DS .3 SCO PRESIDENT WHITE LIBRARY CORNELL . UNiVBRSiTY ""'"""*' """"' DS 461.3:S66" 3 1924 024 056 503 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924024056503 AKBAR THE GREAT MOGUL 1542-1605 OXFORD UNIVEKSITY PRESS LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YOEK TOBONTO MBLBOUBNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY HUMPHREY MILFORD PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY — ' AKBAR THE GREAT MOGUL 1542-1605 BY VINCENT A. SMITH M.A. (UCBL, ET OXON.); M.B.A.S. ; lATE OF THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE AUTHOR OF 'the EARLY HISTORY OP INDIA ' A HISTORY OF FINE ART IN INDIA AND CEYLON ', ETC. TrXeoi' ^/AtoT) TravTos. Heiiod OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1917 ; The Frontispiece AKBAR as a boy, about a.d. 1557 (Tashbih Khurdsdl Akbar Padshah Johnson Collection, India Office ; album xviii, fol. 4 ; artist not known. The earliest Indo-Persian painting). 1)3 PREFACE Twenty-four years ago, when I was editing the Rambles and Recollections of Sir Wilham Sleeman and was under the influence of that author's enthusiastic comment that ' Akbar has always appeared to me among sovereigns what Shakespeare was among poets ', I recorded the opinion that ' the competent scholar who will undertake the exhaustive treatment of the life and reign of Akbar will be in possession of perhaps the finest great historical subject as yet unappropriated '. Since those words were printed in 1893 nobody has essayed to appropriate the subject. The hope that some day I might be able to take it up was always present to my mind, but other more urgent tasks pre- vented me from seriously attempting to realize my old half-formed project until January 1915, when I resolved to undertake a life of Akbar on a scale rather smaller than that at first contemplated. The result of my researches during two years is now submitted to the judgement of the public. The long delay in coming to close quarters with the subject has proved to be of the greatest advantage, both to myself and to my readers. The publication of sound, critical versions of Abu-1 Fazl's Akbarndma, Jahangir's authentic Memoirs, Gulbadan Begam's Memoirs, and certain minor works has rendered accessible in a con- venient form all the principal Persian authorities for the reign. The discovery in a Calcutta library of the long-lost manuscript of the Mongolicae Legationis Com- mentarius, by Father A. Monserrate, S. J., and the pubhca- tion of a good edition of the text of that manuscript vi AKBAR THE GREAT MOGUL by the Rev. H. Hosten, S. J., have placed at the disposal of the historian a practically new contemporary docu- ment of the highest value. The claims of the Jesuit writings to credit and attention having been amply set forth in the Introduction and Bibliography need not be further emphasized here. The free use made of those writings is a special feature of this work. The few authors who have touched the subject of Akbar at all have not only neglected the Jesuit authori- ties, but have also failed to subject the chronicles written in Persian, and now available in good versions, to rigorous critical study. The minor fountains of knowledge, too, have not been tapped. The immense mass of accurate archaeological and numismatic facts accumulated by modern experts has not been utilized. The literature of the reign has been treated so lightly that no historian, except Mr, R. W. Frazer, even mentions the fact that Tulsi Das, the greatest, perhaps, of Indian poets, lived and wrote in the reign of Akbar. Many matters of moment, such as the Jain influence on the policy of the emperor, his malicious persecution of Islam, and the great famine of 1595-8, have been altogether omitted from the current books. The course of my investigation has disclosed numberless cases of the omission or mis- representation of material facts. The necessity for a thorough scrutiny of the authorities for Akbar's life is thus apparent, and the importance of his reign needs no exposition. This book being designed as a biography rather than as a formal history, it has been possible to dispense with the discussion of many details which would require notice in an exhaustive chronicle.^ The Greek motto on • In order to avoid overcrowding list ' appended : (1) De Laet On this volume with appendices many ShahjAan, &c.' (ind. Ant.,'vol. special studies been pub- xliii, • have Nov. 1914, pp. 289-44) (2) lished separately, as given in the ' The date of Akbar's Birth ' PREFACE vii the title-page, to the effect that ' the half is more than the whole ', neatly expresses my view that a compara- tively brief biography enjoys many advantages over a voluminous history crowded with names and details. Long Indian names, whether Muhammadan or Hindu, offer such difficulty to most European readers by reason of their unfamiliar forms, that I have done my best to confine the number of such names to the lowest possible limit, and to reduce the indispensable ones to their simplest dimensions. The spelling of names follows the principle observed in The Early History of India, except that popular literary ' ' forms such as Mogul ' and Parsee ' have been used more freely. In the text long vowels are marked so as to indicate the pronunciation, but no other diacritical marks are used. In the notes, index, and appendices the transliteration is more formal and substantially that of the Indian Antiquary. Consonants are to be pronounced as in English. Ch, in particular, is sounded as in the word ' ' church ; I decline to use the spelling unfortunately adopted by the Asiatic Societies which would transmute ' church ' into ' cure ' and actually produces unlimited confusion in the minds of ordinary readers. Vowels are pronounced as in Italian, so that pul, Mir, Mill-, nau ' are respectively pronounced as the English pull ', ' ' ' '. Meer ', Mool- ', and now Short a with stress on ' it is pronounced like u in but ', and when without (ibid., vol. xliv, Nov. 1915, pp. Great Mogul, &c.' (The Asiatic 233-44). This paper was dis- Review, July 1915, pp. 136-69) ; figured by many misprints owing (6) ' Reply ' to discussion on to the non-receipt of a proof, but above (ibid., August 1915) ; (7) ' a list of Errata is bound with the The Death of Hemu ' (J. R. A. S., ' ' volume ; (8) The Treasure of 1916, pp. 527-35) ; (8) The Con- Akbar ' (J. R. A. S., Nov. 1915, fusion between two consorts of ' (ibid., ; and pp. 235^3) ; (4) The Credit due Humayiin, &c.' 1917) to the book entitled TJie Voyages (9) ' The Site and Design of the and Travels of J. Albert de Man- Ibadat-Khdna or House of Wor- delslo into the East Indies ' (ibid., ship ' (ibid.), pp. 245-54); (5) ' Akbar the Vlll AKBAR THE GREAT MOGUL stress is an indistinct vowel. The name Akbar conse- ' ', quently is pronounced ' Ukbur ' or Ukber Any system for securing approximate uniformity in the spelling of strange Asiatic names must cause some worry. The plan adopted in this book gives as little as possible. We cannot revert to seventeenth- or eight- eenth-century practice and perpetrate the unrecog- nizable barbarisms which disfigure old books. The most interesting of the illustrations is the coloured frontispiece—a perfect facsimile of the original in the India Office Library—prepared by Messrs. Stone & Co., of Banbury. No other portrait of Akbar as a boy of fifteen or thereabouts is known to exist. The picture seems to be contemporary, not a copy, and must have been executed about 1557 or 1558. It is not signed, but may be the work of Abdu-s samad, who was Akbar's drawing-master at about that date, and long afterwards was appointed his Master of the Mint. The portrait possesses additional interest as being the earliest known example of Indo-Persian art, about a dozen years anterior to the Fathpur-Sikri frescoes. Several other illustrations are now published for the first time. The plans of Fathpur-Sikri, in Chapter XV, are from E. W. Smith's excellent book, but have been redrawn with some slight correction. Mr. Henry Beveridge, I.C.S. Retired, rendered an in- valuable service by lending and permitting the use of most of the proof-sheets of the unpublished third volume of his translation of the Akbarndma. He has also favoured me with correspondence on various points. I am indebted for kind communications to William Crooke, Esq., I.C.S. Retired ; Sir George Grierson, K.C.I.E., I.C.S. Retired; and the Rev. H. Hosten, S.J., of Calcutta. My special thanks are due to the Library Committee ; PREFACE ix and Dr. F. W. Thomas, Librarian of the India Office, for the faciUties which rendered possible the production of the coloured frontispiece. For help in providing or suggesting other illustrations acknowledgements are tendered to the Secretary of State for India in Council the Government of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh ; the Council of the Asiatic Society of Bengal the Curators of the Bodleian Library, Oxford ; C. A. Oldham, Esq., I.C.S., Commissioner of Patna ; Rai Bahadur B. A. Gupte, Curator of the Victoria Memorial Exhibition, Calcutta ; and Maulavl A. Hussan, Secretary and Librarian of the Oriental Public (Khuda Baksh) Library, Bankipore. The last-named gentleman furnished me with a detailed account of the magnificent manu- script of the Tdnkh-i Khandan-i Tlmuriya, or History of the Timurid Family. V. A S. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE INTRODUCTION. Geneeal View of the Authorities ...••• 1 I.