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 Râjputni Jôdh-Bai, the daughter of Râjah Bhagwân-das, as the first wife of his son and heir, Prince Salîm.
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 Lahôre.
Why was this?
It is said that a lack of water at Fatehpur was the cause. And yet with the river Jumna close at hand, and Akbar's wealth and boundless energies, what was a lack of water had he really been set on remaining there?
It seems as if we must seek for a cause behind this patent and pitiful one. Such cause, deep-seated, scarcely acknowledged, is surely to be found in the bitter disappointment caused to the emperor by his sons. From his earliest years Salîm had given trouble. At eighteen he was dissolute, cruel, arrogant beyond belief. His younger brothers, Murâd and Danyâl, were little better. Of the three, Murâd was the best; it was possible to think of him as his father's son. Yet the iron must have eaten into that father's soul as he saw them uncomprehending even of his idea, his dream. In leaving Fatehpur Sikri, as he did in 1585, therefore, it seems likely that he left behind also much of his personal interest in empire.
The ostensible cause of his northward journey was the death of his brother, and a consequent revolt in Kâbul; but he did not return for fourteen long years--years that while they brought him success, while they justified his wisdom, brought him also much sorrow and disappointment. Though both earlier historians and Western commentators fail, as a rule, to notice it, there can be no doubt to those who, taking Akbar's whole character as their guide, attempt to read between the lines, that the emperor's policy changed greatly after he left Fatehpur Sikri behind him. A certain personal note is wanting in it. Take, for instance, the war which he carried out in the province of Swât, and which ended in a disaster that cost him his dearest friend, Râjah Birbal. Now that disaster was due entirely to this new note in Akbar's policy. He did not desire conquest; not, at least, conquest on the old blood-and-thunder lines. He wished, and he ordered, what we should nowadays call a "peaceful demonstration to the tribes." The army was to march through the Swât territory, using as little violence as possible, and return. The idea was outrageous to the regulation general, so Abul-fazl and Birbal drew lots as to which of them should go and keep Zein-Khân's martial ardours in check. It fell on Birbal; much, it is believed, to Akbar's regret. Of the exact cause of disagreement between Birbal and Zein-Khân little is known; but they did disagree, and with disastrous results. The whole Moghul army was practically overwhelmed, and it is supposed that Birbal, in attempting escape by the hills, was slain. His body was never found. Elphinstone, in his History, accuses Abul-fazl of giving a confused and contradictory account of this event, "though he must have been minutely informed of its history"; but a little imagination supplies a cause for this: Abul-fazl knew that Birbal was undoubtedly acting on the king's orders.
The emperor for a long time refused even to see Zein-Khân, and he was inconsolable for the loss of his friend--his greatest friend--who had known his every thought. It is said, indeed, that these two men, both keenly interested in the answer to the Great Riddle of Life, the one Agnostic, the other hopeless Optimist by virtue of his genius, had agreed that they would come back the one to the other after death if possible, and that therein lay Akbar's strange eagerness to credit the many reports which gained currency, that Birbal had been seen again alive.