IN INDIA sacred places have long been the focus of pil- grimage, a practice which doubtless extends much further back than the early centuries BC indicated by archaeol- ogical evidence. The importance of pilgrimage to the holy places (1trtha-yatra-) is stressed in the earliest Brahmanical literature. A liturgical text attached to the Rg Veda, generally accepted as having been composed before 1000 BC, provides the first known reference:

Flower-like the heels of the wanderer, His body groweth and is fruitful; All his sins disappear, Slain by the toil of his journeying.

ACROSS the centuries and across great cultural divides the notion that physical surroundings - in the form of clothing, furniture, vessels for eating and drinking, in short what we would now broadly call material culture - have a moral and spiritual dimension has been widespread.' In 1615, for example, the Spanish Franciscan Juan de Santa- maria, would-be reformer of the morals of the Spanish empire, cited Sallust to re-inforce his point:

The signs of a disorderly age are that men's clothes are gaily coloured, men are made up to look like women, customs are lewd, minds are set on profit, conduct is filthy, music is deviant, and ornamentation is vile and variegated.

IT has long been recognised that the arts of the Islamic book, comprising calligraphy, illumination, painting and binding, reached their apogee during the Safavid dynasty of Iran (1501–1732). The achievements of this period were fostered by a series of royal patrons, beginning with the first Safavid ruler, Ismi'l1 (1501–1524), and continuing with his eldest son, Tahmisp (1524-1576). Another active bibliophile among the second generation of Safavids was Ism-'il's youngest son, Bahrdm Mirzd (1517–1549). The evidence for this prince's involvement in the arts - for he himself was calligrapher, artist, poet and musician - and for his sponsorship of a kitdb-khana, or centre for the pro- duction and collection of manuscripts - comes primarily from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century chronicles as well as from other sources, including the well-known introduction to the album of calligraphies, paintings and draw- ings prepared for him in 1544–45, and now in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul (H.2154). That this work was made specifically for Bahrim MTrzi is proclaimed at the outset in a small and beautifully illuminated shamsa or rosette inscribed: 'bi-rasm-i kitib-khana-yi shahriyar Abu'l-Fath. Bahrdm Jdm iqtiddr' (by order of the library of the prince, Abu'l-Fathl Bahrim, as powerful as Jamshid). Dust-Muhammad, the artist responsible for the album's compilation, extols Bahrim Mirzd in the subsequent preface as 'the pearl of the oyster of the caliphate and justice, the gem of the casket of magnificence and rule', and continues that the prince, 'after perfecting the affairs of rule and perusing histories and tales, used to spend his time contemplating the masters' beautiful calligraphic specimens and rare and precious essays, and his gaze of favour and kindness was ever upon this, that the scattered folios of past and present masters should be brought out of the region of dispersal into the realm of collectedness'.