Akbar, Emperor of India, Richard von Garbe [ebook offline .txt] 📗
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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.
MAUSOLEUM OF AKBAR AT SIKANDRA.
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.
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]
FOOTNOTES:
[A] This essay is art enlarged form of an address delivered on the occasion of the birthday of King Wilhelm II of Württemberg, on February 25, 1909.
[1] E. Schlagintweit, Indien in Wort und Bild, II, 26 f.
[2] A. Müller, Der Islam im Morgen-und Abendland, II, 300 f.
[3] From the literature on Emperor Akbar the following works deserve special mention: J. Talboys Wheeler, The History of India from the Earliest Ages. Vol. IV, Pt. I, "Mussulman Rule," London, 1876 (judges Akbar very unfairly in many places, but declares at the bottom of page 135, "The reign of Akbar is one of the most important in the history of India; it is one of the most important in the history of the world"); Mountstuart Elphinstone, History of India, the Hindu and Mahometan Periods, with notes and additions by E.B. Cowell, 9th ed., London, 1905; G.B. Malleson, Akbar and the Rise of the Mughal Empire, Oxford, 1890 (in W.W. Hunter's Rulers of India); A. Müller, Der Islam im Morgen-und Abendland, Vol. II, Berlin, 1887; but especially Count F.A. von Noer, Kaiser Akbar, ein Versuch über die Geschichte Indiens im sechzehnten Jahrhundert, Vol. I, Leyden, 1880; Vol. II, revised from the author's manuscript by Dr. Gustav von Buchwald, Leyden, 1885. In the preface to this work the original sources are listed and described; compare also M. Elphinstone, pp. 536, 537, note 45.
[4] A. Müller, II, 416.
[B] Noer, II as frontispiece (comp. also pp. 327, 328); A. Müller, II, 417.
[5] Noer, I, 131.
[6] Noer, I, 141.
[7] J.T. Wheeler, IV, I, 139, 140; Noer, I, 143, 144.
[8] J.T. Wheeler, IV, I, 180.
[9] Noer, II, 8, 390, 423.
[10] For the following compare Noer I, 391 ff.; M. Elphinstone, 529 ff.; G.B. Malleson, 172 ff., 185 ff.
[11] Noer, II, 6, 7; G.B. Malleson, 174, 175.
[12] J.T. Wheeler, IV, I, 173; Noer, I, 438 n.
[13] Noer, II, 378.
[14] Noer, I, 429. The second invention, however, is questioned by Buchwald.
[15] Noer, I, 439.
[16] Noer, I, 224-226
[17] Badâoni in Noer, II, 320.
[18] Noer, II, 317, 318.
[19] Ibid. 376, 317.
[20] J.T. Wheeler, IV, I, 173; M. Elphinstone, 526; G.B. Malleson, 170.
[21] Noer, II, 355-
[22] J.T. Wheeler, IV, I, 169, following the old English geographer Samuel Purchas.
[23] Abul Fazl in Noer, I, 511.
[24] M. Elphinstone, 519
[25] J.T. Wheeler, IV, I, 168.
[26] Loc. cit., 169.
[27] Noer, I, 432, 433.
[28] A. Müller, II, 386.
[29] J.T. Wheeler, IV, I, 174
[30] J.T. Wheeler, loc. cit., 141; Noer, I, 193; II, 324, 326
[31] A. Müller, II, 418
[32] Noer, I, 262
[33] Noer, I, 259.
[34] J.T. Wheeler, IV, I, 156.
[35] J.T. Wheeler, IV, I, 174; Noer, I, 511, 512. A familiar classical parallel to this incident is the experiment recorded by Herodotus (II, 2) which the Egyptian king Psammetich is said to have performed with two infants. It is related that after being shut up in a goat's stable for two years separated from all human intercourse these children repeatedly cried out the alleged Phrygian word βεκὁς [Greek: bekhos], "bread," which in reality was probably simply an imitation of the bleating of the goats. Compare Edward B. Tyler, Researches into the Early History of Mankind. 2nd edition, (London, 1870), page 81: "It is a very trite remark that there is nothing absolutely incredible in the story and that Bek, bek is a good imitative word for bleating as in βληχἁομαι, μηκἁομαι [Greek: blêchhaomai, mêkhaomai,], blöken, meckern, etc." Farther on we find the account of a similar attempt made by James IV of Scotland as well as the literature with regard to other historical and legendary precedents of this sort in both Orient and Occident.
[36] Noer, II, 324, 325. Beards which the Koran commanded to be worn Akbar even refused to allow in his presence. M. Elphinstone, 525; G.B. Malleson, 177.
[37] J.T. Wheeler, IV, I,162; Noer, I, 481.
[38] J.T. Wheeler, IV, I, 165, note, 47; M. Elphinstone, 523, note 8; G.B. Malleson, 162.
[39] In Noer, I, 485.
[40] A. Müller, II, 420 n.
[41] Noer, II, 314, 355.
[42] In Noer, II, 409.
[43] In Noer, II, 347, 348.
[44] M. Elphinstone, 524.
[45] Noer, I, 503.
[46] Noer, I, 490 n.
[47] Noer, II, 564, 572.
***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG
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