Chapter XXII: Part II (4)

One historian gives a somewhat different version of the birth of Akbar. In it he was born under a tree in the desert, and the little sixteen-year-old mother wept with fear at the hard-featured village midwife summoned hastily to her aid, then flung her arms round her and cried for joy when the boy-baby was put into her young arms. Within a month she and the child were back sharing her lover-husband's danger. It increased day by day, hour by hour. When the young Akbar was but a year old, it reached its climax. Compelled to quit Sinde, Humâyon, his wife and child with him, and some half a dozen followers, was on his way to Kandahâr, when news came that his brother Âskari was marching against him in force. There was nothing for it but swift, immediate flight. But the weather was boisterous, the only safe road almost impassable.

How about the child? Rapidly calculating chances, they decided on leaving the infant prince behind them. What tears, what forebodings must not have been miserable Hamida's--what vain kisses and strainings to her heart!

But when Âskari entered the little camp, the deed was done. The baby Akbar was there regal in his nurse's arms, with all his equipage, all his poor mockery of state and service about him, but the two fugitives were riding hard for the Persian frontier.

Humâyon had lost all things, even his fatherhood.

THE HOUSE OF SÛR

A.D. 1542 TO A.D. 1554

Sher-khân, the man who, worsting Humâyon, seized on the throne, had no atom of royal blood in his veins. He was a plain soldier, though of good birth; but, his father neglecting him, he had run away from home and entered the ranks. A rough-and-ready soldier, too, who, even in Babar's time, had not scrupled to tell a friend that in his opinion it would be no hard task to "drive these foreign Moghuls from Hindustan; for though the king himself was a man of parts, he trusted too much to his ministers, who were corrupt."

The friend laughed; but Sher-Khân was right even in his estimate of the king who, curiously enough, singled him out unerringly a few days afterwards, when, at a military banquet, he called for a knife to carve a chicken withal, and, the servant taking no notice of his rough order, immediately drew his dagger and coolly used it with contemptuous disregard for the diversion of his neighbours. Babar's quick eye caught the incident, and he remarked: "He may be a great man yet; trifles do not disconcert him."

He does not, however, appear to have been either an amiable or an estimable person, though he was not vicious, and even his successes as a soldier are somewhat too crafty for admiration. He knew well when to attack, when to retreat, and, if imperialist and Râjput accounts are to be trusted, was not over-scrupulous in his use of the white flag.

Then there is no doubt but that a secret understanding existed between him and Humâyon's brother Kamrân; for on the withdrawal of the latter from Lahôre, Sher-Shâh instantly pounced down on it, and would have captured the fugitive king but for his hasty flight.

He does not in truth appeal to one's sympathies, this Afghân of the House of Sûr, though he was by no means without good points. It is, however, impossible to get up much interest in a man who picks a quarrel with an innocent Râjput râjah on the ground that he has Mahomedan women in his harem, and who, after a lengthy siege, induces capitulation by promise of the garrison being allowed to march out with their arms and their property: thereinafter, on the advice of a learned doctor of law (who declared it was a sin to keep faith with infidels), proceeding to surround the brave band and cut them off!

It is satisfactory to learn that they sold their lives dearly. But Sher-Shâh continued to be diplomatic. He gained his success against the Râjah of Mârwar by a stratagem. Finding himself in a tight place, he forged treasonable correspondence between himself and certain of the Râjput generals, which was then so disposed of as to fall into the generalissimo's hands. The distrust thus sown of his levees' loyalty caused the râjah to give way; and with disastrous results.

The death of this Machiavel in armour was a Nemesis, for it arose in consequence of the Râjah of Kalinjasr's refusal to capitulate, on the ground of Sher-Shâh's many treacheries.

In the subsequent mining which became necessary to reduce the fort, Sher-Shâh was blown to bits in an explosion of a powder magazine that had not been properly secured.

Despite his treachery, he did much for India in the way of public works. The caravanserais, the wells which still stud the course of the high road from Bengal to the Indus, are of his building; and the very trees which shade the weary traveller in the long marching, if not of his planting, stand in the places of those which he watered with care.

He reigned five years, and left two sons. The elder and rightful heir preferred obscurity to prolonged battle for the crown, and after a while disappeared and was no more heard of, leaving Islâm-Shâh, or, as he is called by a mispronunciation, Salîm-Shâh, to follow in his father's treacherous footsteps. The most noteworthy event in his reign was the insurrection of the Mâhdi sect, led by one Ilâhi. The tenets of their faith seem to have been curiously destructive of each other. Neither their profession of predestination nor their pure socialism prevented them from going about armed, meting out lynch-law to all and sundry whom they deemed to be disobeying any divine law.

They must have been uncomfortable people to deal with, but the faith spread to such alarming proportions, that Salîm-Shâh finally called a Court of Arches to decide whether "Ilâhi's pertinaciously disrespectful manner to the king was consistent with his situation as a subject, or was enjoined by any precept of the Koran?"

He was subsequently tried on the accusation of presuming to personate the Great Mâhdi--for whose advent all pious Mahomedans look--condemned, and refusing to abjure his faith, was brought up for punishment, though at the time suffering from the plague which was then raging. He died under the third lash.

Almost immediately after this, Salîm-Shâh himself died, when his cousin Mobârik succeeded by a singularly brutal murder. Prince Ferôze, Salîm-Shâh's son, was then twelve years old. His mother, Bibi Bhâi, was Mobârik's sister, and devoted to her dissolute, pleasure-loving brother, whose life she had begged of the king. Notwithstanding this, immediately on the latter's death Mobârik entered the harem, tore the wretched boy from his mother's very arms, and killed him with his own hand.

Fraternal affection with a vengeance. His subsequent career was in keeping with this initial act. Sensual to a degree and absolutely illiterate, he set a Hindu usurer called Hemu at the head of affairs, and contented himself with remaining in the harem, and parading the city with pomp, surrounded by a body of archers, whose duty it was to discharge gold-headed arrows worth ten or twelve rupees each amongst the crowd; the scramble for them amusing the jaded satiety of this truly Eastern potentate.

He succeeded in A.D. 1552, and for two years the throne was the centre of a perfect anarchy of revolt.

Hemu, who seems to have had wits, held his own until faced by the returning Humâyon, backed by that splendid old Turkomân soldier, Byrâm Khân. Backed also by the son, whom eleven years before he had left alone with his nurses in the royal camp on the road to Kandahâr, and who now--an extremely youthful warrior--won back empire for his father by precipitating an action before the walls of Lahôre, in which the Moghuls, "animated by the conduct of that young hero," seemed to forget that they were mortal.

So ended the usurping dynasty of Sûr.

THE WANDERINGS OF A KING

A.D. 1542 TO A.D. 1556

When Humâyon and his Queen Hamida-Bânu-Begum left the infant Akbar to face fortune by himself, their own hopes for the future were low indeed. Look where they would, there seemed small chance of success.

India itself had practically become independent of Delhi, where the dreamful, opium-drugged king had thought to consolidate his empire by building a new capital. It is curious to mark in that fourteen-mile-long expanse of faintly-broken ground strewn with purple-stained bricks, which stretches between the massive ruins about the Kutb Minâr to modern Delhi at the foot of the red ridge, how each succeeding dynasty had shifted its ground nearer and nearer the river, until at last it flowed beneath the very walls of the palace which Shâh-jahân built, and where his descendant Bahâdur-Shâh carried on, in 1857, the conspiracy which led at last to the extinction of the Moghul dynasty.

The long fight for Râjputana which had gone on for centuries so that the taking and retaking of its principal forts forms the standing dish of every reign, had for the time ended in temporary independence.

Even at Chitore, Humâyon's delay in coming to the rescue of his bracelet-bound sister had been unproductive of result; for the Princess Kurnâvati's young son Udâi-Singh had escaped, and was now back in his own.

The story of his escape is still a favourite one in India, and women, cuddling their babies, tell breathlessly how one Râjputni once gave her child to death to save a king.

Little Udâi-Singh, smuggled to safety with his foster-mother, found asylum in his half-brother's palace. But one night screams rose from the women's apartments, followed by the sudden ominous death-wail. Punnia, the foster-mother, knew what had happened. The half-brother must have been assassinated as a preliminary to the murder of her charge. She caught him up, thrust opium into his mouth with a last drop of her milk, hid him, still sleeping, in a fruit-basket, and sent him out by the hands of a faithful servant, to await her among the rushes of the river-bed.

Then, throwing the little king's rich coverlet over her own child, she sat down to wait--for what?

For a question which she must answer.

And yet, when it did come, human nature was almost too strong for her. She could only point to the little sleeper in reply to that clamour for "The King! The King!"

And still she had to wait. To weep reservedly over her own darling, to do him reverence, and so, the last ceremony over, steal away hastily to where her king waited her in the rushes. Then, dry-eyed, stern, she carried him, drawing life from her bereaved breast, over wild hill and dale, till, reaching the mountain fortress of Komulmêr, she could set her nurseling on the governor's knee, and say: "Guard him--he is the King!"

Udâi-Singh, unfortunately, grew up unworthy of his foster-mother's sacrifice. Still, he held Chitore, and many another Râjput prince held other portions of the central tableland of India, whose rocky mountains form an ideal country for independence and revolt. For the rest, as we have seen, the Dekkan, Guzerât, and Mâlwa were held by Mahomedan dynasties, as were the smaller principalities of Khandêsh, Bengal, Joûnpur, Multân, Sinde. Towards the south-east the vast kingdom, mostly forest, of Orissa remained unexplored, and in the west, the whole narrow strip which includes the Western Ghâts figures not at all in history. Yet it was on this narrow strip that the first grip of Europe on Hindustan was to be laid.

Columbus was sailing the High Seas. The maritime nations, Italy, England, Spain, were on the _qui vive_ for new worlds, and in 1484--just a year after Babar was born on Valentine's day--one Pedro de Covilham set out for India, overland, by the orders of King John of Portugal, with instructions to return with a report as to the practicability of reaching Hindustan' by sea. He reached India, being, apparently, the first European to touch its soil, but was detained on the return journey by the Arabs.

Ere he reached home in A.D. 1525 (after close on six and-thirty years of imprisonment), Portugal had acted on the advice which he had managed to send, God knows how. Vasco da Gama, leaving the Tagus in 1497, "coasted Guinea southwards, until he rounded into the Indian Ocean"; so reached Calicut in A.D. 1498. It was the beginning. Almost each year that followed saw a fresh, and ever a larger armament sent out chiefly by the Portuguese Order of Christ, with the ostensible object of converting the heathen. We read of nine, of seventeen, finally, in 1507, of twenty-two ships carrying one thousand five hundred fighting-men, and the very first Viceroy of India, Dom Francesco Almeda. Goa was taken and made the seat of Government by Dom Alfonso Albuquerque--after a tussle for the Viceroyalty--in 1510, and in 1542 St Francis Xavier, joint founder of the Jesuits with Ignatius Loyola, went out on a mission and had an enormous success of marvellous stability, since to this day a large proportion of the population on the south-west coast is professedly Roman Catholic.

Thus all India is practically accounted for in this, the first half of the sixteenth century. At a casual glance it seems as if here we have the vast continent tabulated, scheduled, within our reach. But a closer look shows us that these dynasties, these wars, these annexations and depredations, are but scratches on the surface of life. The India of reality was, as ever, in the fields, heedless of politics, heedless of all things beyond the village cosmogony save that recurring cry of, "The Toorkh! the Toorkh!"

That brought ruin, perchance death; but after death comes life, after ruin prosperity. And the new masters, no matter who they were, were not on the whole bad masters. When the revenues of the state depend upon the peasantry and the peasantry only, it is not politic to press the revenue-giver too hardly. There can be small doubt, therefore, that the general state of the country was distinctly flourishing. The land-rent or land-tax, call it what you will, was high, but the land itself was abundant, the people who had to live on it not too numerous. And luxury did not come, as it came in Europe, to the lives of the poor to make them poorer still. The standard of living did not rise, women were content with the fashions of their mothers; men asked no more than to be let live and die; humanity was its own amusement.

Practically, there was little difference in the system of Government under Hindu and Mahomedan rule. In both, the supreme power was easy of access. Petitions could be brought to the final authority without any difficulty, and a certain rough justice undoubtedly prevailed.

The king hired and paid for a portion of the army which he mounted on his own horses, but a large number of men came in independent parties under leaders of their own.

Such was the India which Humâyon left behind him for twelve long years. His adventures during this time are less entertaining than the wanderings of that prince of Bohemians, his father, but they are still interesting.

When he crossed the Persian border, he found himself received with a certain contemptuous pity. Still, female servants were sent to attend on the queen, and demonstrations were made in his favour. Arrived at the court of King Tahmâsp, however, the exiled monarch of India found himself by no means on a bed of roses. Even the gift of the greatest treasure he possessed, a huge diamond, did not ameliorate his situation; for Shâh Tahmâsp affected to despise the jewel, and is said to have sent it away disdainfully in a gift to the King of the Dekkan. But the whole history of this diamond, which has now disappeared, is a fine romance. It is said to have been the eye of Shiv-ji in some shrine, and to have passed into the possession of many conquerors, until it was given to Babar in recognition of chivalrous kindness and courtesy shown to them by the family of the Râjah of Chitore. Babar, who kept nothing for himself, gave the stone, "worth half the daily expenditure of the world," to his son. It is said to have weighed about 280 carats, and to have been of the purest water; it is also conjectured that it reappeared as the Great Moghul diamond which Tavernier describes as belonging to Shâh-jahân, and that possibly it is this very stone which, cleft and badly cut, still shines as the Koh-i-nur.

It did not, anyhow, avail Humâyon much. More effective was his servile consent to wear the red cap of the Persian, and by this becoming a _khizil bash_, renounce his Sunni faith, and proclaim himself a Shiah. He did not do this without much pressure, and at the very last nearly broke bondage; but the promise of ten thousand horse wherewith to recover his kingdom was too tempting. With this force he attacked Kandahâr, where his brother Âskari still held little Akbar as a hostage; or, rather, had so held him until the attacking army loomed over the horizon, when, after some hesitation as to whether it would not be wiser to send the boy under honourable escort to his father, Âskari decided on obeying his brother Kamrân's orders, and despatched the little prisoner to Kâbul. The story of that inclement winter march across the hills, with its attempts at rescue and numberless adventures, would make a charming book for English children.

After five months siege, Kandahâr surrendered, "Dearest Lady" having succeeded in obtaining a promise of pardon for Âskari from his brother. It was revoked, however, in an altogether indefensible manner, and Âskari was kept in chains for the next three years. This is so unlike Humâyon's usual conduct towards his brothers, that it gives colour to the assertion made by some authorities that Âskari's punishment was due to the discovery of a further offence.

After Kandahâr had capitulated, Humâyon marched on Kamrân and Kâbul. This is the march rendered famous by Sir Donald Stewart in the Afghân War, and by Lord Roberts' subsequent and rapid repetition. It was now winter, which had set in with extraordinary severity, and much of the country was under snow. Half-way to Kâbul Humâyon was joined by his brother Hindal, who, with brief intervals of hesitation, appears to have been fairly faithful. Their amalgamated armies proved too formidable for Kamrân to face, though at first he had prepared for extremities by removing little Akbar from his grand-aunt "Dearest Lady's" care, and giving the lad to a trusted creature of his own; so flight to Ghuzni followed. The child, however, remained, and Humâyon's delight at recovering his little son was great. Taking the boy in his arms, he exclaimed: "Joseph was cast by envious brethren into the pit; but in the end he was exalted to great glory, as thou shalt be, my son."

Only remaining in Kâbul long enough to restore the young prince to safer keeping, Humâyon set off in pursuit of his brother, who, finding the gates of Ghuzni closed against him, had fled to the Indus; but while on this campaign Humâyon fell so sick that his life was despaired of. After two months' confinement to bed he recovered, only to find himself deserted by his troops, and to hear that Kamrân, returning to Kâbul one dawn, had managed to slip in with a chosen band of followers as the city gates were being opened, had murdered the governor in his bath, had put out the eyes of Fazl and Muttro, the young prince's foster-brothers and playfellows, and had given the young prince himself into the charge of unkindly eunuchs. It was an anxious moment, and the almost despairing father, still weak from illness, set himself to beat up recruits and march to recover his capital, recover his son. Kamrân's troops, meeting with a reverse in the suburbs of the city, where--this being April--the peach-blossom must have been all ablow, Humstyon was enabled to establish himself on an eminence which commands the town, and to commence shelling it. Whereupon Kamrân sent a message to say that if the cannonade continued, he would expose the young heir to all his father's high hopes on the wall where the fire was hottest. A brutal threat, upon the carrying out of which history stands divided, some authorities saying that Akbar was so exposed, others declaring that Humâyon ordered the artillery to cease firing.

Be that as it may, on the 28th of April he entered the city in triumph, Kamrân having fled the previous night.

So little Akbar was once more in his father's arms. In his mother's also, ere long, for Hamida-Bânu-Begum rejoined her husband in the spring. Regarding this, a pretty story is told by Aunt Rosebody in her Memoirs. Humâyon, ever a lover of pleasure, devised a sumptuous entertainment to welcome his wife, and amongst the many devices for amusement was this. All the ladies of the family, unveiled, resplendent in jewels, were to range themselves in a circle round a hall; and to this dazzling company the baby-prince--he was but four--was to be introduced to choose for himself a mother! One can imagine the scene. Those laughing faces-all but one--around the child who had not seen her he sought for two long years. The pause for hesitation, the sickening suffocation of one heart, the sudden sense of shyness, of loneliness, making one little mouth droop.

And then?

Then a quick cry, "_Amna! Amna-jân!_" and Hamida's arms closed convulsively over the sobbing child. What laughter! What tears! As Auntie Rosebody loves to say of all things that bring the sudden vivifying touch of emotion, "It was like the Day of Resurrection." But the young Akbar's trials were not yet over, neither were his father's dangers. In the summer of 1548 Humâyon once more pursued Kamrân, taking with him at first both Akbar and Akbar's mother--for whom the king (or, as he was now called, the emperor) had an affection that never wavered. Finding the way rough, he sent them back to Kâbul; and when he marched out from that city the next time on the same bootless errand, he left the boy, who was now eight years old, behind him as Governor of Kâbul, under tutorship. Whereupon Kamrân, who appears to have had the faculty of doubling like a hare, taking advantage of a serious wound which delayed his brother in the Sertun Pass, slipped to his rear, and for the third time captured Kâbul and that apple of Humâyon's eyes, Prince Akbar.

This was the last of Kamrân's exploits, however, for Humâyon, after suffering agonies of fear lest evil should happen to his heir, gained a complete and final victory over his brother, who fled once more; not, however, to the emperor's great relief, taking Akbar with him. He was soon after captured by the King of the Ghakkur tribe, that warlike race of the Indian Salt Range who broke the ranks of the Ghuzni Mahmûd, and assassinated his successor in campaign, Ghori-Mahomed. Being immediately betrayed to Humâyon, he met his fate at last. Yet even now, after treasons seventy-and-seven, he was nearly forgiven; would have been forgiven but for the fact that Humâyon's favourite brother, Hindal, had been killed in the pursuit of him. He deserved death, but the blindness which was meted out to him leaves us with a revulsion of feeling against the man who was driven by his adherents into giving the order. A revulsion which Humâyon hardly deserved, since, opium-soddened, flighty in a way, unreliable as he was, cruelty was not one of his faults.

And the adherents were right. With Kamrân scotched, Humâyon's fortunes began at once to improve, and in 1535 he was able to invade the Punjâb with fifteen thousand horse. Within a year he was once more Emperor in Delhi; but not for long. Six months after he re-ascended the throne, before he had time even to take breath and look around him, he fell from the roof of his library, and died from the result of the accident four days afterwards. Visitors to Delhi are still shown the broken stairs from which he fell, and are told the story of how, descending the steps, he heard the call to prayer, and stopped to repeat the creed and sit down till the long sonorous sound of the _muâzzim_ had ended. And how, in attempting to rise again, his staff slipped on the polished marble of the step.

The parapet is certainly but a foot high; but as one looks over it, and remembers that Humâyon was a man in the prime of life, the wonder comes if the opium which claimed so large a share in the emperor's life had not an equal share in his death.

[Map: India to A.D. 1556]

AKBAR THE GREAT

A.D. 1556 TO A.D. 1605

Here is a subject indeed!

Considering the time--a time when Elizabeth of England found that England ready to support her in beheading her woman-cousin, when Charles IX. of France idly gave the order on St Bartholomew's Eve, and Pope Urban VIII., representing the highest majesty of the Christian religion, forced the tortured, seventy-year-old Galileo to his knees, there to abjure by oath what he knew to be God's truth: considering the country--a country to this day counted uncivilised by Europe--there is small wonder that the record of Akbar seems incredible even to the owner of the hand which here attempts to epitomise that record.

And yet it is a true one. Discounting to the full the open flattery of Abul-fazl's Akbarnâmâh, the source from which most information is derived, giving good measure to Budâoni's grudging criticisms, the unbiassed readers of Akbar's life cannot avoid the conviction that in dealing with him, they are dealing with a man of imagination, of genius.

Between the lines, as it were, of bare fact, the unconventional, the unexpected crops up perpetually, making the mind start and wonder. As an instance, let us take the account of the great hunt at Bhera, near the river Jhelum, and let us take it in the very words of the historians.

"The Emperor gave orders for a _gamargha_ hunt, and that the nobles and officers should according to excellent methods enclose the wild beasts.... But, when it had almost come about that the two sides were come together, suddenly, all at once a strange state and strong frenzy came upon the Emperor ... to such an extent as cannot be accounted for. And every one attributed it to some cause or other ... some thought that the beasts of the forest had with a tongueless tongue unfurled divine secrets to him. At this time he ordered the hunting to be abandoned. Active men made every endeavour that no one should even touch the feather of a finch."

Now whether the legend which lingers in India be true or not, that it was the sight of a _chinkara_ fawn which brought about the Emperor's swift change of front, we have here baldly set down certain events which apparently were incomprehensible and but vaguely praiseworthy, even to Abul-fazl's keen eye for virtue in his master. Viewed, however, by the wider sympathies of to-day, the fact stands forth indubitably that the "extraordinary access of rage such as none had ever seen the like in him before" with which Akbar was seized, was no mere fit of epilepsy, such as the rival historian Budâoni counts it to have been, but a sudden overmastering perception of the relations between God's creatures, the swift realisation of the Unity which binds the whole world together; for it seems certain that he never again countenanced a _battue_.

Now Akbar's life was full of such sudden insights. We see the effect of them in his swift actions; actions so swift, so unerring, that they startle the dull world around him. He was that rare thing--a dreamer who was also a man of action.

That he was full of faults none can deny, but, judging him by the highest canon, one feels bound to place him amongst those few names, such as Shakspeare, Michelangelo, Beethoven and Cæsar, who seem to have had equal control over their physical and their subliminal consciousness; and so, inevitably, head the lists of leaders amongst men.

Of Akbar's early years enough has been said. From his birth in the sand-swept desert, to the day on which, a lad-ling of eight, he finally escaped the clutches of his uncle Kamrân, and rode into his father's camp before Kâbul at the head of a faithful contingent, he had suffered such constant vicissitudes of fortune that there can be no surprise at the belief, which grew up later, that he bore a charmed life.

Of the next three years until, at the age of twelve, he marched with his father on India, and brought success by, with youthful energy, precipitating a decisive battle, nothing is known, save that he was married with much pomp to his cousin Râzia-Khânum, daughter of his dead uncle Hindal, a woman many years his senior.

Akbar, then, was thirteen years and four months old when at Hariâna, a town in the Jullunder district, he received the news of his father's accident, and almost at the same time those of his death. He, together with his governor, tutor, or, as it is called in Persian, _atalik_, Byrâm-Khân, was engaged in pursuing Sikûndah-Shâh, the last scion of the House of Sûr, and it seemed to them best, ere returning to Delhi, to secure the Punjâb by securing Sikûndah. But their decision proved of doubtful wisdom; for Kâbul instantly revolted, and Hemu, the shopkeeper-prime-minister of the third Sûri king, with an army of fifty thousand men and five hundred elephants, marched on Delhi, flushed by his victories, to restore the late dynasty, and took the city.

In this predicament, Akbar's counsellors advised retreat to Kâbul. Its recovery seemed certain, and he could there await future developments. But Akbar's instincts were for empire, and Byrâm-Khân, the old Turkomân soldier, was with him.

Delhi must be won back at all hazards; so, not without trepidation, the old man and the boy crossed the river Sutlej, and were joined at Sirhînd by Târdi-Beg, and the forces which had fled from Delhi. Now Târdi-Beg was a nobleman of the House of Chagatâi (which also claimed the young king as its most distinguished scion), and between him and Byräm-Khân there had ever been enmity. The latter, therefore, taking as his excuse the over-haste of Târdi-Beg's retirement from Delhi, called him to his tent, and without referring to their youthful master, had him assassinated. The event, common enough in Indian history, is noteworthy, because it caused the first rift in the confidence between Byrâm and Akbar, who, boy as he was, showed his displeasure, and refused to accept the rough soldier's excuse that violence was necessary to assert power.

The next breach was of the same kind. Passing by our old friend, the fort of Bhattînda, Akbar gave battle to Hemu on the old field at Pâniput, where, thirty years before, his grandfather, Babar, had decided his fate.

No doubt the thought of this had something to do with the renewed victory which left Hemu, sorely wounded, a prisoner in Byrâm's hands. Not satisfied with this, the savage old Tartar general brought him into Akbar's tent, and, presenting the boy with a sword, said: "This is your first war, my king. Prove your sword upon this infidel." But Akbar drew back indignantly. "How can I strike one who is no better than a dead man?" he replied hotly. "It is on strength and sense that a king's sword is tried." Whereupon Byrâm, incensed, no doubt, by the proud refusal, instantly cut down Hemu himself.

They say the boy-king wept; certain it is that he never forgot, never quite forgave, the incident. Next day, marching 53 miles without a halt, Akbar entered Delhi, the acknowledged Emperor of India.

What that India was, we know. On all sides was despotism; good or bad government being the result of the personal equation of the despot.

Akbar was to change much of this by wise, unalterable, and beneficent laws during the nine-and-forty years of his reign; for the present, however, he was under tutelage, and the first four years after his accession passed without the young king's showing any of the markedly-original tendencies which characterised him in after life.

But during those four years he was learning to recognise what he liked, what he disliked. Amongst the latter was the arbitrary exercise of Byrâm's power. This became more and more galling as the years sped by, and the boy, now growing to manhood, began to realise _himself_, began to dream dreams, began to see realities with a clearness and insight far beyond those of his tutor. But he had a generous, an affectionate heart. He hestitated long to throw off the yoke of tutelage and proclaim his determination to rule in his own way; and despite the efforts of Byrâm's enemies--and he had many--added to the persuasions of Mahâm-Anagâh (Akbar's foster-mother, who all his life, from the day when, a yearling babe, he was left in her charge while his father and mother fled for their lives across the Persian frontier, had been his chief adviser), it was not till A.D. 1560 that Akbar made up his mind to action. Then, leaving Byrâm engaged in a hunting expedition, he returned, on pretext of his mother's sudden illness, to Delhi and issued a proclamation announcing to his people that he had taken the sole management of affairs into his own hands, and that no orders, except those given under his own seal, should in future be obeyed. At the same time he sent a dignified message to Byrâm-Khân to this effect:--

"Till now our mind has been taken up with our education and by the amusements of youth, and it was our royal will that you should regulate the affairs of our empire. But, it being our intention henceforward to govern our people by our own judgment, let our well-wisher withdraw from all worldly concerns, and taking the pilgrimage to Mecca on which he has for so long been intent, spend the rest of his days in prayer far removed from the toils of public life."

The very dignity of this was, however, irritating, and Byrâm, after a brief feint of obedience, broke out into open revolt.

It needed Akbar himself to reduce his disloyalty by a display of clemency which must have convinced the old Tartar that he had here to do with some one, with something, the like of which he had never seen before. For when, driven to bay, in utmost distress he sent in an almost hopeless appeal for pardon, Akbar's reply was the despatching of a guard of honour equal to his own to bring the unfortunate man to his presence with every mark of distinction. It was too much for the old soldier. His pride broke down, he flung himself at his young master's feet in a passion of tears. Akbar's reply was to raise him by the hand, order a robe of honour to be flung round him, and to place him in his old seat by the king's side above all the other nobles.

So in "the very loud voice," and with "the very elegant and pleasant manner of speech" for which the young king was famous, he addressed him thus:--

"If Byrâm-Khân loves a military life, the governorship of Kâlpe offers field for his ambition. If he prefers to remain at court, our favour will never be wanting to the benefactor of our family. But if he choose devotion, he shall be escorted to Mecca with all the honour due to his rank, and receive a pension of 50,000 rupees annually."

Byrâm chose the last, and from that time Akbar reigned alone; and, to his credit be it said, except in his disastrous leniency towards his sons, there is scarcely a mistake to be laid to his charge. Before, however, embarking on what must necessarily be a very inadequate sketch of this remarkable man, a few words as to his personality and his looks may not be amiss. He was "inclined to be tall, sinewy, strong, with an open forehead and chest and long arms. He had most captivating manners and an agreeable expression." According to his son, "his manners and habits were quite different from those of other persons, and his visage was full of a godly dignity." For the rest, he was a great athlete, the best polo-player and shot at court, and ready for any exploit that required strength and skill.

His mind followed suit with his body, though he was absolutely unlike his grandfather Babar in versatility. Yet he had had, apparently, much the same opportunity of education. In both, the four years from eight to twelve were all that Fate gave them for schooling; but Babar emerged from his, a writer, a poet, a painter, a musician. Akbar, strange to say, could neither read nor write, but he was counted the first musician of his day.

Such was the man who at eighteen started to rule India on new lines, whose head held a new idea concerning kingship. The king according to this, should be the connecting link between his subjects. He should rule not for one but for all. Just as Asôka, nigh on two thousand years before, had protested that conquest by the sword was not worth calling conquest, so Akbar, whose soul in many ways followed close in thought to that of the old Buddhist king, felt, vaguely at first, afterwards more clearly, more concisely, that the king should be, as it were, the solvent in which caste and creed, even race, should disappear, leaving behind them nothing but equal rights, equal justice, equal law. To secure this, it was necessary to make all men forget conquest.

It was a big idea, and to carry it through in the face of a society which deemed kingship a personal pleasure to be gained by a long purse or a stout arm, needed a strong will.

But Akbar was young, and vital to his finger-tips. The first thing to be accomplished was to annex all India--as bloodlessly as he could. That is the first thing to be noticed in Akbar's rule. War, even from the beginning, was never to him anything but the lesser of two evils; the other being disunion, decentralisation, consequent misgovernment.

His first annexation was Mâlwa, where the governor, hard-pressed, "sought a refuge from the frowns of fortune" in Akbar's clemency. As a result of which he lived, and fought, and died, long years afterwards, in the service of the king, feeling his honour in no way impaired by his defeat.

Immediately after this, Akbar had to choose between personal affection and abstract justice. His foster-brother, Adham-Khân, son to that Mahâm-Anagâh whose kindly, capable breast had been the young king's refuge for so many years, began to give trouble. Lawless, dissolute, he presumed on the king's love for his former playfellow in a thousand ways. It was he who was chief actor in the tragedy of Rûp-mati, the beautiful dancing-girl with whom Bâz-Bahâdur of Mâlwa lived for "seven long happy years, while she sang to him of love," and who killed herself sooner than submit to Adham-Khân's desires. This brought down on him the king's anger, but he defied it still more by assassinating the prime minister as he sate at prayers in Akbar's antechamber on the roof. Some say, and this is probably true, that the king, hearing the old man's cry, came out sword in hand to avenge him, but, restraining his wrath, ordered the murderer to be instantly thrown over the battlements. The story, however, is also told that the young Akbar, coming out from his sleeping-chamber, himself gripped the offender in his strong arms, and forcing him backward to the edge, paused for a last kiss of farewell ere he sent the sin-stained soul to its account. It is, at least, more dramatic.

But either tale ends with the greatest of tragedies for the young king. Mahâm-Anagâh, his more than mother, died of grief within forty days--died unforgiving.

The task of consolidating his empire occupied Akbar for the next two years. It would be idle to attempt to follow him from the Nerbûdda to the Indus, from Allahabâd to Guzerât. One incident will give an idea of his swiftness, his extraordinary dash and courage.

Returned from a long campaign on the north-western hills against his young brother, Mahomed Hakîm, Akbar heard of renewed trouble with the Usbeks in Oude. Though it was then the height of the rainy season, he made a forced march over a flooded country, and arriving at the Ganges at nightfall, swam its swollen stream with his advanced guard, and after lying concealed till daybreak, sounded the attack.

"The enemy, who had passed the night in festivity, little supposing the king would attempt to cross the river without his army, could hardly believe their senses when they heard the royal kettledrums." Needless to say, the rebels, surprised, were defeated, and, as usual, pardoned. This was Akbar's policy. To punish swiftly, then to forgive. Thus he bound men to him by ties of fear and love. Already he had conceived and carried out the almost inconceivable project of allying himself in honourable and peaceful marriage with the Râjputs. Behâri Mull, Râjah of Ambêr (or Jeypore), had given the king his daughter, while his son Bhagwan-dâs, and his nephew Mân-Singh, were amongst Akbar's most trusted friends, and held high posts in the imperial army. Toleration was beginning to bear fruit; but Chitore, the Sacred City, held out alike against annexation or cajolery. So it could not be allowed to remain a centre of independence, of revolt. It was in A.D. 1568 that Akbar began its siege. Udâi-Singh, the Fat King, had fled to the mountains, being but a bastard Râjput in courage, leaving one Jâimul in charge of the sanctuary of Râjput chivalry.

It was a long business. Once an accident in the mines which Akbar was pushing with the utmost care, brought about disaster, and the siege had practically to be begun again. In the end, it was a chance shot which brought success. Alone, unattended, in darkness, Akbar was in the habit of wandering round his guards at night, marking the work done in the trenches, dreaming over the next day's plans. So occupied in a close-pushed bastion, he saw by the flare of a torch on the rampart of the city some Râjput generals also going their rounds. To snatch a matchlock from the sentry and fire was Akbar's quick impulse.

It won him Chitore; for the man who fell, shot through the head, was Jâimul himself. Next morning, Akbar went through scenes which he never forgot. He saw, as his grandfather had done, the great war-sacrifice of the Râjputs; but, unlike Babar, he did not view it contemptuously. It made an indelible mark upon his soul. The story goes, that two thousand of the Râjput warriors escaped the general slaughter by the "stratagem of binding the hands of their women and children, and marching with them through the imperial troops as if they were a detachment of the besiegers in charge of prisoners."

If this extraordinary tale be true, the explanation of it surely lies in Akbar's admiration; an admiration which led him on his return to Delhi to order two huge stone elephants, formed of immense blocks of red sandstone, to be built at the gateway of his palace. And on the necks of these elephants he placed two gigantic stone figures representing Jâimul and Pûnnu, the two Râjput generals who had so bravely defended Chitore.

It was during this siege that Akbar's friendship with the poet Faizi commenced. Five years younger than the young king, who was then but six-and-twenty years of age, Faizi, or Abul-faiz, as he is rightly named, was by profession a physician, by temperament an artist in the highest sense. Charmed by his varied talents, fascinated by his goodness, Akbar kept him by his side until he died nineteen years afterwards, when it is recorded that the king wept inconsolably. One thing they had in common--an unusual thing in those days--they were both extraordinarily fond of animals, especially of dogs.

This friendship, bringing about as it did the introduction to Akbar of Abul-faiz's younger brother, Abul-fazl, marks an important change in the king's mental development.

Hitherto he had been strictly orthodox. In a way, he had set aside the problems of life in favour of his self-imposed task; henceforward his mind was to be as keen, as swift to gain spiritual mastery, as his body was to gain the physical mastery of his world. Possibly he may have been led to thought by the death in this year of his twin sons; apparently these were the only children which had as yet been born to him, and at twenty-seven it is time that an Eastern potentate had sons. With him, too, the very idea of empire must have been bound up with that of an heir to empire. So it is no wonder that we find him overwhelmed with joy at the birth, in 1569, of Prince Salîm. Yet his sons (he had three of them in Fate's good time) were to be the great tragedy of Akbar's life. Long years afterwards, when the baby Salîm, whom he had welcomed verily as a gift from God, had grown to be a man, a cruel man, who ordered an offender to be flayed alive, Akbar, with a shiver of disgust, asked bitterly "how the son of a man who could not see a dead beast flayed without pain, could be guilty of such barbarity to a human being?"

How indeed? Were they really his sons, these hard-drinking, hard-living young princes, who had no thought beyond the princelings of their age?

This resentment, this disgust, however, was not to be for many years. Meanwhile, Akbar, having built the fort at Agra, that splendid building whose every foundation finds water, whose every stone is fitted to the next and chained to it by iron rings, began on his City of Victory, Fatehpur Sikri.

And wherefore not, since sons had been born to his empire? It was wide by this time, but Guzerât was still independent and had to be brought within the net.

It was in this campaign that Akbar nearly met his end in the narrow cactus lane at Sarsa, when he and the two Râjput chieftains, Bhagwan-dâs and Mân-Singh, fought their way through their enemies, each guarding the other's head.

Akbar's life is full of such reckless bravery, such wonderful escapes; in this, at least, he was true grandson to Babar-of-the-Thousand-Adventures.

It was in the following year that the famous ride from Agra to Ahmedabâd in nine days was made; and, after all, somewhat uselessly made, since the emperor was too chivalrous to take his enemy unawares, and, finding him asleep, ordered the royal trumpeters to sound a _reveillée_ before, after giving him plenty of time, the imperial party "charged like a fierce tiger." It is good reading all this, overburdened though the pages of the Akbarnâmâh-Abul-fazl's great History of his Master--may be with flatteries and digressions.

But it is not in all this that Akbar's glory lies. It is in the far-reaching justice of his legal and administrative reforms, above all, in the reasons he gives for these reforms, that he stands unique amongst all Indian kings. We have, however, still to record his conquest of Bengal (where, it may be noted, he swam his rivers on horseback at the head of every detachment for pursuit, every advance guard), still to tell the tale of the Fat King Udâi-Singh's son, Râjah Pertâp, before at Fatehpur Sikri, in the twentieth year of his reign, and the thirty-third of his life, we can find pause to consider Akbar's principles and practice. Bengal, then, was added to empire with the usual rapidity. Then arose trouble in Mêwar. Udâi-Singh was dead, still defying from a distance Akbar's power, still scorning the alliance by marriage which had brought his neighbours revenue and renown; but his son Pertâp lived--Pertâp, who was to the sixteenth century what Prithvi-Râj had been to the fourteenth; that is to say, the flower of Râjput chivalry, the idol of the men, the darling of the women. He had taken to the hills, he had outraged Akbar's sense of justice, and he must be crushed. The battle of Huldighât decided his fate. Wounded, wearied, he fled on his grey horse "Chytuc" up a narrowing stony ravine, behind him the clatter of another horse swifter than his own; for "Chytuc," his friend, his companion, was wounded, too, and more wearied even than wounded.

"_Ho! nîla-ghôra-ki-aswâr!_"

["Oh! Rider of the grey horse!"]

The cry rang out amid the echoing rocks. What! Was his enemy within call already? "Chytuc" stumbled on, urged by the spur.

"_Ho! nîla-ghôra-ki-aswâr!_"

Nearer and nearer! A cry that must be answered at last. One final stumble, "Chytuc" was down, and Pertâp turned to sell life dearly. Turned to find his brother.

"Thy horse is at its end--take mine," said Sukta, who long years before had gone over to Akbar's side, driven thither by Pertâp's pride.

"And thou?"

"I go back whence I came."

Those who had watched the chase from the plains below asked for explanations. They were given.

"Tell the truth," came the calm reply.

Then Sukta told it. Drawing himself up, he said briefly:

"The burden of a kingdom over-weighted my brother. I helped him to carry it."

Needless to say, the excuse was accepted. And to this day the cry, "_Ho! nîla-ghôra-ki-aswâr_," is one of the war-cries of the Râjput.

To return to Akbar, in the twentieth year of his reign. It was just ten years since Faizi had come into his life--Faizi, the first Mahomedan to trouble his head about Hindu literature, Hindu science. It had opened up a new world to Akbar, and when six years afterwards Abul-fazl entered into the emperor's life also, with his broad, clear, tolerant, critical outlook, and his intense personal belief in the genius of the man he served, it seemed possible to achieve what till then Akbar had almost despaired of achieving. The dream had always been there. In some ways he had gone far towards realising it. He had, early in his reign, abolished the capitation tax on infidels, and the tax on pilgrimages, his reason for the latter being, "that although the tax was undoubtedly on a vain superstition, yet, as all modes of worship were designed for the One Great Being, it was wrong to throw any obstacle in the way of the devout, and so cut them off from their own mode of intercourse with their Maker."

Then he had absolutely forbidden the slavery of prisoners of war; and having observed, both during his many campaigns and his still more numerous hunting expeditions, that the greater portion of the land he traversed remained uncultivated, he had set himself, alone, unaided--for his courtiers were content with conventionalities--to find out the cause. The land was rich, the cultivators were industrious; the reason must lie in something which made cultivation unprofitable. What was it? An excessive land-tax? He instantly started experimental farms, which convinced him that this, and nothing else, was the cause of the land lying idle. But on all sides he met with opposition. Convinced himself that the old methods were obsolete, he had almost given up the task of reform in despair, when he met Abul-fazl. In religious matters, too, he had gone far beyond his age. The intolerance the bigotry of those around him shocked his innate sense of justice. Here again Abul-fazl was a tower of strength, and, inch by inch, yard by yard, his support enabled the king to fight for his final position, until in 1577, after endless discussions in the House-of-Argument (which he had had built for the purpose, and where, night after night, he sate listening while doctors of the law, Brahmans, Jews, Jesuits, Sufis--God only knows what sects and creeds--discussed truth from their varying standpoints), he took the law into his own hands and practically forced the learned Ulemas to put their signatures to a document which proclaimed him Head-of-the-Church, the spiritual as well as the temporal guide of his subjects. The reason he gave for desiring this decision was, that as kings were answerable to God for their subjects, any division of authority in dealing with them was inexpedient.

So in 1579 he mounted the pulpit in his Great Mosque at Fatehpur Sikri, and read the Kutbah prayer in his own name in these words, written for the occasion by the poet Faizi:--

"Lo! from Almighty God I take my kingship,
Before His throne I bow and take my judgeship,
Take Strength from Strength, and Wisdom from His Wiseness,
Right from the Right, and Justice from His Justice.
Praising the King, I praise God near and far--
Great is His Power! Allâh-hû-Akbâr!"

They were not unworthy words; and they were, as Sir William Hunter well calls them, the Magna Charter of Akbar's reign. He was now free to realise all his long-cherished dreams of universal tolerance and absolute unity. In future, no distinctions of race and creed were held cogent. The judicial system was reorganised and the magistracy made to understand that the question of religion was no longer to enter into their work.