Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/63

Rh him and he ordered a translation to be made of the Gospels of Christ. Badauni, the Mohammedan writer, says: – "In the year 986 A.H. (1578 A.D.) the missionaries of Europe, who are called Padres, and whose chief pontiff, called Papa, promulgates his interpretations for the use of the people, and who issues mandates that even kings dare not disobey, brought their Gospel to the emperor's notice, advanced proofs of the Trinity, and affirmed the truth and spread abroad the knowledge of the religion of Jesus. The emperor ordered Prince Murad to learn a few lessons from the Gospel and to treat it with all due respect, and Shaikh Abu-l-Fazl was ordered to translate it. Instead of the prefatory Bismillah, the following ejaculation was enjoined: 'O thou whose name is Jesus Christ.'"

Islam no longer satisfied him, though his instinctive devoutness still took him on pilgrimages to Moslem shrines, and as late as the twenty-first year of his reign he was contemplating a journey to Mekka. But Islam was too narrow for his expanding soul. The outward symbols went; the Moslem shibboleth vanished from the coinage, and the ambiguous formula "Allahu Akbar," "God is most great" (or, as detractors construed it, "Akbar is God"), took its place. When Moslems met, instead of the customary salam, they were to say "Allahu Akbar," and the reply, "Jalla Jalaluh," "May his glory shine!" was construed as containing another suspicious reference to Akbar's surname, Jalal-ad-din. While plainly declaring that he pretended to no divine incarnation, such as the Shi'as