"'Tis a day of mirth and jollity,
A daily market of flowers and odours;
The earth-heaps are suffused with ambergris,
The zephyr sheds rose-water from his skirt,
From contact with the morning breeze the pool
Is roughened and pointed, like the edge of a file."
As this garden is in the charge of Khwaja Jahan, he presented me
as offerings with some pieces of brocade of a new fashion they had
lately brought for him from `Iraq. Selecting what I approved of,
I presented the remainder to him. He had arranged the garden well,
and his mansab was ordered to be raised to 5,000 personal and 3,000
horse, original and increased.
A strange circumstance was that I was so much delighted with a jewelled
dagger-hilt of piebald teeth which Khan `Alam had got from Shah
`Abbas and sent to me (see ante), that I appointed several skilful
men to go to Iran and Turan to look for them and to be consistently
searching for them, and to bring some from anywhere and any person,
anyhow, and at any price. Many of my servants who knew my disposition,
and dignified Amirs in the course of their duty, engaged in the
search. It happened that in this city a stupid stranger bought in
the open bazaar a coloured tooth of great beauty and delicacy for a
trifle; he believed that some time or other it had fallen into the
fire, and that the black on it was the mark of burning! After some
time he showed it to one of the carpenters on the establishment
of my prosperous son Shah-Jahan, desiring that he should take off
a piece of the tooth in order to make a ring (shast), and pointed
out that he should remove the marks of burning and the blacknesses,
being ignorant that the blackness enhanced the value and price of the
whiteness. Those moles and patches were what the tirewoman of destiny
had given as an adornment of its beauty. The carpenter at once went
to the Superintendent of his workshop, and gave him the good news
that such a rare and precious thing, in search of which people were
wandering and going long distances, and hastening to all corners and
in all directions in various countries, had fallen for nothing into
the hands of an ignorant man, who did not know its value. It could
be easily and cheaply obtained from him. The Superintendent went
off with him and immediately procured it, and next day produced it
before my son. When my son Shah-Jahan came to wait on me, he at first
showed great delight, and after his brain had become free from the
intoxication of the wine of joy, produced it, and greatly pleased me--