Shi'ahs.* Among shrines these he held in special reverence those of Pír Salím Muhammad Chishtí on the hill of Síkrí, near Agrah and of Khwajah Muí'nuddin Chishti at Ajmír.

He made pilgrimages regularly each year and also before or after any unusually important and solemn action. This practice proves what is stated in the records of Christian missionaries in contradistinction to the later assertions of Badáoní, that Akbar was never indifferent in matters of religion. As he attained conscious independence of thought, it was inevitable that his tolerant and liberal disposition should be repelled in an increasing degree from the rigid forms of the Sunní creed. Outward circumstances strengthened his mental bias, for as in Europe so also in the East and particularly in India, the 16th century was an age of universal intellectual ferment. East and West, in all quarters and under the most diversified forms, there was a stir of intellectual life. It was a period in which mankind rose to renewed mental effort from the crushing repression of the savage and brutal Middle Ages and in which the universal spiritual awakening took action in a pressing forward from serfdom towards freedom and in the thirst for something of whatsoever kind, higher and better.

Surrounded as he was by various and partly conflicting elements, Akbar, least of all men, was able to withstand impulses which coincided with his own innate, unresting impulse towards knowledge and action. He was an absolute ruler and his existence as emperor could be conditioned by his own will only. Humanity

* Historical and descriptive account of Persia. Frazer 321.

† Elliot V, 273 and 328.

See the excellent work of Max Müllbauer; Geschichte der katholischen missionen in Ostindien. Freiburg in Breisgau. 1852. 8vo. 133 et seq.

however, no less than political wisdom, urged him to prove the greatness of his power by wise moderation rather than its arbitrary exercise. When his Mughul ancestors had relentlessly crushed out opposition, they were driven by circumstances to accommodate themselves in creed, manners and custom to the peoples they had vanquished. Even if Akbar were not yet clearly conscious of this fact, it must have prompted him to direct his efforts not to the extermination of his enemies but to their affiliation to himself and his house by acts of conciliatory toleration.

There could have been no question of the annihilation of Hindús by Muhammadans even in subject lands, for the conquerors were and remained in the minority. Moreover Akbar's predecessors had seen the necessity of respecting the faith and the customs of the races they conquered. It is true that he himself stamped out resistance wherever it met him; Mírt'ha was stormed through streams of blood and even Banáras, the sacred city of Hinduism, felt his wrath because it had closed its gates against him during the rebellion of Jaunpúr. Just as little however as he cherished wrath against the brave Rájpúts when Mírt'ha had fallen, so little did he against the refractory Banáras when it had been chastised; he made no delay in renewing intercourse with its brahmáns and showed that though he could act as an autocrat, he could feel as a man.

In order to form a true judgment of Akbar, it is needful to possess the capability of losing oneself in that genius of the East which only the fewest are capable of rightly comprehending. The Oriental does not desire to direct and guide by his understanding; he rather allows himself to be determined by the impulses of

feeling and, with implicit calmness, surrenders himself to the will of fate, without afflicting himself to interpret it. In this abnegation he finds strength to endure the most sudden changes of fortune without being swayed between the fastidious sentimentality and crabbed cynicism of the European's restless strife after ideal aims. It is exceptional for the Oriental to sink into that gloomy stupor of fatalism with which he is so abundantly reproached by Europeans.

An essential difference exists between the inner life of a Muhammadan and that of a Hindú, for the first yields more to passion while the last leads a passionless life of feeling. Both however are human; both strive, each in his mode, after unattainable objects which are fundamentally the same but are pursued by different ways and methods. and methods. The antagonism which for a half chiliad had existed in all other respects in the Hindú and Muhammadan outer and inner life was too strong for it to have been an easy task to reconcile their conflicting elements. For 500 years, the Muhammadans had flooded, plundered and conquered India; now in the 16th century, the Moslim lords of the land lived in proximity to the native population but without coalescence. The Hindú was unchanged as he had been for 1000 years, loving everything native, hating everything foreign. The Muhammadan although not identical with his co-religionist of the time of the Prophet and the first Khalífs had retained enough of the foreigner and of diversity to forbid him to feel at home on the soil of India. Both it is true, had lived and laboured near and with one another, both had often met in battle but to live in task beyond their powers.

community was a

The more impartial Akbar's views became, the more these antagonisms must have troubled him. It became his highest object to do justice to both the opposed creeds and to convert India into a garden in which the many-pillared banyan-that symbol of Hindu Sánkhya doctrine, of vitality ever fresh and rejuvenescent-might flourish in harmonious peace, side by side with the slender and aspiring cypress which the Moslim loves; which is to him not only the sombre tree of mourning, but also the image of heavenward-soaring hope; and which has journeyed with him from the southern slopes of the Bolar Dagh to the sources of the Nile and fromthe Iranian Highlands to the Pillars of Hercules and the China shore of the Pacific.*

* Erdkunde. Ritter. 1836, 2nd Ed. Berlin. VI, 664-73. VIII, 246-7 and IX, 567. Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere. Victor Helm. 3rd Ed. Berlin. 1877. 244-251.

SECTION III.-Akbar enlarges his empire

and consolidates his power.

CHAPTER I.

AKBAR AND THE HINDÚS. CHÍTOR.

AKBAR had now reigned twelve years; the first half of this period had been passed under the guardianship of Bairám Khán, the second under female ascendancy, amid partisan quarrels and open rebellions. These were the years of the Emperor's apprenticeship; the buffet which struck down the audacious Adham Khán made him a man and now when the heads of 'Alí Qulí and Bahadur lay at his feet, it was beyond question that, not in name only but in fact, he was Padshah of India. He had shown that he had matured into an absolute sovereign and that thenceforth his will was to be law in Hindústán. Completely to effect this, two things were however pre-eminently necessary—the confirmation of peace and order within his recently pacified empire and such an extension of frontier as should assure its future.

Bitter experience had taught him that no reliance could be placed upon the Moslim nobility nor yet upon his own kinsmen; he was driven to look elsewhere