Akbar: The Great Mughal

by Ira Mukhoty

Rafiuddin Shirazi, the Persian merchant, too decided to try and see the Padshah and he was standing in a tent with a crowd of spectators when all of a sudden loud shouts of ‘Badshah Salaamat!’ rang out. The Padshah had arrived, clearly, ‘but however much left and right I looked, I did not see anyone who by appearance gave any signs or marks of royalty’ wrote the puzzled Shirazi. ‘When I looked behind,’ he added, ‘I saw that a youth of twenty years was leaning on a favourite, with his hand resting on the other’s shoulder.’ This nonchalant youth, Shirazi realized, was the emperor of Hindustan but he was astonished to see that no one prostrated themselves or gave the Padshah any special treatment whatsoever. Shirazi, taken aback, asked the crowds whether this casualness was normal in Hindustani courts to which he was told, ‘the etiquette for courtiers and salutations at this Court is much more elaborate than those of other rulers: but the King himself is more informal. Often he comes out in ordinary dress and mixes with his confidants and makes no distinction between companions and strangers.’ Shirazi ruminated over this strange explanation but agreed that he had himself seen Akbar flying a kite on the roof of his palace at Agra. On that occasion, he noted that ‘his head was bare and he was wearing a lungi.

ancient city of Gaur.

Gaur or Gaud in West Bengal. Seems interesting place.

In Fatehpur Sikri the ulema seemed not to have anticipated the undercurrents rippling below the smooth sandstone pathways of the palaces and courtyards. They had perhaps not understood that for the Timurids, the Islamic sharia was never as binding a force as it was in other Islamic kingdoms and that there remained the companionable presence of Chenghiz Khan’s yassa laws, and their pre-Islamic guiding spirits. The yassa advised the ruler ‘to consider all sects as one and not to distinguish one from another’.

It was noted by all that Akbar now began his day in a most unusual manner. At the highest point of the roof of the palace, Akbar had had a wooden building ‘of ingenious workmanship’ constructed and from this building, in the cool and watchful dawn, Akbar worshipped the rising sun. For Badauni, it was clear that it was ‘the accursed Birbal’ who had convinced the Padshah:

that the face should be turned towards the rising and not towards the setting (towards Mecca) sun…

In the evenings, when all the lamps and the candles were lit, the whole court ‘had to rise up respectfully’. This Badauni attributed to an equally nefarious influence—Akbar’s Rajput wives. ‘From early youth, in compliment to his wives, the daughters of the Rajahs of Hind,’ noted Badauni, ‘he had within the female apartments continued to offer the hom, which is a ceremony derived from sun-worship.’ Now, continued Badauni, Akbar went one step further and prostrated himself in public before the fire as well as the sun. Akbar also began appearing in the diwan-e-aam with a tilak on the forehead and a rakhi on the wrist, tied by a Brahmin, as a blessing. Immediately all the elegant noblemen adopted the custom and it became de rigueur to wear a rakhi to court.

For ‘though illiterate’, agreed the Jesuits, ‘[Akbar] loved to hear discussions on points of theology and philosophy and with an open mind, listened to any man learned in the law, whether he was Parsee or Hindu or Christian’. Akbar had heard of the renown of the Jain priest, Hiravijaya Suri. According to Jain folklore, Akbar happened to witness a religious procession celebrating six months of fasting by a Jain monk Champa and was intrigued.

Jain monks remained at the Mughal court continuously till 1605, altering forever the significance of this otherwise insubstantial sect. Siddhichandra’s biography of his master Hiravijaya described the virtues of Akbar, in which the Mughal Padshah was firmly welcomed into the Jain worldview:

Akbar remained fascinated by the Jain monks till the end of his reign. The Jain concepts of compassion to all living things would have resonated deeply with Akbar, especially from this time on, as his attention radiated outwards to the dispossessed and the uncounted. He extended his powerful support to this small sect, keeping them safe from attack from other religious groups that were jealous of their meteoric rise. Following requests from the Jain monks Akbar issued farmans prohibiting animal slaughter for twelve days every year, allowed tax exemptions for Jain pilgrims, protected Jain temples in Gujarat besides awarding further donations and gifts.

Akbar’s interactions with the jogis were scandalous, according to Badauni, but also path-breaking and resulted in Hindu ascetic practices having a pronounced and lasting impact on Indo-Islamic culture. Akbar would have the Yog Vashisht, the dialogue between Rama and the Sadhu Vashishta, translated into Persian and would commission miniatures of the jogis of Gorkhatri for the Baburnama. Babur himself had barely mentioned his visit to the Gorkhatri but his grandson would have the jogis painted with great realism, showing their distinctive physical features and their particular dress and habits because of his own first-hand observation of them.

Badauni tells us about specific bans brought in to protect the beliefs of the Hindus at this time: ‘He prohibited the slaughter of cows, and the eating of their flesh, because the Hindus devoutly worship them.’ Anyone accused of cow slaughter or of having killed a peacock was punished by state authorities, long beards were frowned upon, dogs were allowed into the harem, and the hajj pilgrimage and five-times-namaaz were deemed unnecessary.

For Pinheiro, a later Jesuit to Akbar’s court, the verdict was even more succinct: ‘He adores God, and the Sun, and is a Hindu, he follows the sect of the Jains.’

‘He never experienced such grief at the death of any Amir,’ wrote Badauni, ‘as he did at that of Birbal.’ Akbar seemed tormented by the idea of the broken, bloody body of his old friend lying unclaimed on the cold, stony hillsides on which he had died, carrying out his duty to his Padshah unto death. ‘Alas,’ he said, ‘that they could not bring his body out of the defile, that it might have been committed to the flames.’

Rumours circulated for the rest of the year, and even longer, that Birbal was not dead, that he had been seen, among jogis and sannyasis, or wandering in his old fief of Nagarkot. Every time such a rumour reached the court Akbar, painfully hopeful, sent men to have it investigated.