I went out to visit this tomb of the Emperor Akbar at Sikandara, a magnificent building, raised over him by his son, the Emperor Jahāngīr. His remains he deposited in a deep vault under the centre, and are covered by a plain slab of marble, without fretwork or mosaic. On the top of the building, which is three or four stories high, is another marble slab, corresponding with the one in the vault below.[25] This is beautifully carved, with the 'nau nauwē nām'-the ninety-nine names, or attributes of the Deity, from the Korān.[26] It is covered by an awning, not to protect the tomb, but to defend the 'words of God' from the rain, as my cicerone assured me.[27] He told me that the attendants upon this tomb used to have the hay of the large quadrangle of forty acres in which it stands,[28] in addition to their small salaries, and that it yielded them some fifty rupees a year; but the chief native officer of the Tāj establishment demanded half of the sum, and when they refused to give him so much, he persuaded his master, the European engineer, with much difficulty, to take all this hay for the public cattle. 'And why could you not adjust such a matter between you, without pestering the engineer?' 'Is not this the way', said he, with emotion, 'that Hindustan has cut its own throat, and brought in the stranger at all times? Have they ever had, or can they ever have, confidence in each other, or let each other alone to enjoy the little they have in peace?' Considering all the circumstances of time and place, Akbar has always appeared to me among sovereigns what Shakespeare was among poets; and, feeling as a citizen of the world, I reverenced the marble slab that covers his bones more, perhaps, than I should that over any other sovereign with whose history I am acquainted.[29]
Notes:
1. December, 1835.
2. It is not, perhaps, generally known, though it deserves to be so, that the bamboo seeds only once, and dies immediately after seeding. All bamboos from the same seed die at the same time, whenever they may have been planted. The life of the common large bamboo is about fifty years. [W. H. S.] The period is said to vary between thirty and sixty years. Bamboo seed is eaten as rice when obtainable. The author's theories about electricity are more ingenious than satisfactory.
3. Better known as the Mauritius.
4. This proposition may be accepted with confidence. Electricity is a great mystery, which becomes more mysterious the more it is studied.
5. A letter of the author's, dated 13th March, 1809, is extant, in which he gives a full description of the performance of Macbeth at the Haymarket by Kemble and Mrs. Siddons on Saturday, 11th March. The author sailed in the Devonshire on the 24th March.
6. No European had ever before, I believe, noted this, [W. H. S.] Moīn-ud-dīn (p. 49) says that this phrase, 'Thou art our patron, help as therefore against the unbelieving nations,' is from the long chapter 2 ('The Cow') of the Korān, but I have not succeeded in finding the exact words in Sale's version of that chapter. I suspect that the words have been misread. Moīn-ud- dīn gives as the words at the north side of the tomb,
'the unbelieving nations', whereas Muh. Latīf (Agra, p. 111) says that the words 'on the head of the sarcophagus' are