Motives of Travel to Indiain the Mirror of Saeb's Poetry

Iran and India’s close-set relations throughoutthe history have provided a background for a lot of interactions between the two nations and have caused lots of emigrations and travels between them.The vast emigration of scientists, artists and literati and other Iranian groups of the Safavid Age to India is of the most important emigrations to this vast land, and there have been many theories suggested about its causes among which we can mention the following: the religious prejudices of the Safavid kings, the Indian Gurkani’s attention towards the Persian language and literature in that time, and finally numerous prizes given by these kings to the poets and artists.A survey on Saeb’s poetry from this point of view shows that the reasons for these emigrations have been different for different individuals. As a matter of fact, the ground provided for foreign travels in the Safavid Age due to the foreign policies of the kings of that age, especially kingAbbas,encouraged many poets to go to India with different motives, and as to Saeb, his motives were religious teachings, benefiting from the spiritual advantages of the travel, dissatisfaction with the social circumstances and moral decadence of The Safavid Age, oddness of the style of his poetry, trying to find eloquent audiences, and finally looking for a territory that tolerated the freedom of thought and mystical tendencies.