair of wild saras hearing it, and crying out from the other side of the tank, came flying towards them. The male with the male, and the female with the female, engaged in a fight, and although some people were standing about, the birds paid no heed to them. The eunuchs who had been told ofl to protect them hastened to seize them. One clung to the male and the other to the female. He who had caught the male kept hold of it after much struggling, but the one who seized the female could not hold her, and she escaped from his hand. I with my own hand put rings in his beak and on his legs, and set him free. Both went and settled in their own place.f Whenever the domestic saras raised a cry they responded. I saw a sight of this kind in wild antelopes when I had gone to hunt in the pargana of * Compare account in Akbar-nama, II. 150. Akbar was then twenty years old. There is a picture of the two elephants crossing the bridge with Akbar on the elephant Hawa’i in the Clarke MS. in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington. ■j* Presumably the other side of the tank ; it was the wild male saras that Jahangir put rings upon.