Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 4.djvu/130

MOGHULS. the sixth in descent from Teimour; but the Moghul Imperial dynasty of Delhi can hardly be said to have commenced with the former, and it was from Baber that the succession continued "without interruption to the last titular monarch, who reigned till 1857. Thus the dynasty had lasted three hundred and thirty years—considerably longer than any of its predecessors; nor has there been any other Mahomedan dynasty of India to compare with it in this respect, or with the remarkable characters of many of its members.

Yet it had a narrow escape of extinction in the person of Hoomayoon, the son and successor of Baber, who, after a series of misfortunes, left India as a fugitive in the year 1542, having reigned sixteen years. He did not return as a conqueror to Delhi till the year 1555, the intermediate period having been filled by an Affghan dynasty named Soor; but after his second reign, the Moghul dynasty received no other check until its close.

To Hoomayoon succeeded Akbur, the most noble, as, indeed, the most enlightened of the family. He was placed on the throne on the 15th February, 1556, immediately after his father's death, when he was only thirteen years old; and he reigned in great glory and power until his death, October 13, 1605—a period of fifty-one years and a few months. Under him the imperial power culminated to its greatest effective condition; and the events of his reign display an enlightened policy, which, for the period, was as remarkable as it was benevolent. Before his reign the Hindoos had been treated as infidels and enemies by the bigoted Mahomedans. Akbur not only displayed sympathy for, and with them, but was the first to make use of them in public capacities as servants of the state. It is strange now to read of his abolition of suttee, and of the permission for the re-marriage of Hindoo widows; measures only fully carried out in recent years by our Own Government. During his reign all landed property, whether public or private, was surveyed and assessed for the payment of revenue; and its registration in all the wide-spread provinces of the empire was a work which excites wonder as well as admiration, and has been followed by a similar act on the part of the Government of India. In religion he was perfectly tolerant, and is not without suspicion of scepticism in regard to the Mahomedan faith, and an admiration of, if not an actual belief in, Christianity, with the doctrines and precepts of which he was perfectly acquainted. It was to this great monarch that the first British ambassador, Sir T. Roe, was accredited; and from his account of the court, and that of Bernier, the French merchant and traveller, it is evident that the magnificence, the power, and the practical wisdom of Akbur were in no degree exaggerated. When it is considered, also, that, at his succession, the dynasty can hardly be said to have been securely established, that every department and element of administration had fallen into the last degree of disorder, and had to be created anew, it is the more wonderful, that, in a comparatively few