6. Alī Qulī Beg, from Persia entered Akbar's service, and in the war with the Rānā of Chitōr, served under Prince Salīm (Jahāngīr), who gave him the title of Shēr Afgan, 'tiger-thrower', with reverence to his deeds of prowess. The spelling afgan is correct. The word is the radical of the Persian verb afgandan, 'to throw down'.

7. In October, 1605.

8. Properly Kutb-ud-dīn Khan. He was foster-brother of Prince Salīm (Jahāngīr), and his appointment as viceroy alarmed Shēr Afgan, and caused the latter to throw up his appointment in Bengal. The word Kutb (Qutb) cannot stand alone as a name. Kutb (Qutb)-ud-dīn means 'pole-star of religion'.

9. Tāndān, or Tānra. Ancient town, now a petty village, in Mālda District, Bengal, the capital of Bengal after the decadence of Gaur. Its history is obscure, and the very site of the city has not been accurately determined. It is certain that it was in the immediate neighbourhood of Gaur, and south- west of that town beyond the Bhāgīrathī. Old Tāndān has been utterly swept away by the changes in the course of the Pāglā. It was occupied by the Afghan king of Bengal in A.D. 1564, and is not mentioned after 1660. (I.G., 1908.)

10. This narrative, notwithstanding all the minute details with which it is garnished, cannot be accepted as sober history; and I do not know from what source the author obtained it. 'This lady, whose maiden name was Muhr-un-Nisā, or "Seal of Womankind", had attracted the admiration of Jahāngīr when he was crown prince, but Akbar married her to a young Turkomān and settled them in Bengal. After Jahāngīr's accession the husband was killed in a quarrel with the governor of the province, and the wife was placed under the care of one of Akbar's widows, with whom she remained four years, and then married Jahāngīr (1610). There is nothing to justify a suspicion of the Emperor's connivance in the husband's death; nor do Indian historians corroborate the invidious criticisms of "Normal" by European travellers; on the contrary, they portray Nūr-Mahall as a pattern of all the virtues, and worthy to wield the supreme influence which she obtained over the Emperor.' (Lane-Poole, The History of the Moghul Emperors of Hindustan illustrated by their Coins, p. xix.) The authorities on which this statement is founded are given in E. & D., vol. vi, pp. 397 and 402-5. See also Blochmann, Āīn, vol. i, pp. 496, 524. Details of such stories in the various chronicles always differ. Jahāngīr openly rejoiced in the death of Shēr Afgan, and it is by no means clear that he was not responsible for the event. He was not troubled by nice scruples. The first element in the lady's personal name seems to be Mihr, 'sun', not Muhr, 'seal'. The words are identical in ordinary Persian writing.

11. The long interval which elapsed between Shēr Afgan's death and the marriage with the Emperor is a fact opposed to the assumptions which the author adopts that Nūr Mahall was 'nothing loth', and that the death of her first husband was contrived by Jahāngīr.

12. Quaint Sir Thomas Herbert thus expresses himself: 'Meher Metzia [Mihr-un-nisā] is forthwith espoused with all solemnity to the King, and her name changed to Nourshabegem [Nūr Shāh Bēgam], or Nor-mahal, i.e., Light or Glory of the Court; her Father upon this affinity advanced upon all the other Umbraes ['umarā', or nobles]; her brother, Assaph-Chan [Āsaf Khān], and most of her kindred, smiled upon, with the addition of Honours, Wealth, and Command. And in this Sun-shine of content Jangheer [Jahāngīr] spends some years with his lovely Queen, without regarding ought save Cupid's Currantoes' (Travels, ed. 1677, p. 74). Authority exists for the title Āsaf Jāh, as well as for the variant Āsaf Khān.

Coins were struck in the joint names of Jahāngīr and his consort, bearing a rhyming Persian couplet to the effect that

'By command of Jahāngīr the King, from the name of Nūr Jahān his Queen, gold gained a hundred beauties.'

The Queen's administration is censured by some of the European travellers who visited India during Jahāngīr's reign as being venal and inefficient, and she is accused of cruelty and perfidy. She died on the 18th December (N.S.), 1645, and was buried by the aide of Jahāngīr in his mausoleum at Lahore. At her death she was in her 72nd year, according to the Muhammadan lunar reckoning, and would thus have been thirty-four solar years of age when the Emperor married her in 1610 (Beale: Blochmann).

13. According to Sir Thomas Herbert (Travels, ed. 1677, p. 99), 'Queen Normahal and her three daughters' were confined by order of Shāh Jahān in A.D. 1628.

14. Son of Bhagwān Dās, of Ambēr or Jaipur, in Rājputāna, and one of the greatest of Akbar's officers.

15. Also known as Azīz Kokah, a foster-brother of Akbar.

16. This story may or may not be true; but a charge of this kind is absolutely incapable of proof, and would be readily generated in the palace atmosphere.

17. According to a contemporary authority, the blinding was only partial, and the prince recovered the sight of one eye (E. & D. vi. 448). With regard to such details the discrepancies in the histories are innumerable.

18. A.H. 1031 = A.D. 1621-2. The charge seems to be true.

19. A.H. 1036 = A.D. 1626-7.

20. This is a blunder. Jahāngīr's fourth son was named Jahāndār, and died in or about A.H. 1035 = A.D. 1625-6. Dāniyāl was third son of Akbar, and younger brother of Jahāngīr. He died from delirium tremens in A.D. 1605, a few months before the death of Akbar,

21. Jahāngīr died, when returning from Kāshmīr, on the 8th November, A.D. 1627 (N.S.), and was buried near Lahore. The fight with Shahryār took place at Lahore.

22. Bulākī assumed the title of Dāwar Baksh during his short reign, and struck coins at Lahore. He 'vanished—probably to Persia—after his three months' pretence of royalty; and on 25th January, 1628 (18 Jumāda I, 1037), Shāh-Jahān ascended at Agra the throne which he was to occupy for thirty years'. Shahryār was known by the nickname of Nā-shudanī, or 'Good-for-nothing' (Lane- Poole, The History of the Moghul Emperors of Hindustan, illustrated by their Coins, p. xxiii). The two nephews of Jahāngīr, the sons of Dāniyāl, slaughtered at this time, had been, according to Herbert, baptized as Christians (Travels, ed. 1677, pp. 74, 98). There are great discrepancies in the accounts given by various authorities concerning the fate of Bulākī and the other victims of Shāh Jahān. A dissuasion of the evidence would take too much apace, and must be inconclusive, the fact being that the proceedings were secret, and pains were taken to conceal the truth.

23. The dates of birth are, in Old Style:-Dārā Shikoh, March 20, 1615; Sultan Shujā, May 12, 1616; Aurangzēb, October 10, 1619; and Murād Baksh, not stated (Beale).

24. Ante, Chapter 2, text following [8]. The quotation is from Part III, chap. 19, p. 35 of The Travels of Monsieur de Thevenot, now made English. London, Printed in the year MDCLXXXVII. The author, in his quotation, omits between 'that' and 'The Dutch' the clause 'This indeed is certain that there are few Heathens and Parsis in respect of Mahometans there, and these surpass all the other sects in power as they do in number.'

25. During the reign of Akbar, many Christians, Portuguese, English, and others, visited Agra, and a considerable number settled there. A Roman Catholic church was built, the steeple of which was pulled down by Shāh Jahān. The oldest inscriptions in the cemetery adjoining the Roman Catholic cathedral are in the Armenian character. Three Catholic cemeteries exist at or near Agra, namely

(l) the old Catholic graveyard at the village of Lashkarpur, dating from the time of Akbar, who made a grant of the site about A.D. 1600. This cemetery includes the Martyrs' Chapel, also known as the Chapel of Father Santus (Santucci), which was erected in memory of Khoja Mortenepus, an Armenian merchant, whose epitaph is dated 1611. The next oldest tombstone, that of Father Emmanuel d' Anhaya, who died in prison, bears the date August, 1633. Father Joseph de Castro, who died at Lahore, on December 15, 1646, lies in the same building.

(2) A cemetery in Pādrītola, the native Christian ward of the city behind the old cathedral. Father Tieffenthaler is buried there.

(3) A cemetery in an unnamed village, granted by Jahāngīr, and situated a mile north of Lashkarpur. An unpublished letter in the British Museum shows that Jahāngīr closed the churches in his dominions in 1615. Notwithstanding, the College at Agra was founded about 1617 by an Armenian who is known by his title Mirzā Zul-Qarnain. The acute persecution by Shāh Jahān occurred in 1631.

The artillery men in the Mogul service were not all European Christians. Turks from the Ottoman Empire were freely employed. (See Ep. Ind., ii, 132 note.)

The facts concerning the early history of Christianity in Northern India have been imperfectly studied. In this note I have used chiefly a pamphlet by Father H. Hosten, S. J., entitled Jesuit Missionaries in Northern India, &c. (Catholic Orphan Press, Calcutta, 1907), and the confused little book by Fanthome, Reminiscences of Agra (2nd ed., Thacker, Spink & Co., Calcutta, 1895). The Jesuit and Capuchin Fathers are working at the subject and hope to elucidate it. From the A.S. Progress Rep. N. Circle, Muhammadan Monuments, for 1911-12, p. 21, it appears that arrangements for the proper maintenance of the Old Catholic cemetery are in hand.

The author's observations concerning the official relations of Christianity in India do not apply at all to the very ancient churches of the South (See E.H.I., 3rd ed., 1914, App. M, pp. 245-7). Even in the north, the modern missionary operations may claim to be 'independent of office'.

CHAPTER 53

Father Gregory's Notion of the Impediments to Conversion in India—Inability of Europeans to speak Eastern Languages.

Father Gregory, the Roman Catholic priest, dined with us one evening, and Major Godby took occasion to ask him at table, 'What progress our religion was making among the people?'

'Progress!' said he; 'why, what progress can we ever hope to make among a people who, the moment we begin to talk to them about the miracles performed by Christ, begin to tell us of those infinitely more wonderful performed by Krishna, who lifted a mountain upon his little finger, as an umbrella, to defend his shepherdesses at Govardhan from a shower of rain.[1] The Hindoos never doubt any part of the miracles and prophecies of our scripture—they believe every word of them; and the only thing that surprises them is that they should be so much less wonderful than those of their own scriptures, in which also they implicitly believe. Men who believe that the histories of the wars and amours of Rām and Krishna, two of the incarnations of Vishnu, were written some fifty thousand years before these wars and amours actually took place upon the earth, would of course easily believe in the fulfilment of any prophecy that might be related to them out of any other book;[2] and, as to miracles, there is absolutely nothing too extraordinary for their belief. If a Christian of respectability were to tell a Hindoo that, to satisfy some scruples of the Corinthians, St. Paul had brought the sun and moon down upon the earth, and made them rebound off again into their places, like tennis balls, without the slightest injury to any of the three planets [sic], I do not think he would feel the slightest doubt of the truth of it; but he would immediately be put in mind of something still more extraordinary that Krishna did to amuse the milkmaids, or to satisfy some sceptics of his day, and relate it with all the naïveté imaginable.

I saw at Agra Mirzā Kām Baksh, the eldest son of Sulaimān Shikoh, the eldest son of the brother of the present Emperor. He had spent a season with us at Jubbulpore, while prosecuting his claim to an estate against the Rājā of Rīwā. The Emperor, Shāh Ālam, in his flight before our troops from Bengal (1762), struck off the high road to Delhi at Mirzapore, and came down to Rīwā, where he found an asylum during the season of the rains with the Rīwā Rājā, who assigned for his residence the village of Makanpur.[3] His wife, the Empress, was here delivered of a son, the present Emperor, of Hindustān, Akbar Shāh;[4] and the Rājā assigned to him and his heirs for ever the fee simple of this village. As the members of this family increased in geometrical ratio, under the new system, which gave them plenty to eat with nothing to do, the Emperor had of late been obliged to hunt round for little additions to his income; and in his search he found that Makanpur gave name to a 'pargana', or little district, of which it was the capital, and that a good deal of merchandize passed through this district, and paid heavy dues to the Rājā. Nothing, he thought, would be lost by trying to get the whole district instead of the village; and for this purpose he sent down Kām Baksh, the ablest man of the whole family, to urge and prosecute his claim; but the Rājā was a close, shrewd man, and not to be done out of his revenue, and Kām Baksh was obliged to return minus some thousand rupees, which he had spent in attempting to keep up appearances.

The best of us Europeans feel our deficiencies in conversation with Muhammadans of high rank and education, when we are called upon to talk upon subjects beyond the everyday occurrences of life. A Muhammadan gentleman of education is tolerably acquainted with astronomy, as it was taught by Ptolemy; with the logic and ethics of Aristotle and Plato; with the works of Hippocrates and Galen, through those of Avicenna, or, as they call him, Abū- Alīsīna;[5] and he is very capable of talking upon all subjects of philosophy, literature, science, and the arts, and very much inclined to do so; and of understanding the nature of the improvements that have been made in them in modern times. But, however capable we may feel of discussing these subjects, or explaining these improvements in our own language, we all feel ourselves very much at a loss when we attempt to do it in theirs. Perhaps few Europeans have mixed and conversed more freely with all classes than I have; and yet I feel myself sadly deficient when I enter, as I often do, into discussions with Muhammadan gentlemen of education upon the subject of the character of the governments and institutions of different countries—their effects upon the character and condition of the people; the arts and the sciences; the faculties and operations of the human mind; and the thousand other things which are subjects of everyday conversation among educated and thinking; men in our country. I feel that they could understand me quite well if I could find words for my ideas; but these I cannot find, though their languages abound in them, nor have I ever met the European gentleman who could. East Indians can;[6] but they commonly want the ideas as much as we want the language. The chief cause of this deficiency is the want of sufficient intercourse with men in whose presence we should be ashamed to appear ignorant—this is the great secret, and all should know and acknowledge it.

We are not ashamed to convey our orders to our native servants in a barbarous language. Military officers seldom speak to their 'sipāhīs' (sepoys) and native officers, about anything but arms, accoutrements, and drill; or to other natives about anything but the sports of the field; and, as long as they are understood, they care not one straw in what language they express themselves. The conversation of the civil servants with their native officers takes sometimes a wider range; but they have the same philosophical indifference as to the language in which they attempt to convey their ideas; and I have heard some of our highest diplomatic characters talking,[7] without the slightest feeling of shame or embarrassment, to native princes on the most ordinary subjects of everyday interest in a language which no human being but themselves could understand. We shall remain the same till some change of system inspire us with stronger motives to please and conciliate the educated classes of the native community. They may be reconciled, but they can never be charmed out of their prejudices or the errors of their preconceived opinions by such language as the European gentlemen are now in the habit of speaking to them.[8] We must learn their language better, or we must teach them our own, before we can venture to introduce among them those free institutions which would oblige us to meet them on equal terms at the bar, on the bench, and in the senate.[9] Perhaps two of the best secular works that were ever written upon the facilities and operations of the human mind, and the duties of men in their relations with each other, are those of Imām-ud-dīn Ghazzālī, and Nasīr-ud-dīn of Tūs.[10] Their idol was Plato, but their works are of a more practical character than his, and less dry than those of Aristotle.

I may here mention the following, among many instances that occur to me, of the amusing mistakes into which Europeans are liable to fall in their conversation with natives.

Mr. J. W———n, of the Bengal Civil Service, commonly known by the name of Beau W———n,[11] was the Honourable Company's opium agent at Patna, when I arrived at Dinapore to join my regiment in 1810.[12] He had a splendid house, and lived in excellent style; and was never so happy as when he had a dozen young men from the Dinapore cantonments living with him. He complained that year, as I was told, that he had not been able to save more than one hundred thousand rupees that season out of his salary and commission upon the opium, purchased by the Government from the cultivators.[13] The members of the civil service, in the other branches of public service, were all anxious to have it believed by their countrymen that they were well acquainted with their duties, and able and willing to perform them; but the Honourable Company's commercial agents were, on the contrary, generally anxious to make their countrymen believe that they neither knew nor cared anything about their duties, because they were ashamed of them. They were sinecure posts for the drones of the service, or for those who had great interest and no capacity.[14] Had any young man made it appear that he really thought W———n knew or cared anything about his duties, he would certainly never have been invited to his house again; and if any one knew, certainly no one seemed to know that he had any other duty than that of entertaining his guests.

No one ever spoke the native language so badly, because no man had ever so little intercourse with the natives; and it was, I have been told, to his ignorance of the native languages that his bosom friend, Mr. P———st, owed his life on one occasion. W. sat by the sick-bed of his friend with unwearied attention, for some days and nights, after the doctors had declared his case entirely hopeless. He proposed at last to try change of air, and take him on the river Ganges. The doctors, thinking that he might as well die in his boat on the river as in his house at Calcutta, consented to his taking him on board. They got up as far as Hooghly, when P. said that he felt better and thought he could eat something. What should it be? A little roasted kid perhaps. The very thing that he was longing for! W. went out upon the deck to give orders for the kid, that his friend might not be disturbed by the gruff voice of the old 'khānsāmā' (butler). P. heard the conversation, however.

'Khānsāmā', said the Beau W., 'you know that my friend Mr. P. is very ill?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And that he has not eaten anything for a month?'

'A long time for a man to fast, sir.'

'Yes, Khānsāmā, and his stomach is now become very delicate, and could not stand anything strong.'

'Certainly not, sir.'

'Well, Khānsāmā, then he has taken a fancy to a roasted mare' ('mādiyān'), meaning a 'halwān', or kid.'[15]

'A roasted mare, sir?'

'Yes, Khānsāmā, a roasted mare, which you must have nicely prepared.'

'What, the whole, sir?'

'Not the whole at one time; but have the whole ready as there is no knowing what part he may like best.'

The old butter had heard of the Tartars eating their horses when in robust health, but the idea of a sick man, not able to move in his bed without assistance, taking a fancy to a roasted mare, quite staggered him.

'But, sir, I may not be able to get such a thing as a mare at a moment's notice; and if I get her she will be very dear.'

'Never mind, Khānsāmā, get you the mare, cost what she will; if she costs a thousand rupees my friend shall have her. He has taken a fancy to the mare, and the mare he shall have, if she costs a thousand rupees.'

The butter made his salaam, said he would do his best, and took his leave, requesting that the boats might be kept at the bank of the river till he came back.

W. went into his sick friend, who, with great difficulty, managed to keep his countenance while he complained of the liberties old servants were in the habit of taking with their masters. 'They think themselves privileged', said W., 'to conjure up difficulties in the way of everything that one wants to have done.'

'Yes', said P———st, 'we like to have old and faithful servants about us, particularly when we are sick; but they are apt to take liberties, which new ones will not.'

In about two hours the butler's approach was announced from the deck, and W. walked out to scold him for his delay. The old gentleman was coming down over the bank, followed by about eight men bearing the four quarters of an old mare. The butler was very fat; and the proud consciousness of having done his duty, and met his master's wishes in a very difficult and important point, had made him a perfect Falstaff. He marshalled his men in front of the cooking-boat, and then came towards his master, who for some time stood amazed, and unable to speak. At last he roared out, 'And what the devil have you here?'

'Why, the mare that the sick gentleman took a fancy for; and dear enough she has cost me; not a farthing less than two hundred rupees would the fellow take for his mare.'

P———st could contain himself no longer; he burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, during which the abscess in his liver burst into the intestines, and he felt himself relieved, as if by enchantment. The mistake was rectified—he got his kid; and in ten days he was taken back to Calcutta a sound man, to the great astonishment of all the doctors.

During the first campaign against Nepāl, in 1815, Colonel, now Major-General, O.H., who commanded the———Regiment, N. I.,[16] had to march with his regiment through the town of Darbhanga, the capital of the Rājā, who came to pay his respects to him. He brought a number of presents, but the colonel, a high-minded, amiable man, never took anything himself, nor suffered any person in his camp to do so, in the districts they passed through without paying for it. He politely declined to take any of the presents; but said that he 'had heard that Darbhanga produced crows ("kauwā"), and should be glad to get some of them if the Rājā could spare them,'—meaning coffee, or 'kahwā'.

The Rājā stared, and said that certainly they had abundance of crows in Darbhanga; but he thought they were equally abundant in all parts of India.

'Quite the contrary, Rājā Sāhib, I assure you,' said the colonel; 'there is not such a thing as a crow to be found in any part of the Company's dominions that I have seen, and I have been all over them.'

'Very strange!' said the Rājā, turning round to his followers.

'Yes,' replied they,' it is very strange, Rājā Sāhib; but such is your 'ikbāl' (good fortune), that everything thrives under it; and, if the colonel should wish to have a few crows, we could easily collect them for him.'

'If', said the colonel, greatly delighted, 'you could provide us with a few of these crows, we should really feel very much obliged to you; for we have a long and cold campaign before us among the bleak hills of Nepal; and we are all fond of crows.'

'Indeed,' returned the Rājā, 'I shall be happy to send you as many as you wish.' ('Much' and 'many' are expressed by the same term.)

'Then we should be glad to have two or three bags full, if it would not be robbing you.'

'Not in the least,' said the Rājā; 'I will go home and order them to be collected immediately.'

In the evening, as the officers, with the colonel at their head, were sitting down to dinner, a man came up to announce the Rājā's present. Three fine large bags were brought in, and the colonel requested that one might be opened immediately. It was opened accordingly, and the mess butler ('khansāmān') drew out by the legs a fine old crow. The colonel immediately saw the mistake, and laughed as heartily as the rest at the result. A polite message was sent to the Rājā, requesting that he would excuse his having made it—for he had had half a dozen men out shooting crows all day with their matchlocks. Few Europeans spoke the language better than General ———, and I do not believe that one European in a thousand, at this very moment, makes any difference, or knows any difference, in the sound of the two terms.

Kām Baksh had one sister married to the King of Oudh, and another to Mirzā Salīm, the younger son of the Emperor. Mirzā Salīm and his wife could not agree, and a separation took place, and she went to reside with her sister, the Queen of Oudh. The King saw her frequently; and, finding her more beautiful than his wife, he demanded her also in marriage from her father, who resided at Lucknow, the capital of Oudh, on a pension of five thousand rupees a month from the King. He would not consent, and demanded his daughter; the King, finding her willing to share his bed and board with her sister, would not give her up.[17] The father got his old friend, Colonel Gardiner, who had married a Muhammadan woman of rank, to come down and plead his cause. The King gave up the young woman, but at the same time stopped the father's pension, and ordered him and all his family out of his dominions. He set out with Colonel Gardiner and his daughter, on his road to Delhi, through Kāsganj, the residence of the colonel, who was one day recommending the prince to seek consolation for the loss of his pension in the proud recollection of having saved the honour of the house of Tamerlane, when news was brought to them that the daughter had run off from camp with his (Colonel Gardiner's) son James, who had accompanied him to Lucknow. The prince and the colonel mounted their horses, and rode after him; but they were so much heavier and older than the young ones, that they soon gave up the chase in despair. Sulaimān Shikoh insisted upon the colonel immediately fighting him, after the fashion of the English, with swords or pistols, but was soon persuaded that the honour of the house of Tīmūr would be much better preserved by allowing the offending parties to marry ![18] The King of Oudh was delighted to find that the old man had been so punished; and the Queen no less so to find herself so suddenly and unexpectedly relieved from all dread of her sister's return. All parties wrote to my friend Kām Baksh, who was then at Jubbulpore;[19] and he came off with their letters to me to ask whether I thought the incident might not be turned to account in getting the pension for his father restored.[20]

Notes:

1. Govardhan is a very sacred place of pilgrimage, full of temples, situated in the Mathurā (Muttra) district, sixteen miles west of Mathurā, Regulation V of 1826 annexed Govardhan to the Agra district. In 1832 Mathurā was made the head- quarters of a new district, Govardhan and other territory being transferred from Agra.

2. The Purānas, even when narrating history after a fashion, are cast in the form of prophecies. The Bhāgavat Purāna is especially devoted to the legends of Krishna. The Hindī version of the 10th Book (skandha) is known as the 'Prēm Sāgar', or 'Ocean of Love', and is, perhaps, the most wearisome book in the world.

3. This flight occurred during the struggles following the battle of Plassy in 1757, which were terminated by the battle of Buxar in 1764, and the grant to the East India Company of the civil administration of Bengal, Bihār and Orissa in the following year. Shāh Ālam bore, in weakness and misery, the burden of the imperial title from 1759 to 1806. From 1765 to 1771 he was the dependent of the English at Allahabad. From 1771 to 1803 he was usually under the control of Marāthā chiefs, and from the time of Lord Lake's entry into Delhi, in 1803 he became simply a prisoner of the British Government. His successors occupied the same position. In 1788 he was barbarously blinded by the Rohilla chief, Ghulām Kādir.

4. Akbar II. His position as Emperor was purely titular.

5. The name is printed as Booalee Shina in the original edition. His full designation is Abū Alī al-Husain ibn Abdullah ibn Sīnā, which means 'that Sīnā was his grandfather. Avicenna is a corruption of either Abū Sīnā or Ibn Sīnā. He lived a strenuous, passionate life, but found time to compose about a hundred treatises on medicine and almost every subject known to Arabian science. He died in A.D. 1037. A good biography of him will be found in Encyclo. Brit., 11th ed., 1910.

6. Otherwise called Eurasians, or, according to the latest official decree, Anglo-Indians.

7. 'Diplomatic characters' would now be described as officers of the Political Department.

8. These remarks of the author should help to dispel the common delusion that the English officials of the olden time spoke the Indian languages better than their more highly trained successors.

9. The author wrote these words at the moment of the inauguration by Lord William Bentinck and Macaulay of the new policy which established English as the official language of India, and the vehicle for the higher instruction of its people, as enunciated in the resolution dated 7th March, 1835, and described by Boulger in Lord William Bentinck (Rulers of India, 1897), chap. 8. The decision then formed and acted on alone rendered possible the employment of natives of India in the higher branches of the administration. Such employment has gradually year by year increased, and certainly will further increase, at least up to the extreme limit of safety. Indians now (1914) occupy seats in the Council of India in London, and in the Executive and Legislative Councils of the Governor- General, Provincial Governors, and Lieutenant-Governors. They hold most of the judicial appointments and fill many responsible executive offices.

10. Khojah Nasīr-ud-dīn of Tūs in Persia was a great astronomer, philosopher, and mathematician in the thirteenth century. The author's Imām-ud-dīn Ghazzālī is intended for Abū Hāmid Imām al Ghazzālī, one of the most famous of Musulmān doctors. He was born at Tūs, the modern Mashhad (Meshed) in Khurāsān, and died in A.D. 1111. His works are numerous. One is entitled The Ruin of Philosophies, and another, the most celebrated, is The Resuscitation of Religious Sciences (F. J. Arbuthnot, A Manual of Arabian History and Literature, London, 1890). These authors are again referred to in a subsequent chapter. I am not able to judge the propriety of Sleeman's enthusiastic praise.

11. The gentleman referred to was Mr. John Wilton, who was appointed to the service in 1775.

12. The cantonments at Dinapore (properly Dānāpur) are ten miles distant from the great city of Patna.

13. The rupee was worth more than two shillings in 1810. The remuneration of high officials by commission has been long abolished.

14. There used to be two opium agents, one at Patna, and the other at Ghāzīpur, who administered the Opium Department under the control of the Board of Revenue in Calcutta. In deference to the demands of the Chinese Government and of public opinion in England, the Agency at Ghāzīpur has been closed, and the Government of India is withdrawing gradually from the opium trade. Such lucrative sinecures as those described in the text have long ceased to exist.

15. These Persian words would not now be used in orders to servants.

16. This officer was Sir Joseph O'Halloran, K.C.B., attached to the 18th Regiment, N.I. He became a Lieutenant-Colonel on June 4, 1814, and Major-General on January 10, 1837. He is mentioned in Ramaseeana (p 59) as Brigadier-General commanding the Sāgar Division.

17. The King's demand was improper and illegal. The Muhammadan law, like the Jewish (Leviticus xviii, 18), prohibits a man from being married to two sisters at once. 'Ye are also forbidden to take to wife two sisters; except what is already past: for God is gracious and merciful' (Korān, chap. iv). Compare the ruling in 'Mishkāt-ul-Masābih', Book XIII, chap. v, Part II (Matthews, vol. ii, p. 94).

18. The colonel's son has succeeded to his father's estates, and he and his wife are, I believe, very happy together. [W. H. S.] Such an incident would, of course, be now inconceivable. The family name is also spelled Gardner. The romantic history of the Gardners is summarized in the appendix to A Particular Account of the European Military Adventures of Hindustan, from 1784 to 1803; compiled by Herbert Compton: London, 1892.

19. Ante, Chapter 53 text between [2] and [3].

20. Kāsganj, the residence of Colonel Gardner, is in the Etah district of the United Provinces. In 1911 the population was 16,429.

CHAPTER 54

Fathpur-Sīkrī—The Emperor Akbar's Pilgrimage—Birth of Jahāngīr.

On the 6th January we left Agra, which soon after became the residence of the Governor of the North-Western Provinces, Sir Charles Metcalfe.[1] It was, when I was there, the residence of a civil commissioner, a judge, a magistrate, a collector of land revenue, a collector of customs, and all their assistants and establishments. A brigadier commands the station, which contained a park of artillery, one regiment of European and four regiments of native infantry.[2]

Near the artillery practice-ground, we passed the tomb of Jodh Bāī, the wife of the Emperor Akbar, and the mother of Jahāngīr. She was of Rājpūt caste, daughter of the Hindoo chief of Jodhpur, a very beautiful, and, it is said, a very amiable woman.[3] The Mogul Emperors, though Muhammadans, were then in the habit of taking their wives from among the Rājpūt princes of the country, with a view to secure their allegiance. The tomb itself is in ruins, having only part of the dome standing, and the walls and magnificent gateway that at one time surrounded it have been all taken away and sold by a thrifty Government, or appropriated to purposes of more practical utility.[4]

I have heard many Muhammadans say that they could trace the decline of their empire in Hindustan to the loss of the Rājpūt blood in the veins of their princes.[5] 'Better blood' than that of the Rājpūts of India certainly never flowed in the veins of any human beings; or, what is the same thing, no blood was ever believed to be finer by the people themselves and those they had to deal with. The difference is all in the imagination, and the imagination is all-powerful with nations as with individuals. The Britons thought their blood the finest in the world till they were conquered by the Romans, the Picts, the Scots, and the Saxons. The Saxons thought theirs the finest in the world till they were conquered by the Danes and the Normans. This is the history of the human race. The quality of the blood of a whole people has depended often upon the fate of a battle, which in the ancient world doomed the vanquished to the hammer; and the hammer changed the blood of those sold by it from generation to generation. How many Norman robbers got their blood ennobled, and how many Saxon nobles got theirs plebeianized by the Battle of Hastings; and how difficult it would be for any of us to say from which we descended—the Britons or the Saxons, the Danes or the Normans; or in what particular action our ancestors were the victors or the vanquished, and became ennobled or plebeianized by the thousand accidents which influence the fate of battles. A series of successful aggressions upon their neighbours will commonly give a nation a notion that they are superior in courage; and pride will make them attribute this superiority to blood—that is, to an old date. This was, perhaps, never more exemplified than in the case of the Gūrkhas of Nepal, a small diminutive race of men not unlike the Huns, but certainly as brave as any men can possibly be. A Gūrkha thought himself equal to any four other men of the hills, though they were all much stronger; just as a Dane thought himself equal to four Saxons at one time in Britain. The other men of the hills began to think that he really was so, and could not stand before him.[6]

We passed many wells from which the people were watering their fields, and found those which yielded a brackish water were considered to be much more valuable for irrigation than those which yielded sweet water. It is the same in the valley of the Nerbudda, but brackish water does not suit some soils and some crops. On the 8th we reached Fathpur Sīkrī, which lies about twenty- four miles from Agra, and stands upon the back of a narrow range of sandstone hills, rising abruptly from the alluvial plains to the highest, about one hundred feet, and extends three miles north-north- east and south-south-west. This place owes its celebrity to a Muhammadan saint, the Shaikh Salīm of Chisht, a town in Persia, who owed his to the following circumstance:

The Emperor Akbar's sons had all died in infancy, and he made a pilgrimage to the shrine of the celebrated Muīn-ud-dīn of Chisht, at Ajmēr. He and his family went all the way on foot at the rate of three 'kōs', or four miles, a day, a distance of about three hundred and fifty miles. 'Kanāts', or cloth walls, were raised on each side of the road, carpets spread over it, and high towers of burnt bricks erected at every stage, to mark the places where he rested. On reaching the shrine he made a supplication to the saint, who at night appeared to him in his sleep, and recommended him to go and entreat the intercession of a very holy old man, who lived a secluded life upon the top of the little range of hills at Sīkrī. He went accordingly, and was assured by the old man, then ninety-six years of age, that the Empress Jodh Bāī, the daughter of a Hindoo prince, would be delivered of a son, who would live to a good old age. She was then pregnant, and remained in the vicinity of the old man's hermitage till her confinement, which took place 31st of August, 1569. The infant was called after the hermit, Mirzā Salīm, and became in time Emperor of Hindostan, under the name of Jahāngīr.[7] It was to this Emperor Jahāngīr that Sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador, was sent from the English Court.[8] Akbar, in order to secure to himself, his family, and his people, the advantage of the continued intercessions of so holy a man, took up his residence at Sīkrī, and covered the hill with magnificent buildings for himself, his courtiers, and his public establishments.[9]

The quadrangle, which contains the mosque on the west side, and tomb of the old hermit in the centre, was completed in the year 1578, six years before his death; and is, perhaps, one of the finest in the world. It is five hundred and seventy-five feet square, and surrounded by a high wall, with a magnificent cloister all around within.[10] On the outside is a magnificent gateway, at the top of a noble flight of steps twenty-four feet high. The whole gateway is one hundred and twenty feet in height, and the same in breadth, and presents beyond the wall five sides of an octagon, of which the front face is eighty feet wide. The arch in the centre of this space is sixty feet high by forty wide.[11] This gateway is no doubt extremely grand and beautiful; but what strikes one most is the disproportion between the thing wanted and the thing provided—there seems to be something quite preposterous in forming so enormous an entrance for a poor diminutive man to walk through—and walk he must, unless carried through on men's shoulders; for neither elephant, horse, nor bullock could ascend over the flight of steps. In all these places the staircases, on the contrary, are as disproportionately small; they look as if they were made for rats to crawl through, while the gateways seem as if they were made for ships to sail under.[12] One of the most interesting sights was the immense swarms of swallows flying round the thick bed of nests that occupy the apex of this arch, and, to the spectators below, they look precisely like swarm of bees round a large honeycomb. I quoted a passage in the Korān in praise of the swallows, and asked the guardians of the place whether they did not think themselves happy in having such swarms of sacred birds over their heads all day long. 'Not at all,' said they; 'they oblige us to sweep the gateway ten times a day; but there is no getting at their nests, or we should soon get rid of them.' They then told me that the sacred bird of the Korān was the 'abābīl', or large black swallow, and not the 'partādīl', a little piebald thing of no religious merit whatever.[13] On the right side of the entrance is engraven on stone in large letters, standing out in bas-relief, the following passage in Arabic: 'Jesus, on whom be peace, has said, "The word is merely a bridge; you are to pass over it, and not to build your dwellings upon it".' Where this saying of Christ is to be found I know not, nor has any Muhammadan yet been able to tell me; but the quoting of such a passage, in such a place, is a proof of the absence of all bigotry on the part of Akbar.[14]

The tomb of Shaikh Salīm, the hermit, is a very beautiful little building, in the centre of the quadrangle.[15] The man who guards it told me that the Jāts, while they reigned, robbed this tomb, as well as those at Agra, of some of the most beautiful and valuable portion of the mosaic work.[16] 'But,' said he, 'they were well plundered in their turn by your troops at Bharatpur; retribution always follows the wicked sooner or later.'[17] He showed us the little roof of stone tiles, close to the original little dingy mosque of the old hermit, where the Empress gave birth to Jahāngīr;[18] and told us that she was a very sensible woman, whose counsels had great weight with the Emperor.[19] 'His majesty's only fault was', he said, 'an inclination to learn the art of magic, which was taught him by an old Hindoo religious mendicant,' whose apartment near the palace he pointed out to us.

'Fortunately,' said our cicerone, 'the fellow died before the Emperor had learnt enough to practise the art without his aid.'

Shaikh Salīm had, he declared, gone more than twenty times on pilgrimage to the tomb of the holy prophet; and was not much pleased to have his repose so much disturbed by the noise and bustle of the imperial court. At last, Akbar wanted to surround the hill with regular fortifications, and the Shaikh could stand it no longer.[20] 'Either you or I must leave this hill,' said he to the Emperor; 'if the efficacy of my prayers is no longer to be relied upon, let me depart in peace.' 'If it be your majesty's will,' replied the Emperor, 'that one should go, let it be your slave, I pray.' The old story: 'There is nothing like relying upon the efficacy of our prayers,' say the priests, 'Nothing like relying upon that of our sharp swords,' say the soldiers; and, as nations advance from barbarism, they generally contrive to divide between them the surplus produce of the land and labour of society.

The old hermit consented to remain, and pointed out Agra as a place which he thought would answer the Emperor's purpose extremely well. Agra, then an unpeopled waste, soon became a city, and Fathpur- Sīkrī was deserted.[21] Cities which, like this, are maintained by the public establishments that attend and surround the courts of sovereign princes, must always, like this, become deserted when these sovereigns change their resting-places. To the history of the rise and progress, decline and fall, of how many cities is this the key?

Close to the tomb of the saint is another containing the remains of a great number of his descendants, who continue to enjoy, under the successors of Akbar, large grants of rent-free lands for their own support, and for that of the mosque and mausoleum. These grants have, by degrees, been nearly all resumed;[22] and, as the repair of the buildings is now entrusted to the public officers of our government, the surviving members of the saint's family, who still reside among the ruins, are extremely poor. What strikes a European most in going over these palaces of the Moghal Emperors is the want of what a gentleman of fortune in his own country would consider elegantly comfortable accommodations. Five hundred pounds a year would at the present day secure him more of this in any civilized country of Europe or America than the greatest of those Emperors could command. He would, perhaps, have the same impression in going over the domestic architecture of the most civilized nations of the ancient world, Persia and Egypt, Greece and Rome.[23]

Notes:

1. The Act of 1833 (3 & 4 William IV, c. 85), which reconstituted the government of India, provided that the upper Provinces should be formed into a separate Presidency under the name of Agra, and Sir Charles Metcalfe was nominated as the first Governor. On reconsideration, this arrangement was modified, and instead of the Presidency of Agra, the Lieutenant-Governorship of the North-Western Provinces was formed, with head-quarters at Agra. Sir C. Metcalfe became Lieutenant-Governor in 1836, but held the office for a short time only, until January, 1838, when Lord Auckland, the Governor-General, took over temporary charge. The seat of the Local Government was moved to Allahabad in 1868. From 1877 the Lieutenant- Governor of the North-Western Provinces was also Chief Commissioner of Oudh. The name North-Western Provinces, which had become unsuitable and misleading since the annexation of the Panjāb in 1849, could not be retained after the formation of the North-West Frontier Province in 1902. Accordingly, from that year the combined jurisdiction of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh received the new official name of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. The title of Chief Commissioner of Oudh was dropped at the same time, but the legal System and administration of the old kingdom of Oudh continued to be distinct in certain respects.

2. The civil establishment and garrison are still nearly the same as in the author's time. The inland customs department is now concerned only with the restrictions on the manufacture of salt. The offices of district magistrate and collector of land revenue have long been combined in a single officer.

3. Akbar married the daughter of Bihārī Mal, chief of Jaipur, in A.D. 1562. There is little doubt that she, Mariam-uz- Zamānī, was the mother of Jahāngīr. See Blochmann, transl. Aīn, vol. i, p. 619. Mr. Beveridge has given up the opinion which he formerly advocated in J.A.S.B., vol. lvi (1887), Part I, pp. 164-7.

The Jodhpur princess was given the posthumous title of 'Mariam-uz- Zamānī', or 'Mary of the age', which circumstance probably originated the belief that Akbar had one Christian queen. Her tomb at Sikandara is locally known simply as Rauza Maryam, 'the mausoleum of Mary', a designation which has had much to do with the persistence of the erroneous belief in the existence of a Christian consort of Akbar. Mr. Beveridge holds, and I think rightly, that Jodh Bāī is not a proper name. It seems to mean merely 'princess of Jodhpur'. The only lady really known as Jodh Bāī was the daughter of Udai Singh (Mōth Rājā) of Jaipur, who became a consort of Jahāngīr. Sleeman's notion that Jahāngīr's mother also was called Jodh Bāī is mistaken (Blochmann, ut supra).

4. It was blown up about 1832 by order of the Government, and the materials of the gates, walls, and outer towns were used for the building of barracks. But the mausoleum itself resisted the spoiler and remained 'a huge shapeless heap of massive fragments of masonry'. The building consisted of a square room raised on a platform with a vault below. The marble tomb or cenotaph of the queen still exists in the vault. A fine gateway formerly stood at the entrance to the enclosure, and there was a small mosque to the west of the tomb (A.S.R. vol. iv. (1874), p. 121: Muh. Latif, Agra, p. 192). It is painful to be obliged to record so many instances of vandalism committed by English officials. This tomb is the memorial of Jodh Bāī, daughter of Udai Singh, alias Mōth Rājā, who was married to Jahāngīr in A.D. 1585, and was the mother of Shāh Jahān. Her personal names were Jagat Goshaini and Bālmatī. She died in A.D. 1619. Akbar's queen, Maryam- uz-Zamānī, daughter of Rājā Bihārī Mall of Jaipur (Ambēr), who died in A.D. 1623, is buried at Sīkandra. (See Beale, s.v. 'Jodh Bāī' and 'Mariam Zamānī'; Blochmann, transl. Aīn, pp. 429, 619.) The tomb of Maryam-uz- Zamānī has been purchased by Government from the missionaries, who had used it as a school, and has been restored. (Ann. Rep. A.S., India, 1910-11, pp. 92-6.)

5. Although it may be admitted that the Rājpūt strain of blood improved the constitution of the royal family of Delhi, the decline and fall of the Timuride dynasty cannot be truly ascribed to 'the loss of the Rājpūt blood in the veins' of the ruling princes. The empire was tottering to its fall long before the death of Aurangzēb, who 'had himself married two Hindoo wives; and he wedded his son Muazzam (afterwards the Emperor Bahādur) to a Hindoo princess, as his forefathers had done before him'. (Lane-Poole, The History of the Moghul Emperors of Hindustan illustrated by their Coins, p. xviii. ) The wonder is, not that the empire of Delhi fell, but that it lasted so long.

6. When the author wrote the above remarks, Englishmen knew the gallant Gūrkhas as enemies only; they now know them as worthy and equal brethren in arms. The recruitment of Gūrkhas for the British service began in 1838. The spelling 'Gōrkhā' is more accurate.

7. The 'kōs' varies much in value, but in most parts of the United Provinces it is reckoned as equal to two miles. According to the N.W.P. Gazetteer (p. 568), the nearest approximate value for the Agra kōs is 1¾ mile. Three kōs would, therefore, be equal to about 5¼ miles. Muīn-ud- dīn died in A.D. 1236. Sleeman, on I know not what authority, represents Akbar as resorting to Salīm Chishtī, Shaikh of Fathpur- Sīkrī, on the advice given by a vision accorded at Ajmēr. The Tabaqāt-i-Akbarī simply records that Akbar had visited the Shaikh, the 'very holy old man' of Sleeman, several times, and had obtained the promise of a son. That promise was fulfilled by the birth of the princes Salīm and Murād, who both saw the light at Fathpur-Sīkrī. The pilgrimage of Akbar on foot to Ajmēr, which began on Friday, Shabān (8th month) 12, A.H. 977, took place after the birth of Prince Salīm, which occurred on the 18th of Rabī-ul-auwwal (3rd month) of the same Hijrī year. Akbar travelled at the rate of 7 or 8 kōs a day, and spent about 25 days on the journey (E. & D. v. 333, 334). If he had moved at the rate stated by Sleeman he would have been nearly three months on the road. He reached Ajmēr about the middle of February (N.S.). Shaikh Salīm Chishtī died in A.D. 1572 (A. H. 979) aged 96 lunar years.

8. Sir Thomas Roe was sent out by James I, and arrived at Jahāngīr's court in January, 1616. He remained there till 1618, and secured for his countrymen the privilege of trading at Surat. The best edition of his book is that by Mr. William Foster (Hakluyt Soc., 1899).

9. Fathpur-Sīkrī is fully described and illustrated in the late Mr. E. W. Smith's fine work in quarto entitled The Moghul Architecture of Fathpur-Sīkrī (4 Parts, Allahabad Govt. Press, 1894-8), which supersedes all other writings on the subject. The double name of the town means 'Fathpur at Sīkrī' according to a familiar Indian practice. The name Fathpur ('City of Victory') was bestowed in A.D. 1573 to commemorate the glorious campaign in Gujarāt, but building on the site had been begun in 1569. The historians usually call the town simply Fathpur, which name also is found on the coinage, from probably A.H. 977 (A.D. 1569-70). The mint was not in regular working order until eight years later (A.H. 985). Coins continued to be struck regularly at Fathpur until A.H. 989 (A.D. 1581-2). Akbar abandoned his costly foundation a little later. The only coin from the Fathpur mint of subsequent date is one of the first year of Shāhjahān (Wright, Catalogue of Coins in Indian Museum, Mughal Emperors, 1908, p. xlvii). But Rodgers believed in the genuineness of a zodiacal gold coin of Jahāngīr purporting to be struck at Fathpur (J.A.S.B., vol. lvii (1888), Part I, p. 26).

10. Sleeman's dates and details require much correction. The mosque was completed at some time in the year A.H. 979 (May 26, 1571, to May 13, 1572, o.s.), excepting the Buland Darwāza, which was erected in A.H. 983 (1575-6). The 'old hermit', Shaikh Salīm, died on February 13, 1572 (Ramazān 27, A.H. 979). E. W. Smith (op. cit., Part IV, p. 1) gives the correct measurements as follow: 'Exclusive of the bastions upon the angles it measures 542' from east to west to the outside of the līwān or sanctuary, or 515' 3" to the outside of the west main wall (which sets back from the outer wall of the līwān) and 438' from north to south. The general plan adopted by Muhammadans for their masjids has been followed. In the centre is a vast courtyard open to the heavens, measuring 359' 10" by 438' 9", surrounded on the north, south, and east sides by spacious cloisters 38' 3" in depth, and on the west by the līwān itself, 288' 2" in length by 65' deep. It is said to be copied from one at Makka [Mecca], and was erected according to a chronogram over the main arch in A.D. 1571, or at the same time as Rajah Bir Bal's house.' The 'six years before his death' of Sleeman's text should be 'six months' (Latif, Agra, p. 149).

11. The southern portal, known as the Buland Darwāza, or Lofty Gateway, does not match the other gateways. It was built in A.D. 1575-6 (A.H. 983), and was adorned in A.D. 1601-2 (A.H. 1010) with an inscription recording Akbar's triumphant return from his campaign in the Deccan. The date is fixed by a chronogram, preserved in Beale's work entitled Miftāh-ul- tawārīkh (Ann. Progr. Rep. A. S. Northern Circle, for 1905-6, p. 34, correcting E. W. Smith). Correct measurements are:

Full details, with ample illustrations, are given by E. W. Smith, op. cit., Part IV, chap. ii. In the original edition of Sleeman a chromolithograph of the gateway is inserted. Photographs are reproduced in H.F.A., Pl. xcvi, and Fergusson, History of Indian and E. Archit. (ed. 1910), fig. 425.

12. Fergusson (ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 297) successfully justifies the vast size of the gateway. 'The semi-dome is the modulus of the design, and its scale that by which the imagination measures its magnificence.'

The cramped staircases criticized by Sleeman are those ascending from the pavement to the roof, one on the north-west, and the other on the north-east side of the gate. Each flight has 123 steep steps.

13. See the 105th chapter of the Korān. 'Hast thou not seen how thy Lord dealt with the masters of the elephant? Did he not make their treacherous design an occasion of drawing them into error; and send against them flocks of swallows which cast down upon them stones of baked clay, and rendered them like the leaves of corn eaten by cattle?' [W. H. S.] The quotation is from Sale's translation, but Sale uses the word 'birds', and not 'swallows'. In his note, where he tells the whole story, he speaks of 'a large flock of birds like swallows'. The Arabic, Persian, and Hindustānī dictionaries give no other word than 'abābīl' for swallow. The word 'partādīl' (purtadeel) occurs in none of them. According to Oates, Fauna of British India (London, 1890), the 'abābīl' is the common swallow, Hirundo rustica; and the 'mosque-swallow' ('masjid-abābīl'), otherwise called 'Sykes's striated swallow', is the H. erythropygia, H. Daurica of Balfour, Cyclop. of India, 3rd ed., s.v. Hirundinidae. This latter species is the 'little piebald thing' mentioned by the author.

14. Muh. Latif (Agra, pp. 146, 147) gives the text and English rendering of the inscription, which is in Persian, except the logion ascribed to Jesus, which is in Arabic. His translation of the Jesus saying is as follows:

'So said Jeans, on whom be peace! "The world is a bridge; pass over it, but build no house on it. He who reflected on the distresses of the Day of Judgement gained pleasure everlasting.

'"Worldly pleasures are but momentary; spend, then, thy life in devotion and remember that what remains of it is valueless".'

Like the author, I am unable to trace the source of the quotation. The inscription probably was recorded after Akbar's breach with Islam, which may be dated from 1579 or 1580. When he built the mosque, in 1571-5, he was still a devout Musalman, although entertaining liberal opinions. He died on October 25, 1605 (N.S.; October 15, O.S.)

15. For a full account of the exquisite sepulchre of Shaikh Salīm, see E. W. Smith, op. cit.. Part III, chap. ii. An inscription over the doorway is dated A.H. 979 = 1571-2, the year of the saint's death. The building, constructed regardless of expense, must be somewhat later. 'As originally built by Akbar, the tomb was of red sandstone, and the marble trellis-work, the chief ornament of the tomb, was erected subsequently by the Emperor Jahāngīr' (Latif, Agra, p. 144).

16. The first plundering of Akbar's tomb at Sikandra by the Jāts occurred in 1691 according to Manucci (ante, chapter 51, note 29.). The outrages at Fathpur-Sīkrī seem to have been later in date, and to have happened after the capture of Agra in 1761 by Sūraj Mall, the famous Rājā of Bhurtpore (Bharatpur). The Jāts retained possession of Agra until 1774 (I.G., 1908, vol. viii, p. 76). That is the period while they reigned, to use the author's words. Tradition affirms that daring that time they shot away the tops of the minarets at the entrance to the Sikandra park; took the armour and books of Akbar from his tomb, and sent them to Bharatpur, and also melted down two silver doors at the Tāj, which had cost Shāh Jahān more than 125,000 rupees (N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. vii, p. 619)

17. We besieged and took Bharatpur in order to rescue the young prince, our ally, from his uncle, who had forcibly assumed the office of prime minister to his nephew. As soon as we got possession, all the property we found, belonging either to the nephew or the uncle, was declared to be prize-money, and taken for the troops. The young prince was obliged to borrow an elephant from the prize agents to ride upon. He has ever since enjoyed the whole of the revenue of his large territory. [W. H. S.] The final siege and capture of Bharatpur by Lord Combermere took place in January, 1826. The plundering, as Metcalfe observed, 'has been very disgraceful, and has tarnished our well-earned honours'. All the state treasures and jewels, amounting to forty-eight lākhs of rupees, or say half a million of pounds sterling, which should have been made over to the rightful Rājā, were treated as lawful prize, and at once distributed among the officers and men. Lord Combermere himself took six lākhs (Marshman, History of India, ed., 1869, vol. ii, p. 409).

18. The 'little dingy mosque' was built over the cave in which the saint dwelt, and was presented to him by the local quarry-men. It is therefore called The Stone-cutters' Mosque. It is fully described by E. W. Smith, op. cit., Part IV. chap. iii. It is earlier in date than any of Akbar's buildings, having been built in A. H. 945 (A.D. 1538-9), a year after the saint had settled in the 'dangerous jungle' (Progr. Rep. A. S. N. Circle, 1905-6, p. 35).

19. The people of India no doubt owed much of the good they enjoyed under the long reign of Akbar to this most excellent woman, who inspired not only her husband but the most able Muhammadan minister that India has ever had, with feelings of universal benevolence. It was from her that this great minister, Abūl Fazl, derived the spirit that dictated the following passages in his admirable work, the Aīn-i-Akbarī; 'Every sect becomes infatuated with its particular doctrines; animosity and dissension prevail, and each man deeming the tenets of his sect to be the dictates of truth itself, aims at the destruction of all others, vilifies reputation, stains the earth with blood, and has the vanity to imagine that he is performing meritorious actions. Were the voice of reason attended to, mankind would be sensible of their error, and lament the weaknesses which led them to interfere in the religious concerns of each other. Persecution, after all, defeats its own end; it obliges men to conceal their opinions, but produces no change in them.

'Summarily, the Hindoos are religious, affable, courteous to strangers, prone to inflict austerities on themselves, lovers of justice, given to retirement, able in business, grateful, admirers of truth, and of unbounded fidelity in all their dealings.

'This character shines brightest in adversity. Their soldiers know not what it is to fly from the field of battle; when the success of the combat becomes doubtful, they dismount from their horses, and throw away their lives in payment of the debt of valour. They have great respect for their tutors; and make no account of their lives when they can devote them to the service of their God.

'They consider the Supreme Being to be above all labour, and believe Brahmā to be the creator of the world, Vishnu its preserver, and Siva its destroyer. But one sect believes that God, who hath no equal, appeared on earth under the three above-mentioned forms, without having been thereby polluted in the smallest degree, in the same manner as the Christians speak of the Messiah; others hold that all these were only human beings, who, on account of their sanctity and righteousness, were raised to these high dignities.' [W. H. S.] The passage quoted is from Gladwin's translation, vol. ii, p. 318 (4th ed., London, 1800). The wording varies in different editions of Gladwin's work. A better version will be found in Jarrett, transl. Āīn (Calcutta, 1894), vol. iii, p. 8.

There is no substantial foundation for the author's statement that Abūl Fazl learned his charity and toleration from the Hindoo mother of Jahāngīr. The influences which really moulded the opinions of both Abūl Fazl and his royal master are well known. When Akbar and Abūl Fazl are compared with Elizabeth and Burleigh, Philip II and Alva, or the other sovereigns and ministers of the age in Europe, it seems to be little less than a miracle that the Indian statesmen should have held and practised the noble philosophy expounded in the above quotation from the 'Institutes of Akbar'. No man has deserved better than Akbar the stately eulogy pronounced by Wordsworth on a hero now obscure:

    A meteor wert thou in a darksome night;
      Yet shall thy name, conspicuous and sublime,
      Stand in the spacious firmament of time,
    Fixed as a star: such glory is thy right.
             (Sonnets dedicated to Liberty, Part Second, No. XVII.)

20. The story is absurd, the saint having died early in 1572, when the Fathpur-Sīkrī buildings were in progress.

'The city . . . is enclosed on three sides by high embattlemented stone walls pierced by. . . gateways protected by heavy and grim semi- circular bastions of rubble masonry. The fourth side was protected by a large lake.' There were nine gateways (E. W. Smith, op. cit., pp. 1, 59; pl. xci, xciii). The Sangīn Burj, or Stone Tower, is a fine unfinished fortification (ibid., p. 34). The dam of the lake burst in the 27th year of the reign, A.D. 1582 (Latif, Agra, p. 159). The circumference of the town is variously stated as either six or seven miles.

21. Akbar began the works at the fort of Agra in A.H. 972, corresponding to A.D. 1564-65, several years before he began those at Fathpur in A.D. 1569-70 (E. & D., vol. v, pp. 295, 332); and the buildings at Agra and Fathpur were carried on concurrently. He continued building at Fathpur nearly to the close of his reign. Agra was never 'an unpeopled waste' during Akbar's reign. Sikandar Lodī had made it his capital in A.D. 1501.

22. That is to say, the grantees have now to pay land revenue, or rent, to the state.

23. No good general description of the buildings at Agra, Sikandra, and Fathpur-Sīkrī exists. The following list indicates the beat treatises available.

(1) Syad Muhammad Latif—Agra, Historical and Descriptive., &c.; 8vo, Calcutta, 1896, Useful, but crude and badly illustrated.

(2) E. W. Smith—The Moghul Architecture of Fathpur- Sikri; 4 Parts, 4to, Government Press, Allahabad, 1894-8.

(3) Same author—Moghul Colour Decoration of Agra; 4to, Government Press, Allahabad, 1901.

(4) Same author—Akbar's Tomb, Sikandarah; posthumous; 4to, Allahabad Government Press, 1909.

The three works by Mr. E. W. Smith are magnificently illustrated and worthy of the subject.

(5) Nūr Baksh—'The Agra Fort and its Buildings', in A.S. Annual Report for 1903-4, pp. 164-93.

(6) Moin-ud-din—The History of the Taj, &c.; thin 8vo, 116 pp.; Moon Press, Agra, 1905. Useful, as being the only book devoted to the Tāj and connected buildings, but crude and inadequate.

The Archaeological Survey of India, since its reorganization, has not had time to study the Tāj buildings, except for conservation purposes. The report by Mr. Carlleyle on the minor remains at and near Agra in A.S.R., vol. iv, 1874, is almost worthless.

In 1873 Major Cole prepared a handsome volume entitled Illustrations of Buildings near Muttra and Agra, &c.

Some information, to be used with caution, is to be found in gazetteers of different dates.

The brief observations in Fergusson's History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (ed. 1910) are of permanent value. The plan of the editor's work, A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon (H. F. A.), Oxford, 1911, does not permit of detailed descriptions. The well-known little Handbook by Mr. H. G. Keene contains many errors and is unworthy of the author's reputation as an historian.

A good guide-book, prepared with knowledge and accuracy, is badly wanted. It would be difficult to find an author possessed of the needful local knowledge and sufficiently well read to compile a satisfactory book. An adequate illustrated history of the Tāj buildings on the lines of Mr. E. W. Smith's work on Fathpur- Sīkrī is much to be desired, but would be a formidable undertaking, and is not likely to be written for a long time to come. Perhaps some wealthy admirer of Akbar and his achievements may appear and provide the considerable funds required for the preparation of the desired treatise. The Christian antiquities of Agra also deserve systematic treatment. At present the information on record is in a chaotic state.