and hardly tolerant, to insist upon men shaving their chins, with whom it was a matter of conscience to do otherwise; nor should he have insisted on prostrations to himself, which orthodox Mussulmans thought idolatrous.

But what are defects like these when set against such an oasis in the desert of oriental history as a forty-nine years' reign of justice, humanity, and toleration? From the beginning, we have seen, Indian Mahometanism lost something of its native intolerance. I remember a newspaper, full of zeal for the Grand Turk, pointing to the tolerance of the Great Mogul, as an unanswerable argument in favour of the former. Call Mahometanism intolerant! Look at Akbar! Very good. Akbar was the most tolerant of rulers; but was he a Mahometan? He was brought up in that faith; he professed it on his death-bed; but the mature judgment of his vigorous intellect rejected it during the long years of his glory. From the very first, he admitted men of all creeds to the highest offices; Hindoo Rajahs alternate with Moslem Khans among the great dignitaries of the empire. He abolished the pilgrim-tax; he abolished the jezia or capitation-tax, the permanent badge of degradation upon the Giaour. He listened attentively to the religious teachers of all sects; and ended by putting forth a system of his own, to which however he constrained no man.

By the creed of Akbar exclusive reverence for Mahomet or any human prophet was rejected. He taught that there was but one God, and added that Akbar Padishah was His Caliph. He did not how

separate room for every one of the women, whose number exceeds five thousand." Ayeen Akbery, i. 15.

HIS RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE.

197

ever claim any miraculous or prophetic character; his Caliphate apparently consisted in the union of imperial power with the vocation of a religious teacher. In his creed God was one and spiritual; a purely spiritual worship was the best; but those who could not attain to it were recommended to take the sun as the visible symbol of divinity. He ordained no ritual, he established no priesthood; a few prayers and obeisances were recommended in consideration for human infirmity; abstinence was not enforced, but it was recommended as tending to exalt the mind; the real way for man to serve his Creator was by doing his duty to His creatures. In all this, Akbar quite cast away Mahomet and his Creed, and rather lighted upon the original idea of the Hindoo faith in its purer form. Christianity he treated with great respect; he showed reverence to images of Christ and the Virgin; he even caused one of his sons to receive lessons in the Gospel, in which the ordinary "Bismillah" was changed into the formula, "In the name of Jesus Christ.1"

This eclectic creed however made but few converts.

Akbar fully tolerated all creeds. He persecuted neither Moslem nor Hindoo; but he withdrew all legal sanction from any portion of their systems. The Moslem might, if he pleased, drink wine, eat pork, play at dice, and cease to frequent the mosque; he might not, by premature circumcision, commit an infant to a faith which he could not examine. The Hindoo widow might marry again, and she might not be burned against her will. He is said however, which seems at variance with his general system, to have forbidden the slaughter of animals for sacrifice. To 1 Elphinstone, ii. 322, 3.

continue the date of the Hejira would have been absurd when Islam was no longer the dominant religion; he therefore established an æra dating from his own accession, and he had the good sense to make his year solar instead of lunar. The result of all this was strongly to endear his government to the mass of the Hindoo people, who now at last found themselves raised to a perfect equality with their conquerors. The valiant Rajpoots became the most loyal soldiers in the imperial army. The corresponding result was great dissatisfaction among the Mussulman population. Their creed, as under the elder Moguls of Persia, was discouraged; it was brought down from its eminence, and was obliged to meet other creeds on equal terms. Many zealots strongly opposed the imperial projects, and they met with a corresponding proportion of imperial disfavour. But no man was harmed in life, limb, or estate. Akbar's persecution went no further than ordering one bigot out of the presence-chamber, and telling another that he deserved a blow. He never deviated from the noble principles of toleration set forth by his minister Abul Fazl in the Preface to his Institutes-principles totally unknown in any other contemporary state, European or Asiatic, Mahometan or Christian, Catholic or Protestant: "Persecution, after all, defeats its own ends; it obliges men to conceal their opinions, but produces no change in them.1"

Under Akbar's successors Jehangir and Shah Jehan a retrograde movement took place. Jehangir was a cruel tyrant; but Shah Jehan, as a civil administrator, rivalled, if he did not surpass, Akbar. During their reigns Islam again became the dominant faith, but

1 Ayeen Akbery, p. xi. ; cf. p. ix.

IS ISLAM NECESSARILY INTOLERANT?

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Hindoos were not

full toleration was still allowed. excluded from office nor subjected to the capitationtax. Christian missionaries were not hindered from making converts even in the imperial family. Two nephews of Jehangir embraced their faith. Under Shah Jehan, three sons of that Emperor professed three different persuasions. Dara adhered to the eclectic creed of Akbar; Shuja was a Shiah; Aurangzebe a bigotted Sonnite.1 Aurangzebe ultimately deposed his father; he put his brother Dara to death as an apostate; he restored the capitation-tax and the lunar year; he excluded Hindoos from office; he acted in short as a perfect Moslem bigot. He had his reward in the revolt of the noble Rajpoots and in the growth of the indomitable Mahrattas. He reigned from 1658 to 1707; his forty-nine years may be set against the forty-nine of Akbar.

The history of these Mogul Emperors shows to my mind most plainly the essential intolerance of the Mahometan religion. Only one Mahometan prince ever gave full and perfect religious equality to all his people. By a logical consequence, he deserted the religion against whose precepts his noblest acts were so many sins. Here and there a King like Abbas had laboured to secure his infidel subjects from actual personal oppression; but Akbar stands alone in thoroughly relieving them from every mark of degradation or inferiority. Among all the benefactors of their species few can claim a more honourable place than this most illustrious Emperor. In his own age he stood alone,2 not only in Islam, but in the whole world; Catholic and Protestant Christendom

1 Elphinstone, ii. 416.

2 William the Silent of Nassau may be classed as a solitary exception.

might both have gone and sat at his feet. A mightier genius and a nobler heart can hardly be conceived than that of the Mahometan despot who ordained universal toleration. But the more glory we yield to Akbar, the more shame we cast upon the Mahometan religion. His tolerance proves its intolerance. There are those in our own day who assuredly need the lesson, that a Mahometan government, to become really tolerant, must cease to be Mahometan. Sultan Abdul Medjid personally I believe to be actuated by the most beneficent motives towards his subjects of all religions. But he would fain effect impossibilities. He may, as a Mahometan ruler, perchance be glorious after the fashion of his ancestors. He may, if he will, be glorious after the far nobler fashion of Akbar. But to win the glory of Akbar, he must tread in his steps. He must not only grant a nominal equality to his Christian subjects; he must himself, if he would really change from a foreign invader into a national sovereign, cast away a creed, against which, the more beneficent is his legislation, the greater is his sin. And after all, the example of Akbar shows how little an individual man can do, when his reforms rest on no national basis. Whatever good a single despot could do Akbar did; but even Akbar could not secure permanency for a reform which he had granted of his own free will, but which no national voice had demanded. Strange to say, some look for special permanence in the modern Turkish reforms, because they originate in the Government, and are "in a manner forced upon the people in spite of themselves.1" The history of Rome, of Switzerland, of England, tells us a good deal in favour of the permanence of reforms 1 Larpent's Turkey, ii. 9.