Part 25 (2/2)

”And thou?”

”I go back whence I came.”

Those who had watched the chase from the plains below asked for explanations. They were given.

”Tell the truth,” came the calm reply.

Then Sukta told it. Drawing himself up, he said briefly:

”The burden of a kingdom over-weighted my brother. I helped him to carry it.”

Needless to say, the excuse was accepted. And to this day the cry, ”_Ho! nila-ghora-ki-aswar_,” is one of the war-cries of the Rajput.

To return to Akbar, in the twentieth year of his reign. It was just ten years since Faizi had come into his life--Faizi, the first Mahomedan to trouble his head about Hindu literature, Hindu science.

It had opened up a new world to Akbar, and when six years afterwards Abul-fazl entered into the emperor's life also, with his broad, clear, tolerant, critical outlook, and his intense personal belief in the genius of the man he served, it seemed possible to achieve what till then Akbar had almost despaired of achieving. The dream had always been there. In some ways he had gone far towards realising it. He had, early in his reign, abolished the capitation tax on infidels, and the tax on pilgrimages, his reason for the latter being, ”that although the tax was undoubtedly on a vain superst.i.tion, yet, as all modes of wors.h.i.+p were designed for the One Great Being, it was wrong to throw any obstacle in the way of the devout, and so cut them off from their own mode of intercourse with their Maker.”

Then he had absolutely forbidden the slavery of prisoners of war; and having observed, both during his many campaigns and his still more numerous hunting expeditions, that the greater portion of the land he traversed remained uncultivated, he had set himself, alone, unaided--for his courtiers were content with conventionalities--to find out the cause. The land was rich, the cultivators were industrious; the reason must lie in something which made cultivation unprofitable. What was it? An excessive land-tax? He instantly started experimental farms, which convinced him that this, and nothing else, was the cause of the land lying idle. But on all sides he met with opposition. Convinced himself that the old methods were obsolete, he had almost given up the task of reform in despair, when he met Abul-fazl. In religious matters, too, he had gone far beyond his age.

The intolerance the bigotry of those around him shocked his innate sense of justice. Here again Abul-fazl was a tower of strength, and, inch by inch, yard by yard, his support enabled the king to fight for his final position, until in 1577, after endless discussions in the House-of-Argument (which he had had built for the purpose, and where, night after night, he sate listening while doctors of the law, Brahmans, Jews, Jesuits, Sufis--G.o.d only knows what sects and creeds--discussed truth from their varying standpoints), he took the law into his own hands and practically forced the learned Ulemas to put their signatures to a doc.u.ment which proclaimed him Head-of-the-Church, the spiritual as well as the temporal guide of his subjects. The reason he gave for desiring this decision was, that as kings were answerable to G.o.d for their subjects, any division of authority in dealing with them was inexpedient.

So in 1579 he mounted the pulpit in his Great Mosque at Fatehpur Sikri, and read the Kutbah prayer in his own name in these words, written for the occasion by the poet Faizi:--

”Lo! from Almighty G.o.d I take my kings.h.i.+p, Before His throne I bow and take my judges.h.i.+p, Take Strength from Strength, and Wisdom from His Wiseness, Right from the Right, and Justice from His Justice.

Praising the King, I praise G.o.d near and far-- Great is His Power! Allah-hu-Akbar!”

They were not unworthy words; and they were, as Sir William Hunter well calls them, the Magna Charter of Akbar's reign. He was now free to realise all his long-cherished dreams of universal tolerance and absolute unity. In future, no distinctions of race and creed were held cogent. The judicial system was reorganised and the magistracy made to understand that the question of religion was no longer to enter into their work.

The whole revenue administration was altered, and it remains to this day practically as Akbar left it. In this, as in finance and currency, he was ably aided by Todar-Mull, a Hindu of exceptional ability and tried integrity.

But Akbar was fortunate in his friends. In addition to Faizi, who appears to have satisfied his philosophic instincts, and Abul-fazl, to whose clear eyes he always turned when in doubt, he had a third intimate companion who, in many ways, stood closest to him of the three.

This was Rajah Birbal, who began life as a minstrel. His pure intellectuality, his quaint humour and cynical outlook on life, seem to have given Akbar the nerve tonic, which, dreamer as he was at times, he seems to have needed; for like all really great men, the emperor was almost feminine in sensitiveness.

It is difficult to decide what his own personal creed was. That which he promulgated as the Divine Faith is a somewhat nebulous Deism. That which is credited to him in the following words is poetically mystical:--

”In every Temple they seek Thee, in every Language they praise Thee.

Each Religion says that it holds Thee, the One. But it is Thou whom I seek from temple to temple; for Heresy and Orthodoxy stand not behind the Screen of thy Truth. Heresy to the Heretic, Orthodoxy to the Orthodox; but only the dust of the Rose Petal remains to the seller of perfume.”

Behind all this there lies the conviction so strongly expressed that ”not one step can be made without the torch of truth,” that ”to be beneficial to the soul, belief must be the outcome of clear judgment.”

But the chronicle of the remainder of his reign claims us.

In 1584 he outraged the orthodox by choosing a Rajputni Jodh-Bai, the daughter of Rajah Bhagwan-das, as the first wife of his son and heir, Prince Salim.

He himself had left such things as marriage behind him, and, though still in the prime of years, led the life of an ascetic. Five hours sleep sufficed for him; he ate but sparingly once a day; wine and women he appears to have forgotten. There is a saying attributed to him of his regret that he had not earlier recognised all women as sisters. Certainly for the last five-and-twenty years of his life he had nothing in this respect wherewith to reproach himself. Wider interests absorbed him. Child-marriages had to be discountenanced, abolished by a sweep of the pen; education placed on a firmer, better basis. It seemed to him, as it seems to many of us to-day, that an unconscionable time was spent in teaching very little, and, hey presto! another sweep of the pen, and school-time was diminished by one-half. There is nothing so dynamic as a good despotism!

All this was crowded, literally crammed into a few peaceful years at Fatehpur Sikri, and then suddenly he left his City of Victory, the city that was bound up with his hope of personal empire, the city he had built to commemorate the birth of his heir and removed his capital, not to Delhi, but to the far north--to Lah.o.r.e.

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