Part 1 (1/2)
Akbar, Emperor of India.
by Richard von Garbe.
The student of India who would at the same time be an historian, discovers to his sorrow that the land of his researches is lamentably poor in historical sources. And if within the realm of historical investigation, a more seductive charm lies for him in the a.n.a.lysis of great personalities than in ascertaining the course of historical development, then verily may he look about in vain for such personalities in the antiquity and middle ages of India. Not that the princely thrones were wanting in great men in ancient India, for we find abundant traces of them in Hindu folk-lore and poetry, but these sources do not extend to establis.h.i.+ng the realistic element in details and furnis.h.i.+ng life-like portraits of the men themselves. That the Hindu has ever been but little interested in historical matters is a generally recognized fact. Religious and philosophical speculations, dreams of other worlds, of previous and future existences, have claimed the attention of thoughtful minds to a much greater degree than has historical reality.
[Footnote A: This essay is art enlarged form of an address delivered on the occasion of the birthday of King Wilhelm II of Wurttemberg, on February 25, 1909.]
The misty myth-woven veil which hangs over persons and events of earlier times, vanishes at the beginning of the modern era which in India starts with the Mohammedan conquest, for henceforth the history of India is written by foreigners. Now we meet with men who take a decisive part in the fate of India, and they appear as sharply outlined, even though generally unpleasing, personalities.
Islam has justly been characterized as the caricature of a religion.
Fanaticism and fatalism are two conspicuously irreligious emotions, and it is exactly these two emotions, which Islam understands how to arouse in savage peoples, to which it owes the part it has played in the history of the world, and the almost unprecedented success of its diffusion in Asia, Africa and Europe.
About 1000 A.D. India was invaded by the Sultan Mahmud of Ghasna.
”With Mahmud's expedition into India begins one of the most horrible periods of the history of Hindustan. One monarch dethrones another, no dynasty continues in power, every accession to the throne is accompanied by the murder of kinsmen, plundering of cities, devastation of the lowlands and the slaughter of thousands of men, women and children of the predecessor's adherents; for five centuries northwest and northern India literally reeked with the blood of mult.i.tudes.”[1] Mohammedan dynasties of Afghan, Turkish and Mongolian origin follow that of Ghasna. This entire period is filled with an almost boundless series of battles, intrigues, imbroglios and political revolutions; nearly all events had the one characteristic in common, that they took place amid murder, pillage and fire.
[Footnote 1: E. Schlagintweit, _Indien in Wort und Bild_, II, 26 f.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: AKBAR, EMPEROR OF INDIA.
From Noer's _Kaiser Akbar_, (Frontispiece to Vol. II).]
The most frightful spectacle throughout these reeking centuries is the terrible Mongolian prince Timur, a successor of Genghis-Khan, who fell upon India with his band of a.s.sa.s.sins in the year 1398 and before his entry into Delhi the capital, in which he was proclaimed Emperor of India, caused the hundred thousand prisoners whom he had captured in his previous battles in the Punjab, to be slaughtered in one single day, because it was too inconvenient to drag them around with him. So says Timur himself with shameless frankness in his account of the expedition, and he further relates that after his entry into Delhi, all three districts of the city were plundered ”according to the will of G.o.d.”[2] In 1526 Baber, a descendant of Timur, made his entry into Delhi and there founded the dominion of the Grand Moguls (i.e., of the great Mongols). The overthrow of this dynasty was brought about by the disastrous reign of Baber's successor Aurungzeb, a cruel, crafty and treacherous despot, who following the example of his ancestor Timur, spread terror and alarm around him in the second half of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries. Even to-day Hindus may be seen to tremble when they meet the sinister fanatical glance of a Mohammedan.
[Footnote 2: A. Muller, _Der Islam im Morgen-und Abendland_, II, 300 f.]
Princes with sympathetic qualities were not entirely lacking in the seven centuries of Mohammedan dominion in India, and they s.h.i.+ne forth as points of light from the gloomy horror of this time, but they fade out completely before the luminous picture of the man who governed India for half a century (1556-1605) and by a wise, gentle and just reign brought about a season of prosperity such as the land had never experienced in the millenniums of its history. This man, whose memory even to-day is revered by the Hindus, was a descendant of Baber, Abul Fath Jelaleddin Muhammed, known by the surname Akbar ”the Great,”
which was conferred upon the child even when he was named, and completely supplanted the name that properly belonged to him. And truly he justified the epithet, for great, fabulously great, was Akbar as man, general, statesman and ruler,--all in all a prince who deserves to be known by every one whose heart is moved by the spectacle of true human greatness.[3]
[Footnote 3: From the literature on Emperor Akbar the following works deserve special mention: J. Talboys Wheeler, _The History of India from the Earliest Ages._ Vol. IV, Pt. I, ”Mussulman Rule,” London, 1876 (judges Akbar very unfairly in many places, but declares at the bottom of page 135, ”The reign of Akbar is one of the most important in the history of India; it is one of the most important in the history of the world”); Mountstuart Elphinstone, _History of India, the Hindu and Mahometan Periods_, with notes and additions by E.B.
Cowell, 9th ed., London, 1905; G.B. Malleson, _Akbar and the Rise of the Mughal Empire_, Oxford, 1890 (in W.W. Hunter's _Rulers of India_); A. Muller, _Der Islam im Morgen-und Abendland_, Vol. II, Berlin, 1887; but especially Count F.A. von Noer, _Kaiser Akbar, ein Versuch uber die Geschichte Indiens im sechzehnten Jahrhundert_, Vol. I, Leyden, 1880; Vol. II, revised from the author's ma.n.u.script by Dr. Gustav von Buchwald, Leyden, 1885. In the preface to this work the original sources are listed and described; compare also M. Elphinstone, pp.
536, 537, note 45.]
When we wish to understand a personality we are in the habit of ascertaining the inherited characteristics, and investigating the influences exercised upon it by religion, family, environment, education, youthful impressions, experience, and so forth. Most men are easily comprehensible as the products of these factors. The more independent of all such influences, or the more in opposition to them, a personality develops, the more attractive and interesting will it appear to us. At the first glance it looks as if the Emperor Akbar had developed his entire character from himself and by his own efforts in total independence of all influences which in other cases are thought to determine the character and nature of a man. A Mohammedan, a Mongol, a descendant of the monster Timur, the son of a weak incapable father, born in exile, called when but a lad to the government of a disintegrated and almost annihilated realm in the India of the sixteenth century,--which means in an age of perfidy, treachery, avarice, and self-seeking,--Akbar appears before us as a n.o.ble man, susceptible to all grand and beautiful impressions, conscientious, unprejudiced, and energetic, who knew how to bring peace and order out of the confusion of the times, who throughout his reign desired the furtherance of his subjects' and not of his own interest, who while increasing the privileges of the Mohammedans, not only also declared equality of rights for the Hindus but even actualized that equality, who in every conceivable way sought to conciliate his subjects so widely at variance with each other in race, customs, and religion, and who finally when the narrow dogmas of his religion no longer satisfied him, attained to a purified faith in G.o.d, which was independent of all formulated religions.
A closer observation, however, shows that the contrast is not quite so harsh between what according to our hypotheses Akbar should have been as a result of the forces which build up man, and what he actually became. His predilection for science and art Akbar had inherited from his grandfather Baber and his father Humayun. His youth, which was pa.s.sed among dangers and privations, in flight and in prison, was certainly not without a beneficial influence upon Akbar's development into a man of unusual power and energy. And of significance for his spiritual development was the circ.u.mstance that after his accession to the throne his guardian put him in the charge of a most excellent tutor, the enlightened and liberal minded Persian Mir Abdullatif, who laid the foundation for Akbar's later religious and ethical views.
Still, however high we may value the influence of this teacher, the main point lay in Akbar's own endowments, his susceptibility for such teaching as never before had struck root with any Mohammedan prince.
Akbar had not his equal in the history of Islam. ”He is the only prince grown up in the Mohammedan creed whose endeavor it was to enn.o.ble the limitation of this most separatistic of all religions into a true religion of humanity.”[4]
[Footnote 4: A. Muller, II, 416.]
Even the external appearance of Akbar appeals to us sympathetically.
We sometimes find reproduced a miniature from Delhi which pictures Akbar as seated; in this the characteristic features of the Mongolian race appear softened and refined to a remarkable degree.[B] The shape of the head is rather round, the outlines are softened, the black eyes large, thoughtful, almost dreamy, and only very slightly slanting, the brows full and bushy, the lips somewhat prominent and the nose a tiny bit hooked. The face is beardless except for the rather thin closely cut moustache which falls down over the curve of the month in soft waves. According to the description of his son, the Emperor Jehangir, Akbar's complexion is said to have been the yellow of wheat; the Portuguese Jesuits who came to his court called it plainly white. Although not exactly beautiful, Akbar seemed beautiful to many of his contemporaries, including Europeans, probably because of the august and at the same time kind and winsome expression which his countenance bore. Akbar was rather tall, broad-shouldered, strongly built and had long arms and hands.
[Footnote B: Noer, II as frontispiece (comp. also pp. 327, 328); A.
Muller, II, 417.]
Akbar, the son of the dethroned Emperor Humayun, was born on October 14, 1542, at Amarkot in Sindh, two years after his father had been deprived of his kingdom by the usurper Sher Chan. After an exile of fifteen years, or rather after an aimless wandering and flight of that length, the indolent pleasure-and opium-loving Humayun was again permitted to return to his capital in 1555,--not through his own merit but that of his energetic general Bairam Chan, a Turk who in one decisive battle had overcome the Afghans, at that time in possession of the dominion. But Humayun was not long to enjoy his regained throne; half a year later he fell down a stairway in his palace and died. In January 1556 Akbar, then thirteen years of age, ascended the throne. Because of his youthful years Bairam Chan a.s.sumed the regency as guardian of the realm or ”prince-father” as it is expressed in Hindi, and guided the wavering s.h.i.+p of state with a strong hand. He overthrew various insurgents and disposed of them with cold cruelty.