Page:Akbar and the Rise of the Mughal Empire.djvu/203

196 These scenes were witnessed only on days of high ceremony. At ordinary times Akbar was the simple, unaffected, earnest man, ever striving after truth, such as the work he accomplished gives evidence of. That work was the consolidation of an empire, torn by Muhammadan conquerors for more than four centuries, and at the end of that period still unsettled, still unconsolidated. During those four centuries the principles of the Kurán, read in a bigoted and unnatural sense by the Afghán conquerors, had been distorted to rob and plunder the Hindu population. The most enlightened of his earlier predecessors, Sultán Firuz Sháh, described by an English writer as possessing 'a humane and generous spirit,' confesses how he persecuted those who had not accepted the faith of Islám. Those principles of persecution for conscience sake, unchallenged at the time of the accession of Akbar, Akbar himself abolished.

Akbar's great idea was the union of all India under one head. A union of beliefs he recognised at a very early stage as impossible. The union therefore must be a union of interests. To accomplish such a union it was necessary, first, to conquer; secondly, to respect all consciences and all methods of worshipping the Almighty. To carry out this plan he availed himself to a modified extent only of the Muhammadan ritual. Instead of the formula under which so many persecutions had been organised, 'there is but one God, and Muhammad is his Prophet,' he adopted the revised version there is but one God, and Akbar is his vice-