Games, Music and Recreation in Mughal South Asia

The Mughal court in northern India and present-day Pakistan used games, hunts and music for recreation, competition and ceremony. Abu’l Fazl, Akbar’s court historian, described these practices in the Ain-i-Akbari, his account of the empire and its institutions. The examples span the reigns of Mughal emperors Akbar (1556–1605), Shah Jahan (1628–1658) and Aurangzeb (1658–1707), with a manuscript commissioned in 1662 showing how music scholarship traveled with Aurangzeb’s court.

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Board games and picture cards

Abu’l Fazl’s late-sixteenth-century Ain-i-Akbari calls chaupar a game long familiar in Hindustan, then records the rules used at Akbar’s court. Four players formed two opposing pairs. Each had four coloured pieces and threw three long dice, whose marked sides determined how far pieces moved around a cross-shaped board. A piece travelled along the outer track before turning toward the empty centre; reaching the final track made it “ripe,” but an exact throw was still needed to finish. Two pieces kept together could not be captured singly, and a player who completed all four pieces then used later throws to help a partner finish. The account also specifies bets, penalties for inattentive play, and fees for substitutes. Abu’l Fazl says that earlier noble gatherings could include as many as two hundred players and last through many rounds, sometimes over months, making chaupar a social event as well as a contest of dice and movement.

Akbar’s playing cards also turned political imagery into a pastime. Abu’l Fazl describes twelve suits, each with a king, a minister and ten numbered cards. Their pictures ranged from horses, elephants and infantry to ships, forts, treasure, animals and women. Akbar altered the treasure suit: its king distributed money, its minister inspected the treasury and the ten numbered cards showed classes of treasury workers. He also added a king of assignments inspecting grants and financial registers; other cards showed workers in the Financial Department, including paper makers, clerks and bookbinders.

Polo and equestrian skill

Chaugán, the mounted ball game commonly called polo, tested both riding and control of the stick. In one version, the rider used the curved end of a mallet to guide the ball slowly from the middle of the field to the goal. In another, the player struck it hard and galloped after it. Abu’l Fazl describes right- and left-handed strokes and shots made from beside or beneath the horse. At Akbar’s games, there were no more than ten players at once, with other riders ready to take the place of two resting players after an interval. When the ball reached the goal, kettledrums announced the score, and betting heightened competition. The account also describes night matches with balls made from light palas wood set alight so they continued to burn.

Hunting as a royal institution

Akbar’s hunts involved a carefully arranged staff. Abu’l Fazl names qarawals, men employed by the Master of Hunting, who surrounded the hunting ground while guards, officers, equipment keepers and grandees waited farther back. Akbar gradually selected a smaller party and approached the inner ground alone or with one or two companions. For tiger hunting, one reported method placed a goat inside a large cage behind a screen: the tiger could see the bait but not reach it, and its entry triggered the door to close. Abu’l Fazl also says Akbar preferred to face tigers openly with a bow or matchlock. A separate entry in the Ain-i-Akbari says writers recorded the game Akbar killed and the guns used; it gives the name Sangram for a gun credited with 1,019 animals. Abu’l Fazl presents hunts as occasions when Akbar inspected local conditions, taxation and the army.

Court music and ceremonial space

Abu’l Fazl describes musicians from Hindu, Iranian, Turani (Central Asian) and Kashmiri backgrounds, including men and women, serving Akbar’s court. He says they were divided into seven groups, one assigned to each day of the week. Music also structured the court’s daily rhythm: a large band played at midnight and again at dawn. Before sunrise, surnas, reed instruments, began the morning sequence; after sunrise came a short prelude, then metal karna horns and other winds. The paired damamah kettledrums produced a deep sound, while the naqqarah drums joined later. The band moved through a series of tunes, including a quiet beginning that grew louder before fading. At Akbar’s night audience, Abu’l Fazl places Sufi teachers, members of Islamic mystical traditions, in discussion with the emperor and says musicians entered before daybreak to perform songs and religious strains.

At Shah Jahan’s Red Fort in Delhi, built during his reign, the Naubat Khana, or drum house, stood beyond the entrance and before the Diwan-i-Am, the public audience hall. Ceremonial musicians played there, so sound marked the transition from the fort’s entrance into the court. See the Red Fort for the larger palace setting.

A manuscript made on the move

Musical performance was accompanied by scholarship and copying. In 1662, during Aurangzeb’s reign, courtier Diyānat Khān commissioned a manuscript of fourteen Arabic and Persian works on music theory, including the analysis of sound, rhythm, harmony and instrument-making. British Library manuscript Or. 2361 began in Delhi, the Mughal capital; two specialist scribes copied Arabic and Persian works. The court’s route to Kashmir passed through Ambala in present-day India and Lahore in present-day Pakistan; the manuscript’s colophons, notes at the end of texts recording where and when scribes worked, locate copying in Delhi, Ambala and Lahore. Diyānat Khān checked Arabic texts against other copies near Lahore and during the Kashmir journey; further texts were added in Delhi in 1664 and 1665.