A new biography highlights Akbar’s general Raja Man Singh’s statesmanship and patronage of the arts

While Mughal forces and Maharana Pratap continued to engage against each other in one part of the Subcontinent for over fifteen years after Haldighati, Man Singh along with his father, Raja Bhagwant Das of Amber, had been posted to Punjab and the north-west region along the still-fluid frontier of the Mughal Empire in 1578. It was as effective a way as any to take them away from Dhoondhar as well as Mewar, and for that matter from Agra, while giving them the opportunity of garnering more honour, fame and the chance of enhanced mansabs. Abu’l Fazl’s Akbarnama records that Akbar deputed his minister, Raja Todar Mal, to proceed to Punjab and arrange for the jagirs to be given to Raja Bhagwant Das and Kunwar Man Singh.

The Kachhwaha father-son duo, with their separate retinues, reached Punjab for their new duties in April 1578 and reported to the emperor. They presented themselves to Akbar while he was hunting in the neighbourhood of Bhera (now part of Pakistan’s present-day Sargodha district. The district was called Shahpur while it was part of undivided India). The city of Bhera, on the Jhelum River, had been sacked by Mirza Muhammad Hakim in 1566. Akbar had made Bhera...

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