Akbar Shah and the Persic

      Emperor Akbar, the leader of the Mughal Empire (India), whose official language was modern Persian, was a little eccentric, among other things, in his language-policy; the year after his advocation of the Din-e Elāhi in 1581, he impulsively ordered officials to restrict the use of Arabic words and even Arabic letters in official Mughal documents, and in 1592 his patronage was extended to the compilation of the unique Persian dictionary Farhang-e Jahāngīrī, in which rare ancient Persian (= Pārsīg) vocabulary items were contained preferentially. This strong attachment to ancient Persian vocabularies of the Emperor is best expressed by the compiler of the Farhang-e Jahāngīrī, Mir Jamāl al-Dīn Shīrāzī, in its preface:

“Subjects of Emperor Akbar, hearing this remark [= Emperor’s desire to promote the study on Pārsīg], invited this humble man (Mir Jamāl al-Dīn Shīrāzī himself) to his holy presence. He said with the tongue of court : «Persian, Pahlavī and Darī were corrupted and their grammars do not have correct measure … because since the time Arabs conquered the land of Persia, Persian language had mixed with Arabic words, most of the Persian, Darī  and Pahlavī  words were abolished, assuredly extinguished. Therefore the explanation on the books written in ancient Persian languages, and the meaning of the poems which ancient poets adorned with golden arrangement, remained concealed under the veil of concealment. So before this, I ordered some of the members of holy court to arrange a book which contains all the ancient Persian words. » …”
It is not clear in this question what Akbar’s real intention was in this pro-Persian language-policy, but it is clear that the group which enjoyed the favour of his language-policy to the full was none other than the Zoroastrians, because it was they who had best preserved ancient Persian words and Zoroastrian literature was indispensable for ancient Persian study.

Takeshi Aoki, “The transformation of Zoroastrian messianism in Mughal India. From the advent of Zoroastrian Holy Emperor to the change of Zoroastrianism”, Orient, Tokyo, 37/ 2002, 136-66 (159-60).

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Mughal Emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1605) holds a religious assembly in the Ibadat Khana (House of Worship) in Fatehpur Sikri

rēš-spēd dastōr kaikobad (kay-kavād), pus ī dastōr meherjirana ped dar ī akbar

akbar duvum nibēg ī akbarnāma az abulfazl pedīred. (History of Akbar, by Abul-Fazl ibn Mubarak, Delhi, late 16th century, Chester Beatty Collection, London)