Page:Akbar and the Rise of the Mughal Empire.djvu/179

172 with Faizí and Abulfazl, affected the system of administration introduced by the reforming sovereign. In a previous page of this chapter I have quoted an expression of his own, to the effect that he had, at one time of his reign, forced Bráhmans to embrace Muhammadanism. This must have happened because Akbar states it, but of the forced conversions I have found no record. They must have taken place whilst he was still a minor, and whilst the chief authority was wielded by Bairám. From the moment of his assumption of power, that is, from the day on which he gave the till then all-powerful Bairám Khán permission to proceed to Mekka, he announced his intention, from which he never swerved, to employ Hindus and Muhammadans alike without distinction. In the seventh year of his reign, he being then in the twenty-first year of his life, Akbar abolished the practice, heretofore prevailing, by which the troops of the conqueror were permitted to forcibly sell or keep in slavery the wives, children, and dependants of the conquered. Whatever might be the delinquencies of an enemy, his children and the people belonging to him were, according to the proclamation of the sovereign, to be free to go as they pleased to their own houses, or to the houses of their relatives. No one, great or small, was to be made a slave. 'If the husband pursue an evil course,' argued the liberal-minded prince, 'what fault is it of the wife? And if the father rebel, how can the children be blamed?'

The same generous and far-seeing policy was pur-