A spinach-green jade cup from the reign of Awrangzeb, Mughal, India, second half 17th century

inscription

ilahi to in shah-e darvish dust

keh asayesh-e khalq dar zill-e ust

be-darash bar awrang-e shahi o jah

be-charkh-e barin ta bovad mehr-o mah

'O You God, this very king who befriends dervishes (whom the poor hold dear)

Whose ease of the nation is under his shadow

Place him on the throne of sovereignty and magnificence

On the highest heavenly sphere as long as there is the Sun and the Moon.’

The smooth, largely unadorned surface of the cup gives full expression to the roiling spinach-green colours of the jade. As on comparable Mughal 'plain' jade cups, such as the wine cup made for Jahangir now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (inv. no.IM.152-1924), it is carved with a band of finely carved nasta'liq containing a poetic reference to its likely patron. Where on Jahangir's wine cup the poetic inscription invokes 'the world-seizing king' (shah-e jahangir), the second couplet of the inscription on the present cup names 'the throne of sovereignty' (awrang-e shahi). The first couplet, meanwhile, is adapted from a pious couplet in the Bustan of Sa'di (Wickens 1974, p.13).