Rulers of India: Akbar

by G. B. Malleson

The empire north of the Vindhyan range was portioned by the Emperor into twelve subahs or provinces. These were each governed by a viceroy, subordinate only to the sovereign. He held office during good behaviour, and was bound in all things to carry out the instructions of his master. Under him were local military officers called fáujdárs, who united in their own persons the duties devolving upon a chief of police and a military commander. To them was consigned the maintenance of peace in their several districts; the superintendence of military establishments within the same; the command of the regular troops there located; and, generally, the repression of disturbances.

The lines upon which justice was administered by the officers of Akbar were the same as those introduced by his Afghán predecessors. The Kurán was the basis upon which the law rested. But precedents often modified the strict interpretation. Where, moreover, the law leaned to severity it was again modified by the instructions drafted by the Emperor or his advisers. The leading features of these instructions were to temper justice with mercy. The high officers were enjoined to be sparing in capital punishments. In one rescript addressed to the Governor of distant Gujarát, that functionary was directed in no case, except in that of dangerous sedition, to inflict capital punishment until his proceedings had received the confirmation of the Emperor.

South of the Vindhyan range, in the division known as the Deccan, or South, the imperial possessions were originally divided into three subahs or commands. Subsequently, when new provinces and districts had been acquired, they were increased to six. After the death of Akbar these were all placed under one head, called the Subahdár, the precursor of the Nizám. With him, but subordinate to him, was associated an administrative financial officer called the Diwán, or Chancellor.

Akbar was a very magnificent sovereign. Though simple in his habits, he recognised, as the greatest of British Viceroys recognised after him, that show is a main element in the governing of an Eastern people. It is necessary to strike the eye, to let the subjects see the very majesty of power, the 'pomp and circumstance' attending the being whose nod indicates authority, who is to them the personified concentration on earth of the attributes of the Almighty. This is no mere idea. The very expressions used by the natives of India at the present day show how this thought runs through their imaginations. To them the man in authority, the supreme wielder of power, sits in the place of God. His fiat means to them weal or woe, happiness or misery. On days of ceremony, then, they expect that this all-powerful being shall display the ensigns of royalty, shall surround himself with the pomp and glitter which betoken state. Akbar thoroughly understood this and acted accordingly.

We are not left to the descriptions of the author of the Ain to realise the imposing grandeur of his ceremonies. The native historians speak of his five thousand elephants, his twelve thousand riding-horses, his camp-equipage containing splendid tents, comprising halls for public receptions, apartments for feasting, galleries for exercise, chambers for retirement, all of splendid material and rich and varied colours. They describe the Emperor himself on the days of special ceremonial seated in a rich tent, the awnings of which were thrown open, in the centre of carpeting of the softest material, covering at least two acres of ground, receiving the homage of his nobles. These occupied tents inferior only in degree to that of the sovereign. Then ensued, in the sight of the people, the ceremony of weighing the sovereign against various articles, to be distributed to those who needed them. According to the number of years the sovereign had lived there was given away an equal number of sheep, goats, and fowls to the breeders of those animals. A number of the smaller animals were likewise set at liberty. The Emperor himself distributed with his own hand almonds and fruits of the lighter sort among his courtiers.

On the great day of the festival Akbar seated himself on his throne, sparkling with diamonds, and surrounded by his chiefest nobles, all magnificently attired. Then there passed before him, in review, the elephants with their head and breast-plates adorned with rubies and other stones, the horses splendidly caparisoned, the rhinoceroses, the lions, the tigers, the panthers, the hunting-leopards, the hounds, the hawks, the procession concluding with the splendidly attired cavalry. This is no fancy picture. The like of it was witnessed by Hawkins, by Roe, and by Terry, in the time of the son and successor of Akbar, and those eminent travellers have painted in gorgeous colours the magnificence of the spectacle.

These scenes were witnessed only on days of high ceremony. At ordinary times Akbar was the simple, unaffected, earnest man, ever striving after truth, such as the work he accomplished gives evidence of. That work was the consolidation of an empire, torn by Muhammadan conquerors for more than four centuries, and at the end of that period still unsettled, still unconsolidated. During those four centuries the principles of the Kurán, read in a bigoted and unnatural sense by the Afghán conquerors, had been distorted to rob and plunder the Hindu population. The most enlightened of his earlier predecessors, Sultán Firuz Sháh, described by an English writer as possessing 'a humane and generous spirit,' confesses how he persecuted those who had not accepted the faith of Islám. Those principles of persecution for conscience sake, in full swing at the time of the accession of Akbar, Akbar himself abolished.

Akbar's great idea was the union of all India under one head. A union of beliefs he recognised at a very early stage as impossible. The union therefore must be a union of interests. To accomplish such a union it was necessary, first, to conquer; secondly, to respect all consciences and all methods of worshipping the Almighty. To carry out this plan he availed himself to a modified extent only of the Muhammadan ritual. Instead of the formula under which so many persecutions had been organised, 'there is but one God, and Muhammad is his Prophet,' he adopted the revised version: 'there is but one God, and Akbar is his vicegerent on earth.' The prophet, he argued, came to preach the oneness, the unity, of God to an idolatrous people. To that people Muhammad was the messenger to proclaim the good tidings. But the precepts that messenger had laid down and had embodied in the Kurán had been interpreted to teach the propagation of the doctrine of the oneness of God by the sword.

The consequences of acting upon that mis-reading, as Akbar considered it, had been failure, at least in India. To that failure he had before him the witness of upwards of four centuries. He had but just entered his twenty-first year when he recognised that government carried on on such a principle must inevitably alienate. His object, I cannot too often repeat, was to bring together, to conciliate, to cement, to introduce a principle which should produce a community of interests among all his subjects. The germ of that principle he found in the alteration of the Musalmán profession of faith above stated. The writings of Muhammad, misinterpreted and misapplied, could only produce disunion. He, then, for his age and for his reign, would take the place of the Prophet. He would be the interpreter of the generous and merciful decrees of the one All-powerful.