Note 45 — The Fourteenth New Year’s Feast from the Auspicious Accession
Alexander Rogers translation
On Saturday, the 10th, the huntsmen represented that there was in that neighbourhood a tiger that greatly troubled and injured the ryots and wayfarers. I immediately ordered them to bring together a number of elephants and surround the forest and at the end of the day myself rode out with my ladies. As I had vowed that I would not injure any living thing with my own hand, I told Nūr-Jahān45 to shoot at him. An elephant is not at ease when it smells a tiger, and is continually in movement, and to hit with a gun from a litter (ʿimārī) is a very difficult matter, insomuch that Mīrzā Rustam, who, after me, is unequalled in shooting, has several times missed three or four shots from an elephant. Yet Nūr-Jahān B. so hit the tiger with one shot that it was immediately killed.