Part 4

Akbar felt that he was a mediator between God and man and believed "that the deity revealed itself to him in the mystical illumination of his soul."[41] This conviction Akbar held in common with many rulers of the Occident who were much smaller than he. Idolatrous marks of veneration he permitted only to a very limited degree. He was not always quite consistent in this respect however, and we must realize how infinitely hard it was to be consistent in this matter at an Oriental court when the customary servility, combined with sincere admiration and reverence, longed to actively manifest itself.

[Footnote 41: Noer, II, 314, 355.]

Akbar, as we have already seen, suffered the Hindu custom of prostration, but on the other hand we have the express testimony to the contrary from the author Faizî, the trusted friend of the Emperor, who on the occasion of an exaggerated homage literally says: "The commands of His Majesty expressly forbid such devout reverence and as often as the courtiers offer homage of this kind because of their loyal sentiments His Majesty forbids them, for such manifestations of worship belong to God alone,"[42] Finally however Akbar felt himself moved to forbid prostration publicly, yet to permit it in a private manner, as appears in the following words of Abul Fazl[43]:

[Footnote 42: In Noer, II, 409.]

[Footnote 43: In Noer, II, 347, 348.]

"But since obscurantists consider prostration to be a blasphemous adoration of man, His Majesty in his practical wisdom has commanded that it be put an end to with ignorant people of all stations and also that it shall not be practiced even by his trusted servants on public court days. Nevertheless if people upon whom the star of good fortune has shone are in attendance at private assemblies and receive permission to be seated, they may perform the prostration of gratitude by bowing their foreheads to the earth and so share in the rays of good fortune. So forbidding prostration to the people at large and granting it to the select the Emperor fulfils the wishes of both and gives the world an example of practical wisdom."

The desire to unite his subjects as much as possible finally impelled Akbar to the attempt to equalize religious differences as well. Convinced that religions did not differ from each other in their innermost essence, he combined what in his opinion were the essential elements and about the year 1580 founded a new religion, the famous Dîn i Ilâhi, the "religion of God." This religion recognizes only one God, a purely spiritual universally efficient being from whom the human soul is derived and towards which it tends. The ethics of this religion comprises the high moral requirements of Sufism and Parsism: complete toleration, equality of rights among all men, purity in thought, word and deed. The demand of monogamy, too, was added later. Priests, images and temples,--Akbar would have none of these in his new religion, but from the Parsees he took the worship of the fire and of the sun as to him light and its heat seemed the most beautiful symbol of the divine spirit.[44] He also adopted the holy cord of the Hindus and wore upon his forehead the colored token customary among them. In this eclectic manner he accommodated himself in a few externalities to the different religious communities existing in his kingdom.

[Footnote 44: M. Elphinstone, 524.]

Doubtless in the foundation of his Dîn i Ilâhi Akbar was not pursuing merely ideal ends but probably political ones as well, for the adoption of the new religion signified an increased loyalty to the Emperor. The novice had to declare himself ready to yield to the Emperor his property, his life, his honor, and his former faith, and in reality the adherents of the Dîn i Ilâhi formed a clan of the truest and most devoted servitors of the Emperor. It may not be without significance that soon after the establishment of the Dîn i Ilâhi a new computation of time was introduced which dated from the accession of Akbar to the throne in 1556.

After the new religion had been in existence perhaps five years the number of converts began to grow by the thousands but we can say with certainty that the greater portion of these changed sides not from conviction but on account of worldly advantage, since they saw that membership in the new religion was very advantageous to a career in the service of the state.[45] By far the greatest number of those who professed the Dîn i Ilâhi observed only the external forms, privately remaining alien to it.

[Footnote 45: Noer, I, 503.]

In reality the new religion did not extend outside of Akbar's court and died out at his death. Hence if failure here can be charged to the account of the great Emperor, yet this very failure redounds to his honor. Must it not be counted as a great honor to Akbar that he considered it possible to win over his people to a spiritual imageless worship of God? Had he known that the religious requirements of the masses can only be satisfied by concrete objects of worship and by miracles (the more startling the better), that a spiritualized faith can never be the possession of any but a few chosen souls, he would not have proceeded with the founding of the Dîn i Ilâhi. And still we cannot call its establishment an absolute failure, for the spirit of tolerance which flowed out from Akbar's religion accomplished infinite good and certainly contributed just as much to lessening the antagonisms in India as did Akbar's social and industrial reforms.

A man who accomplished such great things and desired to accomplish greater, deserves a better fortune than was Akbar's towards the end of life. He had provided for his sons the most careful education, giving them at the same time Christian and orthodox Mohammedan instructors in order to lead them in their early years to the attainment of independent views by means of a comparison between contrasts; but he was never to have pleasure in his sons. It seems that he lacked the necessary severity. The two younger boys of this exceedingly temperate Emperor, Murâd and Daniâl, died of delirium tremens in their youth even before their father. The oldest son, Selim, later the Emperor Jehângir, was also a drunkard and was saved from destruction through this inherited vice of the Timur dynasty only by the wisdom and determination of his wife. But he remained a wild uncontrolled cruel man (as different as possible from his father and apparently so by intention) who took sides with the party of the vanquished Ulemâs and stepped forth as the restorer of Islam. In frequent open rebellion against his magnanimous father who was only too ready to pardon him, he brought upon this father the bitterest sorrow; and especially by having the trustworthy minister and friend of his father, Abul Fazl, murdered while on a journey. Very close to Akbar also was the loss of his old mother to whom he had clung his whole life long with a touching love and whom he outlived only a short time.

Akbar lost his best friends and his most faithful servants before he finally succumbed to a very painful abdominal illness, which at the last changed him also mentally to a very sad extent, and finally carried him off on the night of the fifteenth of October, 1605. He was buried at Sikandra near Agra in a splendid mausoleum of enormous proportions which he himself had caused to be built and which even to-day stands almost uninjured.

This in short is a picture of the life and activities of the greatest ruler which the Orient has ever produced. In order to rightly appreciate Akbar's greatness we must bear in mind that in his empire he placed all men on an equality without regard to race or religion, and granted universal freedom of worship at a time when the Jews were still outlaws in the Occident and many bloody persecutions occurred from time to time; when in the Occident men were imprisoned, executed or burnt at the stake for the sake of their faith or their doubts; at a time when Europe was polluted by the horrors of witch-persecution and the massacre of St. Bartholemew.[46] Under Akbar's rule India stood upon a much higher plane of civilization in the sixteenth century than Europe at the same time.

[Footnote 46: Noer, I, 490 n.]

Germany should be proud that the personality of Akbar who according to his own words "desired to live at peace with all humanity, with every creature of God," has so inspired a noble German of princely blood in the last century that he consecrated the work of his life to the biography of Akbar. This man is the Prince Friedrich August of Schleswig-Holstein, Count of Noer, who wandered through the whole of Northern India on the track of Akbar's activities, and on the basis of the most careful investigation of sources has given us in his large two-volumed work the best and most extensive information which has been written in Europe about the Emperor Akbar. How much his work has been a labor of love can be recognized at every step in his book but especially may be seen in a touching letter from Agra written on the 24th of April, 1868, in which he relates that he utilized the early hours of this day for an excursion to lay a bunch of fresh roses on Akbar's grave and that no visit to any other grave had ever moved him so much as this.[47]

[Footnote 47: Noer, II, 564, 572.]