So in "the very loud voice," and with "the very elegant and pleasant manner of speech" for which the young king was famous, he addressed him thus:--
"If Byrâm-Khân loves a military life, the governorship of Kâlpe offers field for his ambition. If he prefers to remain at court, our favour will never be wanting to the benefactor of our family. But if he choose devotion, he shall be escorted to Mecca with all the honour due to his rank, and receive a pension of 50,000 rupees annually."
Byrâm chose the last, and from that time Akbar reigned alone; and, to his credit be it said, except in his disastrous leniency towards his sons, there is scarcely a mistake to be laid to his charge. Before, however, embarking on what must necessarily be a very inadequate sketch of this remarkable man, a few words as to his personality and his looks may not be amiss. He was "inclined to be tall, sinewy, strong, with an open forehead and chest and long arms. He had most captivating manners and an agreeable expression." According to his son, "his manners and habits were quite different from those of other persons, and his visage was full of a godly dignity." For the rest, he was a great athlete, the best polo-player and shot at court, and ready for any exploit that required strength and skill.
His mind followed suit with his body, though he was absolutely unlike his grandfather Babar in versatility. Yet he had had, apparently, much the same opportunity of education. In both, the four years from eight to twelve were all that Fate gave them for schooling; but Babar emerged from his, a writer, a poet, a painter, a musician. Akbar, strange to say, could neither read nor write, but he was counted the first musician of his day.
Such was the man who at eighteen started to rule India on new lines, whose head held a new idea concerning kingship. The king according to this, should be the connecting link between his subjects. He should rule not for one but for all. Just as Asôka, nigh on two thousand years before, had protested that conquest by the sword was not worth calling conquest, so Akbar, whose soul in many ways followed close in thought to that of the old Buddhist king, felt, vaguely at first, afterwards more clearly, more concisely, that the king should be, as it were, the solvent in which caste and creed, even race, should disappear, leaving behind them nothing but equal rights, equal justice, equal law. To secure this, it was necessary to make all men forget conquest.
It was a big idea, and to carry it through in the face of a society which deemed kingship a personal pleasure to be gained by a long purse or a stout arm, needed a strong will.
But Akbar was young, and vital to his finger-tips. The first thing to be accomplished was to annex all India--as bloodlessly as he could. That is the first thing to be noticed in Akbar's rule. War, even from the beginning, was never to him anything but the lesser of two evils; the other being disunion, decentralisation, consequent misgovernment.
His first annexation was Mâlwa, where the governor, hard-pressed, "sought a refuge from the frowns of fortune" in Akbar's clemency. As a result of which he lived, and fought, and died, long years afterwards, in the service of the king, feeling his honour in no way impaired by his defeat.
Immediately after this, Akbar had to choose between personal affection and abstract justice. His foster-brother, Adham-Khân, son to that Mahâm-Anagâh whose kindly, capable breast had been the young king's refuge for so many years, began to give trouble. Lawless, dissolute, he presumed on the king's love for his former playfellow in a thousand ways. It was he who was chief actor in the tragedy of Rûp-mati, the beautiful dancing-girl with whom Bâz-Bahâdur of Mâlwa lived for "seven long happy years, while she sang to him of love," and who killed herself sooner than submit to Adham-Khân's desires. This brought down on him the king's anger, but he defied it still more by assassinating the prime minister as he sate at prayers in Akbar's antechamber on the roof. Some say, and this is probably true, that the king, hearing the old man's cry, came out sword in hand to avenge him, but, restraining his wrath, ordered the murderer to be instantly thrown over the battlements. The story, however, is also told that the young Akbar, coming out from his sleeping-chamber, himself gripped the offender in his strong arms, and forcing him backward to the edge, paused for a last kiss of farewell ere he sent the sin-stained soul to its account. It is, at least, more dramatic.
But either tale ends with the greatest of tragedies for the young king. Mahâm-Anagâh, his more than mother, died of grief within forty days--died unforgiving.