Read the passage and answer the question:

It was Akbar who consciously set out to make Persian the leading language of the Mughal court. Cultural and intellectual contacts with Iran, as well as a regular stream of Iranian and Central Asian migrants seeking positions at the Mughal court, might have motivated the emperor to adopt the language. Persian was elevated to a language of empire, conferring power and prestige on those who had a command of it. It was spoken by the king, the royal household and the elite at court. Further, it became the language of administration at all levels so that accountants, clerks and other functionaries also learnt it. Even when Persian was not directly used, its vocabulary and idiom heavily influenced the language of official records in Rajasthani and Marathi and even Tamil. Since the people using Persian in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries came from many different regions of the subcontinent and spoke other Indian languages, Persian too became Indianised by absorbing local idioms. A new language, Urdu, sprang from the interaction of Persian with Hindavi.

In reference to the Mughal empire, what is a 'scriptorium'?

A place where the emperor’s collection of manuscripts was kept and new manuscripts were produced.

The correct answer is Option 1 - A place where the emperor’s collection of manuscripts was kept and new manuscripts were produced.

All books in Mughal India were manuscripts, that is, they were handwritten. The centre of manuscript production was the imperial Kitab khana. Although Kitab khana can be translated as a library, it was a scriptorium, that is, a place where the emperor’s collection of manuscripts was kept and new manuscripts were produced.