Sam Dalrymple | Substack
Travels of Samwise
Sam Dalrymple
#1 Bestselling Author & Orwell Prize Finalist | Global Art and History with a particular focus on South Asia | Award winning Filmmaker | Order Shattered Lands now!
The Great Picture Wall of Lahore
Emperor Jahangir was one of the most interesting emperors in South Asian history.
He was obsessed with nature and indeed loved his pet antelope Mansraj so much that he built it a majestic tomb outside Lahore.
He also had two pet dodos, and miniature paintings of them survive in the emperor's muraqqa albums.
The Sultans of Sanskrit
When I did my degree in Sanskrit and Persian at Oxford, I had a general impression that these languages belonged to utterly different worlds.
Patronage of Sanskrit - the sacred language of Hinduism - is generally assumed to have disappeared in much of India after the arrival of Islam.
In fact, however, the opposite …