Note 7 — The Third New Year’s Feast from my Accession.

On Thursday, the 8th Muḥarram, 10177 (24th April, 1608), Jalālu-d-dīn Masʿūd, who held the rank of 400 personal and was not wanting in bravery, and who in several battles had done great deeds, died at about the age of 50 or 60 years of diarrhœa. He was an opium-eater, and used to eat opium after breaking it in pieces, like cheese, and it is notorious that he frequently ate opium from the hand of his own mother. When his disease became violent and there was a prospect of his death, his mother from excessive love for him ate more opium than was right out of that which she used to give her son, and two or three hours after his death she also died. I have never heard of such affection on the part of a mother for her son. It is the custom among the Hindus that after the death of their husbands women burn themselves, whether from love, or to save the honour of their fathers, or from being ashamed before their sons-in-law, but nothing like this was ever manifested on the part of mothers, Musulman or Hindu. On the 15th of the same month I presented my best horse by way of favour to Rāja Mān Singh. S͟hāh ʿAbbās had sent this horse with some other horses and fitting gifts by Minūchihr, one of his confidential slaves, to the late king Akbar. From being presented with this horse the Raja was so delighted that if I had given him a kingdom I do not think he would have shown such joy. At the time they brought the horse it was three or four years old. It grew up in Hindustan. The whole of the servants of the Court, Moghul and Rajput together, represented that no horse like this had ever come from Iraq to Hindustan. When my revered father gave the province of Khandesh and the Subah of the Deccan to my brother Dāniyāl, and was returning to Agra, he by way of kindness told Dāniyāl to ask of him whatever he desired. Seizing the opportunity, he asked for this horse, and he accordingly gave it to him. On Tuesday, the 20th, a report came from Islām K͟hān with the news of the death of Jahāngīr Qulī K͟hān, the governor of the Subah of Bengal, who was my special slave. On account of his natural excellence and innate merit he had been enrolled in the list of the great Amirs. I was much grieved at his death. I bestowed the rule of Bengal and the tutorship to Prince Jahāndār on my farzand8 Islām K͟hān, and in his place gave the government of the Subah of Behar to Afẓal K͟hān (son of Abū-l-faẓl). The son of Ḥakīm ʿAlī, whom I had sent on some duties to Burhanpur, came and brought with him some Karnatic jugglers who had no rivals or equals; for instance, one of them played with ten balls, each of which was equal to an orange and one to a citron, and one to a surk͟h,9 in such a way that notwithstanding some were small and some large he never missed one, and did so many kinds of tricks that one’s wits became bewildered. At the same time a dervish from Ceylon came and brought a strange animal called a deonak10 (or devang). Its face was exactly like a large bat, and the whole shape was like that of a monkey, but it had no tail. Its movements were like those of the black tailless monkey which they call ban mānus͟h (jungle man) in the Hindi language. Its body was like that of a young monkey two or three months old. It had been with the dervish for five years.11 It appeared that the animal would never grow larger. Its food is milk and it also eats plantains. As the creature appeared very strange, I ordered the artists to take a likeness of it in various kinds of movement. It looked very ugly.