Chapter XI: Chronicle of the Reign (2)

His son, Partap Singh, inherited all his obstinacy, and many of the noble qualities of his grandfather, the famous Sanga Rana. Without a capital, without resources, his kindred and clansmen dispirited by the reverses of his house, yet sympathising with him in his refusal to ally himself with a Muhammadan, Partap Singh had established himself at Kombalmir, in the Aravallis, and had endeavoured to organise the country for a renewed struggle. Some {125} information of his plans seems to have reached the ears of Akbar whilst he was paying his annual visit to Ajmere in 1576-7, and he despatched his most trusted general, also a Rajput, the Man Singh of Jaipur, whom we have seen fighting by his side in Gujarat, with five thousand horse, to beat him up. The two opposing forces met at Huldighat, called also Gogandah, in December 1576. The battle which followed terminated in the complete defeat of the Rana, who, when the day was lost, fled to the Aravalli hills. To deprive him of all possible resources Akbar despatched a party into the hills, with instructions to lay waste the country whilst pursuing. Akbar himself entered Mewar, arranged the mode of its administration; then proceeded to Malwa, encamped on its western frontier, arranged the administration of the territories dependent upon the city of Burhanpur, and improved that of Gujarat. To these matters he devoted the years 1577-8. He then marched for the Punjab.

A circumstance, interesting to the people who now hold supreme sway in India, occurred to the Emperor on his way to the Punjab. He had reached Delhi, and had even proceeded a march beyond it, when a certain Haji[2] who had visited Europe, 'brought with him fine goods and fabrics for his Majesty's inspection.' The chronicler does not state more on the subject than the extract I have made, and we are left to imagine the part of Europe whence the fabrics came, and the impression they made. Akbar stayed but a short time {126} in the Punjab, then returned to Delhi, paid then his annual visit to Ajmere, and stopping there but one night, rode, accompanied by but nine persons, at the rate of over a hundred miles a day to Fatehpur-Sikri, arriving there the evening of the third day.

[Footnote 2: A Haji is a Musalman who has made the pilgrimage to Mekka.]

The following year, 1580, was remarkable for the fact that the empire attained the highest degree of prosperity up to that time. Bengal was not only tranquil, but furnished moneys to the imperial exchequer. The ruler of Mewar was still being hunted by the imperial troops, but in no other part of India was the sound of arms heard.

In the course of his journeys Akbar had noticed how the imposition of inland tolls, justifiable so long as the several provinces of Hindustan were governed by rival rulers, tended only, now that so many provinces were under one head, to perpetuate differences. Early in 1581, then, he abolished the tamgha, or inland tolls, throughout his dominions. The same edict proclaimed likewise the abolition of the jizya, a capitation tax imposed by the Afghan rulers of India upon those subjects who did not follow the faith of Muhammad. It was the Emperor's noble intention that thought should be free; that every one of his subjects should worship after his own fashion and according to his own convictions, and he carried out this principle to the end of his days. The most important political event of the year was the rebellion of a body of disaffected nobles in Bengal. Acting without much cohesion they were defeated and dispersed.

{127} The year following, 1582, Akbar marched at the head of an army to the Punjab to repulse an invasion made from Kabul by his own brother, Muhammad Hakim Mirza. The rebel brother had arrived close to Lahore before Akbar had reached Panipat. The news, however, of the march of Akbar produced upon him the conviction that his invasion must miscarry. He accordingly retreated from Lahore, and fell back on Kabul. Akbar followed him by way of Sirhind, Kalanaur, and Rotas; then crossed the Indus at the point where Attock now stands, giving, as he crossed the river, instructions for the erection of a fortress at that place.

He advanced on to Peshawar, and pushed forward a division of his army under his son, Prince Murad, to recover Kabul. Murad was a young man, tall and thin, with a livid complexion, but much given to drink, from the effects of which he and his brother, Prince Danyal, eventually died. Marching very rapidly, he encountered the army of his uncle at Khurd-Kabul and totally defeated him. Akbar had followed him with a supporting army, and entered Kabul three days after him. There he remained three weeks, then, having pardoned his brother and re-bestowed upon him the government of Kabul, he returned by way of the Khaibar to Lahore, settled the government of the Punjab, and then marched, by way of Delhi, to Fatehpur-Sikri. 'He now,' writes the chronicler, 'remained for some time at Fatehpur, administering justice, dispensing charity, and arranging public business.'

{128} Apparently he continued to reside there throughout the year following. Rebellion was still smouldering in Bengal, but the Emperor was represented there by capable officers who reported constantly to him, and to whom he as constantly despatched instructions. The disaffection was not very serious, but it was harassing and interfered greatly with the collection of the revenues.

The beginning of 1584 found Akbar still at Fatehpur-Sikri. The principal events of the year were, the pacification of Bengal; the outbreak and suppression of a rebellion in Gujarat; the revolt of the ruler of Asirgarh and Burhanpur; disturbances in the Deccan; and the death of the brother of Akbar, the then ruler of Kabul. The revolts were put down and a new governor was sent to Kabul. Prosperity reigned over the empire when the year closed.

Among the firmest of the protected allies of the Emperor was Bhagwan Das, Raja of Jaipur, who had not only himself rendered splendid military service to Akbar, but whose nephew, Man Singh, held a very high command in his armies. At the period at which we have arrived this Rajput prince was governor of the Punjab. From his family Akbar now selected a wife for his son, Prince Salim, afterwards the Emperor Jahangir. The marriage was celebrated at Fatehpur-Sikri, with great ceremony and amid great rejoicings. Until this reign the Rajput princes had scornfully rejected the idea of a matrimonial alliance with princes of the Muhammadan faith. But it was the {129} desire of Akbar to weld: to carry into action the cardinal principle that differences of race and religion made no difference in the man. He had many prejudices to overcome, especially on the part of the Rajput princes, and to the last he could not conquer the obstinate resistance of the Rana of Mewar.

The others were more complaisant. They recognised in Akbar the founder of a set of principles such as had never been heard before in India. In his eyes merit was merit, whether evinced by a Hindu prince or by an Uzbek Musalman. The race and creed of the meritorious man barred neither his employment in high positions nor his rise to honour. Hence, men like Bhagwan Das, Man Singh, Todar Mall, and others, found that they enjoyed a consideration under this Muhammadan sovereign far greater and wider-reaching than that which would have accrued to them as independent rulers of their ancestral dominions. They governed imperial provinces and commanded imperial armies. They were admitted to the closest councils of the prince whose main object was to obliterate all the dissensions and prejudices of the past, and, without diminishing the real power of the local princes who entered into his scheme, to weld together, to unite under one supreme head, without loss of dignity and self-respect to anyone, the provinces till then disunited and hostile to one another.

One of the means which Akbar employed to this end was that of marriage between himself, his family, {130} and the daughters of the indigenous princes. There was, he well knew, no such equaliser as marriage. The Rajput princes could not fail to feel that their relationship to the heir to the throne, often to the throne itself, assured their position. When they reflected on the condition of Hindustan prior to his rule; how the Muhammadan conquests of the preceding five centuries had introduced strife and disorder without cohesion, and that this man, coming upon them as a boy, inexperienced and untried in the art of ruling, had introduced order and good government, toleration and justice, wherever he conquered; that he conquered only that he might introduce those principles; that he made no distinction between men on account of their diversity of race or of religious belief; they, apt to believe in the incarnation of the deity, must have recognised something more than ordinarily human, something approaching to the divine and beneficent, in the conduct of Akbar.

His toleration was so absolute, his trust, once given, so thorough, his principles so large and so generous, that, despite the prejudices of their birth, their religion, their surroundings, they yielded to the fascination. And when, in return, Akbar asked them to renounce one long-standing prejudice which went counter to the great principle which they recognised as the corner-stone of the new system, the prejudice which taught them to regard other men, because they were not Hindus, as impure and unclean, they all, with one marked exception, gave way. They recognised that {131} a principle such as that was not to be limited; that their practical renunciation of that portion of their narrow creed which forbade marriages with those of a different race, could not but strengthen the system which was giving peace and prosperity to their country, honour and consideration to themselves.

It was in the beginning of the thirty-first year of his reign that Akbar heard of the death of his brother at Kabul, and that the frontier province of Badakshan had been overrun by the Uzbeks, who also threatened Kabul. The situation was grave, and such as, he concluded, imperatively required his own presence. Accordingly, in the middle of November, he set out with an army for the Punjab, reached the Sutlej at the end of the following month, and marched straight to Rawal Pindi. Learning there that affairs at Kabul were likely to take a direction favourable to his interests, he marched to his new fort of Attock, despatched thence one force under Bhagwan Das to conquer Kashmir, another to chastise the Baluchis, and a third to move against Swat. Of these three expeditions, the last met with disaster. The Yusufzais not only repulsed the first attack of the Mughals, but when reinforcements, sent by Akbar under his special favourite, Raja Birbal, joined the attacking party, they too were driven back with a loss of 8,000 men, amongst whom was the Raja.[3] It was the {132} severest defeat the Mughal troops had ever experienced. To repair it, the Emperor despatched his best commander, Raja Todar Mall, supported by Raja Man Singh, of Jaipur. These generals manoeuvred with great caution, supporting their advance by stockades, and eventually completely defeated the tribes in the Khaibar Pass.

[Footnote 3: Raja Birbal was a Brahman, a poet, and a skilful musician. He was noted for his liberality and his _bonhomie_. 'His short verses, bon mots, and jokes,' writes Blochmann (_Ain-i-Akbari_, p. 405) 'are still in the mouths of the people of Hindustan.']

Meanwhile, the expedition sent against Kashmir had been but a degree more successful. The commanders of it had reached the Pass of Shuliyas, and had found it blockaded by the Musalman ruler of the country. They waited for supplies for some days, but the rain and snow came on, and before they could move there came the news of the defeat inflicted by the Yusufzais. This deprived them of what remained to them of nerve, and they hastened to make peace with the ruler of Kashmir, on the condition of his becoming a nominal tributary, and then returned to Akbar. The Emperor testified his sense of their want of enterprise by according to them a very cold reception, and forbidding them to appear at court. But the mind of Akbar could not long harbour resentment, and he soon forgave them.

Of the three expeditions, that against the Baluchis alone was immediately successful. These hardy warriors submitted without resistance to the Mughal Emperor. As soon as the efforts of Todar Mall and Man Singh had opened the Khaibar Pass, Akbar appointed the latter, the nephew and heir to the Jaipur Raja, to be Governor of Kabul, and sent {133} him thither with a sufficient force, other troops being despatched to replace him in the Yusufzai country, and Peshawar being strongly occupied. Akbar had himself returned to Lahore. Thence he directed a second expedition against Kashmir. As this force approached the Passes, in the summer of 1587, a rebellion broke out against the actual ruler in Srinagar. The imperial force experienced then no difficulty in entering and conquering the country, which thus became a portion of the Mughal empire, and, in the reign of the successor of Akbar, the summer residence of the Mughal sovereigns of India. It may here be mentioned that to reach Jamrud, at the entrance of the Khaibar Pass, Man Singh had to fight and win another battle with the hill-tribes. He reached Kabul, however, and established there a stable administration. The Kabulis and the heads of the tribes, however, complained to Akbar that the rule of a Rajput prince was not agreeable to them, whereupon Akbar translated Man Singh in a similar capacity to Bengal, which just then especially required the rule of a strong hand, and replaced him at Kabul by a Musalman. He announced at the same time his intention of paying a visit to that dependency.

First of all, he secured possession of Sind (1588); then, in the spring of the following year, set out for Kashmir. On reaching Bhimbar, he left there the ladies of his harem with Prince Murad, and rode express to Srinagar. He remained there, visiting {134} the neighbourhood, till the rainy season set in, when he sent his harem to Rotas. They joined him subsequently at Attock on his way to Kabul. The Passes to that capital were open, all opposition on the part of the hill-tribes having ceased, so Akbar crossed the Indus at Attock, and had an easy journey thence to Kabul. He stayed there two months, visiting the gardens and places of interest. 'All the people, noble and simple, profited by his presence.'[4] He was still at Kabul when news reached him of the death of Raja Todar Mall (November 10, 1589). The same day another trusted Hindu friend, Raja Bhagwan Das of Jaipur, also died. Akbar made then new arrangements for the governments of Kabul, Gujarat, and Jaunpur, and returned towards Hindustan.

[Footnote 4: Elliot, vol. v. p. 458.]

He had already, as I have stated, arranged for the government of Bengal. He reached Lahore on his home journey in the beginning of 1590. Whilst residing there, information reached him that his newly appointed Governor of Gujarat, the son of his favourite nurse, had engaged in hostilities with Kathiawar and Cutch. These hostilities eventuated in the addition of those two provinces to the Emperor's dominions, and in the suicide of the prince of Afghan descent, who had fomented all the disturbances in Western India.[5] The Emperor took advantage of his stay at Lahore to direct the more {135} complete pacification of Sind, affairs in which province had taken a disadvantageous turn. The perfect conquest of the province proved more difficult than had been anticipated. It required large reinforcements of troops, and the display of combined firmness and caution to effect the desired result. The campaign took two years, and, during that time, Kashmir had revolted.

[Footnote 5: Vide Blochmann's _Ain-i-Akbari_, p. 326.]

The Emperor during those two years had had his head-quarters at Lahore. No sooner did he hear that the success in Sind was complete, than Akbar, who, expecting the event, had sent on the bulk of his forces towards Bhimbar, remaining himself hunting on the banks of the Chenab, set out to rejoin his main body. On his way to it he learned that his advanced guard had forced one of the Passes, notwithstanding fierce opposition. This event decided the war, for the soldiers of the rebel chief, resenting his action, fell upon him during the night, killed him, and cut off his head, which they sent to Akbar. With the death of this man all opposition ceased, and Akbar, riding on to Srinagar, stayed there eight days, settling the administration, and then proceeded by way of the gorge of Baramula to Rotas, and thence to Lahore. There he received information that his lieutenant in Bengal, the Raja Man Singh, had definitively annexed the province of Orissa to the imperial dominions. He had despatched thence to Lahore a hundred and twenty elephants, captured in that province, as a present to the Emperor.

{136} The attempt to bring into the imperial scheme the Deccan provinces south of the Vindhyan range, followed the next year, and continued for eight years later. On the whole it was successful. The strong places, Daulatabad, Kherwa, Nasik, Asirgarh, and Ahmadnagar, opened their gates, after long sieges, to the imperial arms. And, although the territories dependent upon Ahmadnagar were not entirely subdued till 1637, the position acquired by Akbar gave him a preponderance which the Mughals retained for at least a century.

The campaign in Southern India was remarkable for three facts. The first was the dissensions of the generals sent from different parts of India to co-operate independently in the conquest, dissensions which necessitated, first, the despatch thither from Agra of the Emperor's confidant, Abulfazl, and afterwards, the journey thither of Akbar himself; secondly, the death, from excessive drinking, of the Emperor's son, Prince Murad, at Jalna; thirdly, the murder of Abulfazl, on his return to Agra, at the instigation of Prince Salim, the eldest surviving son of Akbar and his heir apparent.

Akbar had held his court for fourteen years at Lahore when, in 1598, the necessities of the position in Southern India forced him to march thither. He had compelled the surrender of Ahmadnagar and Asirgarh, when, nominating Prince Danyal to be governor in Khandesh and Berar, and Abulfazl to complete the conquest of the territories dependent {137} upon Ahmadnagar, he marched in the spring of 1601 towards Agra.

The circumstances which required the presence of Akbar at Agra were of a very painful character. Prince Salim had from his earliest youth caused him the greatest anxiety. Nor had the anxiety been lessened as the boy approached manhood. Salim, better known to posterity as the Emperor Jahangir, was naturally cruel, and he appeared incapable of placing the smallest restraint on his passions. He hated Abulfazl, really because he was jealous of his influence with his father; avowedly because he regarded him as the leading spirit who had caused Akbar to diverge from the narrow doctrines of the bigoted Muhammadans. Akbar had hoped for a moment that the despatch of Abulfazl to Southern India would appease the resentment of his son, and when he decided to proceed thither himself he had nominated Salim as his successor, and had confided to him, with the title of Viceroy of Ajmere, the task of finishing the war with the Rana of Mewar, which had broken out again. He had further studied his partialities by despatching the renowned Man Singh, his relation by marriage, to assist him.

The two princes were already on their march towards Mewar when information reached them that a rebellion had broken out in Bengal, of which province Man Singh was Viceroy. Man Singh was therefore compelled to march at once to repress the outbreak. Left without a counsellor, and commanding a {138} considerable force, Prince Salim resolved to take advantage of the absence of his father in the south to make a bold stroke for the crown. Renouncing, then, his march on Mewar, he hurried with his force to Agra, and when the commandant of the imperial fortress, loyal to his master, shut its gates in his face, hastened to Allahabad, occupied the fort, seized the provinces of Oudh and Behar, and assumed the title of King.

It was the news of these occurrences which drew Akbar from the Deccan. Attributing the action of Salim to the violence of a temper which had ever been impatient of control, he resolved rather to guide than to compel him. Accordingly he wrote him a letter, in which, assuring him of his continued love if he would only return to his allegiance, he warned him of the consequences of continued disobedience. When this letter reached Salim, Akbar was approaching Agra at the head of an army of warriors, few in number, but the chosen of the empire. Salim, then, recognising that his position was absolutely untenable, and that if he persisted it might cost him the succession, replied in the most submissive terms. His conduct, however, did not correspond to his words. Informed, somewhat later, that the bulk of the imperial army was still in the Deccan, he marched to Itawa, levying troops as he proceeded, with the intention of waiting upon his father at the head of an imposing force. But Akbar was not deceived. He sent his son an order {139} to choose one of two courses; either to come to Agra slightly attended, or to return to Allahabad.

Prince Salim chose the latter course, receiving the promise, it is believed, that he should receive the grant of Bengal and Orissa. At any rate, he did receive the grant of those provinces. We cannot say, at this time, how much Akbar was influenced in his course by the consciousness of the comparative weakness of his own position, by his dislike of having to fight his own son, or by his affection. Probably the three sentiments combined to give to the course he adopted a tinge of weakness. At any rate, he soon had reason to feel that his concessions to his rebellious son had produced no good effect. For Salim, whose memory was excellent, and whose hatred was insatiable, took the opportunity of the return of Abulfazl from the Deccan, but slightly attended, to instigate the Raja of Orchha to waylay and murder him.[6]

[Footnote 6: Prince Salim justifies, in his _Memoirs_, the murder on the ground that Abulfazl had been the chief instigator of Akbar in his religious aberrations, as he regarded them. To the last he treated the Raja of Orchha with the greatest consideration.]

The murder of his friend was a heavy blow to Akbar. Happily he never knew the share his son had in that atrocious deed. Believing that the Raja of Orchha was the sole culprit, he despatched a force against him. The guilty Raja fled to the jungles, and succeeded in avoiding capture, until the death of Akbar rendered unnecessary his attempts to conceal himself. A reconciliation with Salim followed, and {140} the Emperor once more despatched his eldest son to put down the disturbances in Mewar. These disturbances, it may be mentioned, were caused by the continued refusal of Rana Partap Singh to submit to the Mughal. After his defeat at Huldighat in 1576, that prince had fled to the jungles, closely followed by the imperial army. Fortune continued so adverse to him that after a series of reverses, unrelieved by one success, he resolved, with his family and trusting friends, to abandon Mewar, and found another kingdom on the Indus. He had already set out, when the unexampled devotion of his minister placed in his hands the means of continuing the contest, and he determined to try one more campaign. Turning upon his adversaries, rendered careless by continued success, he smote them in the hinder part, and, in 1586, had recovered all Mewar, the fortress of Chitor and Mandalgarh excepted. Cut off from Chitor, he had established a new capital at Udaipur, a place which subsequently gave its name to his principality. When he died, in 1597, he was still holding his own. He was succeeded by his son, Amra Rana, who, at the time at which we have arrived, was bidding defiance, in Mewar, to all the efforts of the imperial troops (1603).

Prince Salim had a great opportunity. The forces placed at his disposal were considerable enough, if energetically employed, to complete the conquest of Mewar, but he displayed so little taste for the task that Akbar recalled him and sent him to his {141} semi-independent government of Allahabad, where he spent his time in congenial debauchery, and in worse. His disregard of all sense of duty and honour, even of the lives of his most faithful attendants, became at last so marked that Akbar set out for Allahabad, in the hope that his presence might produce some effect. He had made but two marches, however, when the news of the serious illness of his own mother compelled him to return. But the fact that he had quitted Agra for such a purpose produced a revulsion in the thought and actions of Prince Salim. As his father could not come to him, he determined to repair, slightly attended, to the court of his father. There he made his submission, but he did not mend his ways, and his disputes with his eldest son, Prince Khusru, became the scandal of the court.

The Emperor, indeed, was not happy in his children. His two eldest, twins, had died in infancy. The third, erroneously styled the first, was Prince Salim. The fate of the fourth son, Prince Murad, has been told. The fifth son, Prince Danyal, described as tall, well-built, good-looking, fond of horses and elephants, and clever in composing Hindustani poems, was addicted to the same vice as his brother Murad, and died about this time from the same cause. His death was a great blow to Akbar, who had done all in his power to wean his son from his excesses, and had even obtained a promise that he would renounce them. There were at court many grandsons of the Emperor. Of these the best-beloved was Prince Khurram, who {142} subsequently succeeded Jahangir under the title of Shah Jahan.

The news of the death of Prince Danyal and its cause seem to have greatly affected the Emperor. He was ill at the time, and it soon became evident that his illness could have but one termination. The minds of those about him turned at once to the consideration of the succession. His only surviving son was Prince Salim, but his conduct at Allahabad, at Agra, and elsewhere, had turned the hearts of the majority against him, whilst in his son, Prince Khusru, the nobles recognised a prince whose reputation was untarnished. Prince Khusru, moreover, as the son of a princess of Jodhpur, was closely related to Raja Man Singh, and that capable man was a great factor in the empire. He had married, too, the daughter of the Muhammadan nobleman who held the highest rank in the army, and who was himself probably related to the royal family, for he was the son of the favourite nurse of Akbar. These two great nobles began then to take measures for the exclusion of Prince Salim, and the succession of Prince Khusru.

To effect this purpose they had the fort of Agra, in the palace in which Akbar was lying ill, guarded by their troops. Had Akbar died at this moment his death must have given rise to a civil war, for Salim would not renounce his pretensions. But, as soon as the prince recognised the combination against him, alarmed for his personal safety, he withdrew a short distance from Agra. Vexed at his absence during {143} what he well knew was his last illness, Akbar, a lover above all of legality, summoned his nobles around him, declared Prince Salim to be his lawful successor, and expressed a hope that Prince Khusru might be provided for by the government of Bengal.

The influence acquired by Akbar was never more apparent than at this conjuncture. It needed but one expression of resentment against his ungrateful and undutiful son to secure his exclusion. His expressions in his favour, on the other hand, had the effect of inducing the most powerful nobles to resolve to carry out his wishes, the half-hearted and wavering to join with them. Not even the highest nobleman in the army, the father-in-law of Prince Khusru, who had already combined with Raja Man Singh to support Khusru, could resist the influence. He sent privately to Prince Salim to assure him of his support. Man Singh, the most influential of all at that particular crisis, seeing that he was isolated, yielded to the overtures made him by Salim, and promised also to uphold him. Secure now of the succession, Prince Salim repaired to the palace, where he was affectionately received by the dying Akbar. The circumstances of that interview are known only from the report of the prince.

After the first affectionate greetings Akbar desired that all the nobles might be summoned to the presence; 'for,' he added, 'I cannot bear that any misunderstanding should subsist between you and those who have for so many years shared in my toils, {144} and been the companions of my glory.' When the nobles entered and had made their salutations, he said a few words to them in a body; then, looking at each of them in succession, he begged them to forgive him if he had wronged any one of them. Prince Salim then threw himself at his feet, weeping; but Akbar, signing to his attendants to gird his son with his own scimitar and to invest him with the turban and robes of State, commended to his care the ladies of the palace, urged him to be kind and considerate to his old friends and associates, then, bowing his head, he died.

Thus peacefully departed the real founder of the Mughal empire. More fortunate than his father and his grandfather, more far-sighted, more original, and, it must be added, possessing greater opportunities, he had lived long enough to convince the diverse races of Hindustan that their safety, their practical independence, their enjoyment of the religion and the customs of their forefathers, depended upon their recognition of the paramount authority which could secure to them these inestimable blessings. To them he was a man above prejudices. To all alike, whether Uzbek, or Afghan, or Hindu, or Parsi, or Christian, he offered careers, provided only that they were faithful, intelligent, true to themselves. The several races recognised that during his reign of forty-nine years India was free from foreign invasion; that he subjugated all adversaries within, some by force of arms, some by means more peaceful, and that he preferred {145} the latter method. 'The whole length and breadth of the land,' wrote Muhammad Amin after his death, 'was firmly and righteously governed. All people of every description and station came to his court, and universal peace being established among all classes, men of every sect dwelt secure under his protection.' Such was Akbar the ruler. In the next chapter I shall endeavour to describe what he was as a man.

Akbar died the 15th October, 1605, one day after he had attained the age of sixty-three.

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