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Rh Afghans, and Mughals had left a powerful Muhammadan population in India under their own Kings. Akbar reduced these Musalmán States to Provinces of the Delhi Empire. Many of the Hindu kings and Rajput nations had also regained their independence: Akbar brought them into political dependence upon his authority. This double task he effected partly by force of arms, but in part also by alliances. He enlisted the Rájput princes by marriage and by a sympathetic policy in the support of his throne. He then employed them in high posts, and played off his Hindu generals and Hindu ministers alike against the Mughal party in Upper India, and against the Afghán faction in Lower Bengal.

Reduction of the Rajputs, 1561-1568.—Humáyún. as we have seen, left but a small kingdom, confined to the Punjab, with the Districts round Delhi and Agra. Akbar quickly extended it, at the expense of his nearest neighbours, namely, the Rájputs. Jaipur was reduced to a fief of the empire; and Akbar cemented his conquest by marrying the daughter of its Hindu prince. Jodhpur was in like manner overcome; and Akbar married his son, Salfm, who afterwards reigned under the title of Jahángír, to the grand-daughter of the Rájá. The Rájputs of Chitor were overpowered after a long struggle, but would not mingle their high-caste Hindu blood even with that of a Muhammadan emperor. They found shelter among the mountains and deserts of the Indus, whence they afterwards emerged to recover most of their old dominions, and to found their capital of Udaipur, which they retain to this day. They still boast that alone, among the great Rájput clans, they never gave a daughter in marriage to a Mughal emperor.

Conciliation of the Hindus.—Akbar pursued his policy of conciliation towards all the Hindu States. He also took care to provide a career for the lesser Hindu nobility. He appointed his brother-in-law, the son of the Jaipur Rájá, Governor of the Punjab. Rájá Mán Singh, also a Hindu relative of the Emperor's family, did good war service for Akbar from Kábul to Orissa, and ruled as his Governor of Bengal from 1589 to 1604. Akbar's great finance minister, Rájá Todar Mall, was likewise a Hindu, and carried out the first regular land-settlement and survey of