Akbar died the 15th October, 1605, one day after he had attained the age of sixty-three.
CHAPTER XII
THE PRINCIPLES AND INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION OF AKBAR
'The success of the three branches of the government, and the fulfilment of the wishes of the subject,' writes the author of the Ain-í-Akbarí, 'whether great or small, depend upon the manner in which a king spends his time.'
Tried by this test, the cause of the success of Akbar as a man and as a ruler can be logically traced. Not only was he methodical, but there ran through his method a most earnest desire to think and do what was right in itself and conducive to the great aim of his life, the building of an edifice which, rooted in the hearts of people, would be independent of the personality of the ruler. Before I attempt to state in detail the means he adopted to attain this end, I propose to say a few words on a subject which may be said to underlie the whole question, the conformation of his mind and the manner in which it was affected by matters relating to the spiritual condition of mankind. Than this there cannot be any more important investigation, for it depended entirely on the structure of his mind, and its power to accept without prejudice, and judge impartially, views differing from those of his co-religionists, whether the chief of the Muhammadans, few in number when compared with the entire community, could so obtain the confidence and sympathy of the subject race, doomed to eternal perdition in the thought of all bigoted Musalmáns, as to overcome their prejudices to an extent which, had they been consulted previously, they would have declared impossible. The period was undoubtedly unfavourable to the development of what may be called a liberal policy in this matter.
The Muhammadans were not only conquerors, but conquerors who had spread their religion by the sword. The scorn and contempt with which the more zealous among them regarded the religion of the Hindus and those who professed it may be traced in every page of the writings of Badauní, one of the contemporary historians of the period. Nor was that scorn confined solely to the Hindu religion. It extended to every other form of worship and to every other doctrine save that professed by the followers of Muhammad.
Akbar was born in that creed. But he was born with an inquiring mind, a mind that took nothing for granted. During the years of his training he enjoyed many opportunities of noting the good qualities, the fidelity, the devotion, often the nobility of soul, of those Hindu princes, whom his courtiers, because they were followers of Bráhma, devoted mentally to eternal torments. He noted that these men, and men who thought like them, constituted the vast majority of his subjects. He noted, further, of many of them, and those the most trustworthy, that though they had apparently much to gain in a worldly point of view by embracing the religion of the court, they held fast to their own. His reflective mind, therefore, was unwilling from the outset to accept the theory that because he, the conqueror, the ruler, happened to be born a Muhammadan, therefore Muhammadanism was true for all mankind. Gradually his thoughts found words in the utterance: 'Why should I claim to guide men before I myself am guided;' and, as he listened to other doctrines and other creeds, his honest doubts became confirmed, and, noting daily the bitter narrowness of sectarianism, no matter of what form of religion, he became more and more wedded to the principle of toleration for all.
The change did not come all at once. The historian, Badauní, a bigoted Musalmán, who deplored what he considered the backsliding of the great sovereign, wrote: 'From his earliest childhood to his manhood, and from his manhood to old age, his Majesty has passed through the most various phases, and through all sorts of religious practices and sectarian beliefs, and has collected everything which people can find in books, with a talent of selection peculiar to him and a spirit of inquiry opposed to every (Islamite) principle. Thus a faith based on some elementary principles traced itself on the mirror of his heart, and as the result of all the influences which were brought to bear on his Majesty, there grew, gradually as the outline on a stone, the conviction on his heart that there were sensible men in all religions, and abstemious thinkers, and men endowed with miraculous powers, among all nations. If some true knowledge were thus everywhere to be found, why should truth be confined to one religion, or to a creed like Islám, which was comparatively new, and scarcely a thousand years old; why should one sect assert what another denies, and why should one claim a preference without having superiority conferred upon itself?'