Ṣafawid Poets and India

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. British Institute of Persian Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Iran. I During the seventeenth century there was a large influx of poets from Safawid Iran to Mughal India and the Deccan. Persian poetry throve in India rather than in its natural homeland, Iran. The theory so far held is best summed up in Mirzi Muhammad Qazwini's communication to E. G. Browne:The chief reason for this [i.e. lack of patronage by the Safawids] seems to have been that these kings, by reason of their political aims and strong antagonism to the Ottoman Empire, devoted the greater part of their energies to the propagation of the Shi'a doctrine and the encouragement of divines learned in its principles and laws.Browne subscribed to this theory fully, as have all his successors, including Rypka more recently, who asserts that the " cultural " interest of the Safawids was confined to the consolidation of Shi'ism, and that in the Safawid Iran there was a " palpable lack of interest in the poets, their works and their burial-places "; though he does concede some development of, and interest in, non-religious poetry in the Safawid Iran as exemplified by Ismd'il I's Turki diwdn and Sam Mirzd's tadhkira.1The theory can be traced to a pious anecdote narrated in the Ta'rikh-i '.lam-drd'i 'Abbdsi that Tahm~sp (1524-76) was not pleased with the two panegyrics sent by Muhtasham Kashi from Kashan in praise of the Safawid monarch and the Princess Pari Khan Khanum, and observed that eulogies should be written only in the honour of the Prophet and the Imams, which would earn reward in the hereafter and from himself. On this, Muhtasham composed and sent him his famous devotional haft-band.2Even if this hagiological anecdote has a kernel of truth, it is relevant only to a particular occasion, and one has to weigh against it the evidence that a great deal of non-religious poetry was written in the age of Tahmasp. One cannot easily rule out the possibility that the anecdote may have had its origin as a legend to extol Tahmdsp's piety and to provide an apocryphal genesis for Muhtasham's haft-band. One has also to take into account the fact that Muhtasham had written earlier several panegyrics in honour of Tahmdsp and much erotic verse. There is no doubt that in the age of Tahmasp painting and calligraphy became the major arts, and a certain poet complained of the better opportunities of advancement for the " calligraphist, the painter, the Qazwini and the donkey "; but it does not follow that poetry had necessarily become a minor art, as Browne has asserted.3Minorsky advanced the view that the decline of poetry under the Safawids might be explained as due to the decline of mysticism...

Electron beam irradiation of LLDPE and PDMS rubber blends: Studies on the physicomechanical properties

“…The tensile impact strength of the blends LL 40 and LL 30 are found to be very close to each other at higher radiation doses of 400 and 500 kGy. However, reduction of tensile impact strength at higher doses of radiation (i.e., 400 and 500 kGy) is assumed to compact three dimensional network formation increasing brittleness of the matrix in contradiction to that reported by Ahmad et al 30 due to chain scission for blends of NR/LLDPE. However, degradation at very high doses of radiation exposure is not ruled, which is very well reflected in the tensile properties.…”

“…4. It is also observed that a blend ratio of 70: 30 (LLDPE: PDMS) rubber gives the best balance in property spectrum at 100 kGy radiation.…”

“…The reduction in elongation at break with the increase in radiation dose may be due to the reduced segmental mobility of the polymer chains on account of cross-link formation in the amorphous region and the occurrence of some chain scission with increase in radiation dose as was observed in case of NR/LLDPE blends. 30 Alternately, it may be due to the onset of degradation, which reduces the ability of the polymer to deform plastically as observed by De Boer et al 43 The aforesaid factors are responsible for the gradual reduction in elongation at break in case of blends with higher proportion of LLDPE and at higher doses of irradiation. Thus, a remarkable decrease in elongation at break in case of LL 50, LL 40, and LL 30 blends is observed.…”

“…Krupa and Luyt 28 have presented the mechanical and thermal properties of LLDPE cross-linked with gamma radiation. Ahmad et al 29,30 have studied the electron beam radiation (EBR) cross-linking of NR LLDPE blends filled with carbon black. A study 31 says that silicone rubber is found to impart better performance properties on radiation cross-linking by using EBR.…”

Refractive indices of semiconductors from energy gaps

“…Refractive index of a material is known to decrease with energy gap and therefore, these two fundamental quantities of a material are believed to have certain correlation. Over a period of time there have been many attempts to find a suitable relationship, both empirical and semi empirical, between the energy gap and refractive index of semiconductors [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. Many of the empirical relations relate the refractive index n to the energy gap E g directly whereas some relations are proposed to calculate E g from electronegativity first and then from the calculated E g , n is determined.…”