Page:Akbar and the Rise of the Mughal Empire.djvu/100

Rh himself, the maintainer of equal laws, equal justice, for all classes. Such became, as his mind developed, the principles of Akbar. He has been accused, he was accused in his life-time, by bigoted Muhammadan writers, of arrogating to himself the attributes of the Almighty. This charge is only true in the sense that, in an age and in a country in which might had been synonymous with right, he did pose as the messenger from Heaven, the representative on earth of the power of God, to introduce union, toleration, justice, mercy, equal rights, amongst the peoples of Hindustán.

His first aim was to bring all India under one sceptre, and to accomplish this task in a great measure by enlisting in its favour the several races which he desired to bring within the fold. I have thought it advisable for the fuller comprehension of his system to treat the subject in its two aspects, the physical and the moral. This chapter, then, will chronicle the successive attempts to bring under one government and one form of law the several states into which India was then divided. The chapter that follows will deal more particularly with the moral aspect of the question.

It would be tedious, in a work like this, to follow Akbar in all the details of his conquests in India. It will suffice to record that, during the first year of his own personal administration and the sixth of his actual reign, he re-attached Málwá to his dominions. Later in the season his generals repelled an attempt