Richard Garbe

“ Even to-day every traveler in India thinks he has been set down in another world when he treads the ground of Rajputâna and sees around him in place of the weak effeminate servile inhabitants of other parts of the country powerful upright men, splendid warlike figures with blazing defiant eyes and long waving beards.
While Akbar valued the Rajputs very highly his own personality was entirely fitted to please these proud manly warriors. ”

“ Upon the neck of this enraged brute sat a young man in perfect calmness belaboring the animal's head with the iron prong which is used universally in India for guiding elephants. The Rajputs sprang from their horses and came up perfectly unconcerned to observe the interesting spectacle, and broke out in loud applause when the conquered elephant knelt down in exhaustion. The young man sprang from its back and cordially greeted the Rajput princes (who now for the first time recognized Akbar in the elephant-tamer) bidding them welcome to his red imperial tent. ”

“ To how much bodily strength, intrepidity, cold-blooded courage and sure-sightedness this blow of the sword testified which dared not come the fraction of a second too late, may be judged by every one who has any conception of the spring of a raging tigress anxious for the welfare of her young. And we may easily surmise the thoughts which the sight aroused in the minds of the Mohammedan nobles in Akbar's train. ”

“ Sometime previous to these reforms Akbar had abolished a custom so disgusting that we can hardly comprehend that it ever could have legally existed. At any rate it alone is sufficient to brand Islam and its supreme contempt for followers of other faiths, with one of the greatest stains in the history of humanity. When a tax-collector gathered the taxes of the Hindus and the payment had been made, the Hindu was required "without the slightest sign of fear of defilement" to open his mouth in order that the tax collector might spit in it if he wished to do so. ”

“ The great masses of the Hindu people Akbar won over by lowering the taxes as we have previously related, and by all the other successful expedients for the prosperity of the country, but especially by the concession of perfect liberty of faith and worship and by the benevolent interest with which he regarded the religious practices of the Hindus. A people in whom religion is the ruling motive of life, after enduring all the dreadful sufferings of previous centuries for its religion's sake, must have been brought to a state ”

“ The misty myth-woven veil which hangs over persons and events of earlier times, vanishes at the beginning of the modern era which in India starts with the Mohammedan conquest, for henceforth the history of India is written by foreigners. Now we meet with men who take a decisive part in the fate of India, and they appear as sharply outlined, even though generally unpleasing, personalities.
Islam has justly been characterized as the caricature of a religion. ”

“ Akbar was a rough, strong-nerved man, who was seldom angry but whose wrath when once aroused was fearful. It is a blemish on his character that in some cases he permitted himself to be carried away to such cruel death sentences, but we must not forget that he was then dealing with the punishment of particularly desperate criminals, and that such severe judgments had always been considered in the Orient to be righteous and sensible. Not only in the Orient unfortunately,—even in Europe 200 years after Akbar's time tortures and the rack were applied at the behest of courts of law. ”

“ Most men are easily comprehensible as the products of these factors. The more independent of all such influences, or the more in opposition to them, a personality develops, the more attractive and interesting will it appear to us. At the first glance it looks as if the Emperor Akbar had developed his entire character from himself and by his own efforts in total independence of all influences which in other cases are thought to determine the character and nature of a man. ”

“ When the tax-collector availed himself of this privilege the Hindu lost thereby his greatest possession, his caste, and was shut out from any intercourse with his equals. Accordingly he was compelled to pass his whole life trembling in terror before this horrible evil which threatened him. That a man of Akbar's nobility of character should remove such an atrocious, yes devilish, decree seems to us a matter of course; but for the Hindus it was an enormous beneficence. ”

“ A man who ordered himself to be officially declared the highest authority in matters of faith—to be sure not so much in order to found an imperial papacy in his country as to guard his empire from an impending religious war—at any rate a man who saw how the prosperity of his reign proceeded from his own personal initiative in every respect, such a man could countenance no will above his own nor subject himself to any pangs of conscience. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not that the princely thrones were wanting in great men in ancient India, for we find abundant traces of them in Hindu folk-lore and poetry, but these sources do not extend to establishing the realistic element in details and furnishing life-like portraits of the men themselves. That the Hindu has ever been but little interested in historical matters is a generally recognized fact. Religious and philosophical speculations, dreams of other worlds, of previous and future existences, have claimed the attention of thoughtful minds to a much greater degree than has historical reality. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When we learn that Akbar invariably prayed at the grave of his father in Delhi [32] before starting upon any important undertaking, or that during the siege of Chitor he made a vow to make a pilgrimage to a shrine in Ajmir after the fall of the fortress, and that after Chitor was in his power he performed this journey in the simplest pilgrim garb, tramping barefooted over the glowing sand, [33] it is impossible for us to look upon Akbar as irreligious. On the contrary nothing moved the Emperor so strongly and insistently as the striving after religious truth. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ From all this the Indian peasants could see that Emperor Akbar not only desired strict justice to rule but also wished to further their interests, and the peasants had always comprised the greatest part of the inhabitants, (even according to the latest census in 1903, vol. I, p. 3, 50 to 84 percent of the inhabitants of India live by agriculture) . But Akbar succeeded best in winning the hearts of the native inhabitants by lifting the hated poll tax which still existed side by side with all other taxes. ”

“ 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 number of men able to bear arms in Akbar's realm has been given as about four and a half millions but the standing army which was held at the expense of the state was small in proportion. It contained only about twenty-five thousand men, one-half of whom comprised the cavalry and the rest musketry and artillery; Since India does not produce first class horses, Akbar at once provided for the importation of noble steeds from other lands of the Orient which were famed for horse breeding and was accustomed to pay more for such animals than the price which was demanded. ”

“ Upon his arrival at the imperial camp before Delhi, a most surprising sight met his eyes. Men were running in every direction, fleeing wildly before a raging elephant who wrought destruction to everything that came within his reach. ”

“ The embittered man hatched up a conspiracy against the grand vizier and when one night in the year 1562 the latter was attending a meeting of political dignitaries on affairs of state in the audience hall of the Imperial palace, Adham Chân with his conspirators suddenly broke in and stabbed the grand vizier in the breast, whereupon his companions slew the wounded man with their swords. Even now the deluded Adham Chân counted still upon the Emperor's forbearance and upon the influence of his mother. Akbar was aroused by the noise and leaving his apartments learned what had happened. ”

“ From olden times the inhabitants of India have had a predisposition for religious and philosophical disputations. So Akbar, too, was convinced of the utility of free discussion on religious dogmas. Based upon this idea, and perhaps also in the hope that the Ulemâs would be discomfited Akbar founded at Fathpur Sikrî, his favorite residence in the vicinity of Agra, the famous Ibâdat Khâna, literally the "house of worship," but in reality the house of controversy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fanaticism and fatalism are two conspicuously irreligious emotions, and it is exactly these two emotions, which Islam understands how to arouse in savage peoples, to which it owes the part it has played in the history of the world, and the almost unprecedented success of its diffusion in Asia, Africa and Europe. ”

“ Akbar had long ceased to be a faithful Moslem. Now after the fall of the Ulemâs he came forward openly with his conviction, declared the Koran to be a human compilation and its commands folly, disputed the miracles of Mohammed and also the value of his prophecies, and denied the doctrine of recompense after death. He professed the Brahman and Sûfistic doctrine that the soul migrates through countless existences and finally attains divinity after complete purification. ”

“ In 1526 Baber, a descendant of Timur, made his entry into Delhi and there founded the dominion of the Grand Moguls (i.e., of the great Mongols) . The overthrow of this dynasty was brought about by the disastrous reign of Baber's successor Aurungzeb, a cruel, crafty and treacherous despot, who following the example of his ancestor Timur, spread terror and alarm around him in the second half of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries. Even to-day Hindus may be seen to tremble when they meet the sinister fanatical glance of a Mohammedan. ”

“ Akbar placed the discussion in charge of the wise and liberal minded Abul Fazl. How badly the Ulemâs, the representatives of Mohammedan orthodoxy, came off on these controversial evenings was to be foreseen. Since they had no success with their futile arguments they soon resorted to cries of fury, insults for their opponents and even to personal violence, often turning against each other and hurling curses upon their own number. ”

“ Throughout his empire order and justice reigned and a prosperity hitherto unknown. Although taxes were never less oppressive in India than under Akbar's reign, the imperial income for one year amounted to more than $120,000,000, a sum at which contemporary Europe marveled, and which we must consider in the light of the much greater purchasing power of money in the sixteenth century. ”

“ When we wish to understand a personality we are in the habit of ascertaining the inherited characteristics, and investigating the influences exercised upon it by religion, family, environment, education, youthful impressions, experience, and so forth. ”

“ The above mentioned brothers Faizî and Abul Fazl introduced to his impressionable spirit the exalted teaching of Sûfism, the Mohammedan mysticism whose spiritual pantheism had its origin in, or at least was strongly influenced by, the doctrine of the All-One, held by the Brahman Vedânta system. The Sûfi doctrine teaches religious tolerance and has apparently strengthened Akbar in his repugnance towards the intolerant exclusiveness of Sunnitic Islam. ”