One of the first uses made by Akbar of the power thus obtained was to clear the magisterial and judicial bench. His chief-justice, a bigoted Sunní, who had used his power to persecute Shiahs and all so-called heretics, including Faizí the brother of Abulfazl, was exiled, with all outward honour, to Mekka. Another high functionary, equally bigoted, received a similar mission, and the rule was inculcated upon all that in the eye of the law religious differences were to be disregarded, and that men, whether Sunnís, or Shiahs, Muhammadans or Hindus, were to be treated alike: in a word, that the religious element was not to enter into the question before the judge or magistrate.
From this time forth the two brothers, Faizí and Abulfazl, were the chief confidants of the Emperor in his schemes for the regeneration and consolidation of the empire. He caused them both to enter the military service, as the service which best secured their position at court. They generally accompanied him in his various expeditions, and whilst they suggested reforms in the land and revenue systems, they were at hand always to give advice and support to the views of the sovereign.
Meanwhile Akbar was preparing, in accordance with the genius of the age, and with the sentiments of the people over whom he ruled, to draw up and promulgate a religious code such as, he thought, would commend itself to the bulk of his people. The chief feature of this code, which he called Dín-í-Iláhí, or 'the Divine faith,' consisted in the acknowledgment of one God, and of Akbar as his Khalífah, or vicegerent on earth. The Islámite prayers were abolished as being too narrow and wanting in comprehension, and in their place were substituted prayers of a more general character, based on those of the Pársís, whilst the ceremonial was borrowed from the Hindus. The new era or date, which was introduced in all the government records, and also in the feasts observed by the Emperor, was exclusively Pársí. These observances excited little open opposition from the Muhammadans, but the bigoted and hot-headed amongst them did not the less feel hatred towards the man whom they considered the principal adviser of the sovereign. They displayed great jealousy, moreover, regarding the admission of Hindu princes and nobles to high commands in the army and influential places at court. It was little to them that these men, men like Bhagwán Dás, Mán Singh, Todar Mall, Bírbal, were men of exceptional ability. They were Hindus, and, on that account and on that alone, the Muhammadan historians could not bring themselves to mention their names without sneering at their religion, and at the fate reserved for them in another world.
The inquiring nature of the mind of Akbar was displayed by the desire he expressed to learn something tangible regarding the religion of the Portuguese, then settled at Goa. He directed Faizí to have translated into Persian a correct version of the New Testament, and he persuaded a Jesuit priest, Padre Rodolpho Aquaviva, a missionary from Goa, to visit Agra.
It was on the occasion of the visit of this Father that a famous discussion on religion took place in the Ibádat-Khána, at which the most learned Muhammadan lawyers and doctors, Bráhmans, Jains, Buddhists, Hindu materialists, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians or Pársís, each in turn spoke. The story is thus told by Abulfazl. 'Each one fearlessly brought forward his assertions and arguments, and the disputations and contentions were long and heated. Every sect, in its vanity and conceit, attacked and endeavoured to refute the statements of their antagonists. One night the Ibádat-Khána was brightened by the presence of Padre Rodolpho, who for intelligence and wisdom was unrivalled among Christian doctors. Several carping and bigoted men attacked him, and this afforded an opportunity for the display of the calm judgment and justice of the assembly. These men brought forward the old received assertions, and did not attempt to arrive at truth by reasoning. Their statements were torn to pieces, and they were nearly put to shame, when they began to attack the contradictions of the Gospel, but they could not prove their assertions. With perfect calmness and earnest conviction of the truth the Padre replied to their arguments, and then he went on to say:
'"If these men have such an opinion of our Book, and if they believe the Kurán to be the true word of God, then let a furnace be lighted, and let me with the Gospel in my hand, and the 'Ulamá (learned doctors) with their holy book in their hands, walk into that testing-place of truth, and the right will be manifest." The black-hearted mean-spirited disputants shrank from this proposal, and answered only with angry words. This prejudice and violence greatly annoyed the impartial mind of the Emperor, and, with great discrimination and enlightenment, he said:
'"Man's outward profession and the mere letter of Muhammadanism, without a heartfelt conviction, can avail nothing. I have forced many Bráhmans, by fear of my power, to adopt the religion of my ancestors; but now that my mind has been enlightened with the beams of truth, I have become convinced that the dark clouds of conceit and the mist of self-opinion have gathered round you, and that not a step can be made in advance without the torch of proof. That course only can be beneficial which we select with clear judgment. To repeat the words of the creed, to perform circumcision, or to be prostrate on the ground from the dread of kingly power, can avail nothing in the sight of God:
Obedience is not in prostration on the earth:
Practice sincerity, for righteousness is not borne upon the brow!"'
Whatever we may think of this discussion, of the test of fire proposed by the Christian priest, we may at least welcome it as showing the complete toleration of discussion permitted at the Ibádat-Khána, and, above all, as indicating the tendency of the mind of Akbar. He had, in fact, reasoned himself out of belief in all dogmas and in all accepted creeds. Instead of those dogmas and those creeds he simply recognised the Almighty Maker of the world, and himself, the chiefest in authority in his world as the representative in it of God, to carry out his beneficent decrees of toleration, equal justice, and perfect liberty of conscience, so far as such liberty of conscience did not endanger the lives of others. He was very severe with the Muhammadans, because he recognised that the professors of the faith of the dominant party are always inclined to persecution. But he listened to all, and recognising in all the same pernicious feature, viz., the broad, generous, far-reaching, universal qualities attributed to the Almighty distorted in each case by an interested priesthood, he prostrated himself before the God of all, discarding the priesthood of all.
He has been called a Zoroastrian, because he recognised in the sun the sign of the presence of the Almighty. And there can be no doubt but that the simplicity of the system of the Pársís had a great attraction for him. In his own scheme there was no priesthood. Regarding himself as the representative in his world of the Almighty, he culled from each religion its best part, so as to make religion itself a helpful agency for all rather than an agency for the persecution of others. The broad spirit of his scheme was as much raised above the general comprehension of the people of his age, as were his broad political ideas. To bring round the world to his views it was necessary that 'an Amurath should succeed an Amurath.' That was and ever will be impossible. The result was that his political system gradually drifted after his death into the old narrow groove whence he had emancipated it, whilst his religious system perished with him. After the reigns of two successors, Muhammadan but indifferent, persecution once again asserted her sway to undo all the good the great and wise Akbar had effected, and to prepare, by the decadence of the vital principle of the dynasty, for the rule of a nation which should revive his immortal principle of justice to all and toleration for all.