And coming events cast their shadows before;
for, could he, by any prophetic power, have foreseen that the cloud which then shaded his fortunes, was but the precursor of glory to his race, he would have continued his retreat from the sheltering sand-hills of Umarkot with very different sentiments from those which accompanied his flight into Persia [322].
Early Years of Akbar.
Akbar’s Struggle for the Empire.
Comparison of Akbar with Rāna Udai Singh.
The Rana was old enough to philosophize on ‘the uses of adversity’; and though the best of the ‘great ancients’ had fallen in defence of Chitor, there were not wanting individuals capable of instilling just and noble sentiments into his mind: but it was of that common character which is formed to be controlled by others; and an artful and daring concubine stepped in, to govern Udai Singh and Mewar.
Akbar was not older when he came to the throne[[21]] of Delhi than Udai Singh when he ascended that of Mewar. Nor were his hopes much brighter; but the star which beamed upon his cradle in the desert, conducted to his aid such counsellors as the magnanimous Bairam, and the wise and virtuous Abu-l Fazl. Yet it may be deemed hardly fair to contrast the Rajput with the Mogul: the one disciplined into an accurate knowledge of human nature, by experience of the [324] mutability of fortune; the other cooped up from infancy in a valley of his native hills, his birth concealed, and his education restricted.[[22]]
Akbar was the real founder of the empire of the Moguls, the first successful conqueror of Rajput independence: to this end his virtues were powerful auxiliaries, as by his skill in the analysis of the mind and its readiest stimulant to action, he was enabled to gild the chains with which he bound them. To these they became familiarized by habit, especially when the throne exerted its power in acts gratifying to national vanity, or even in ministering to the more ignoble passions. But generations of the martial races were cut off by his sword, and lustres rolled away ere his conquests were sufficiently confirmed to permit him to exercise the beneficence of his nature, and obtain by the universal acclaim of the conquered, the proud epithet of Jagad Guru, or ‘guardian of mankind.’ He was long ranked with Shihabu-d-din, Ala, and other instruments of destruction, and with every just claim; and, like these, he constructed a Mimbar[[23]] for the Koran from the altars of Eklinga. Yet he finally succeeded in healing the wounds his ambition had inflicted, and received from millions that meed of praise which no other of his race ever obtained.
The absence of the kingly virtues in the sovereign of Mewar filled to the brim the bitter cup of her destiny. The guardian goddess of the Sesodias had promised never to abandon the rock of her pride while a descendant of Bappa Rawal devoted himself to her service. In the first assault by Ala, twelve crowned heads defended the ‘crimson banner’ to the death. In the second, when conquest led by Bajazet[[24]] came from the south, the chieftain of Deolia, a noble scion of Mewar, “though severed from her stem,” claimed the crown of glory and of martyrdom. But on this, the third and grandest struggle, no regal victim appeared to appease the Cybele of Chitor, and win her to retain its ‘kunguras’[[25]] as her coronet. She fell! the charm was broken; the mysterious tie was severed for ever which connected [325] Chitor with perpetuity of sway to the race of Guhilot. With Udai Singh fled the “fair face” which in the dead of night unsealed the eyes of Samarsi, and told him “the glory of the Hindu was departing”:[[26]] with him, that opinion, which for ages esteemed her walls the sanctuary of the race, which encircled her with a halo of glory, as the palladium of the religion and the liberties of the Rajputs.
To traditions such as these, history is indebted for the noblest deeds recorded in her page; and in Mewar they were the covert impulse to national glory and independence. For this the philosopher will value the relation; and the philanthropist as being the germs or nucleus of resistance against tyrannical domination. Enveloped in a wild fable, we see the springs of their prejudices and their action: batter down these adamantine walls of national opinion, and all others are but glass. The once invincible Chitor is now pronounced indefensible. “The abode of regality, which for a thousand years reared her head above all the cities of Hindustan,” is become the refuge of wild beasts, which seek cover in her temples; and this erst sanctified capital is now desecrated as the dwelling of evil fortune, into which the entrance of her princes is solemnly interdicted.