The Book of Akbar 1.143-146

On hearing this soul-refreshing message, the morning breeze of felicity arose; the stock of eternal bliss was collected; the eye of hope grew bright; the outer world became current coin; the inner world exulted; the skirt of success fell into my hand; the wished-for countenance came in sight. Good God! What a strange mystery it is that in historical writings, praise of the pure Giver is introduced as an adornment to the book, whereas here, the book is adorned in order to the praise of the Creator. In the pages of secularists, praise comes in as ancillary to the design of the book, but in this glorious history, the design is subservient to the praise. According to the old method, God’s praise was effected by utterance; in this new rendezvous on Reason’s highway, action is praise. My predecessors relied on speech for God’s praise; in this exordium of rare writing, recourse is had to the perfect man who is a God-worshipping king, viz., that Lord of the World who, by virtue of his God-seeking and God-apprehending, has removed the veil from between the external and the internal and has established love between the sections of the recluse and the layman and has lifted up the curtain from in front of the apparent and the real.

Heedlessness which used to travel on the opposite road to discretion, has retraced his steps and become one of wisdom’s servants. Formalism which had left the regions of inquiry and was stirring up tumults, has now thrown inquiry’s scarf on his shoulder and become a minister at the shrine. Blind self-worship which had abandoned the worship of God and adopted the worship of the creature, has now got eyes to see with and has come, ashamed and downcast, to the temple of divine worship. Blear-eyed envy which had megrim in the head and madness in the brain, and used to strive against the Allwise Lawgiver, has now got wisdom for his guide, and, having become enrolled as one of the pardoned of the shrine of grace, has been ranked among the helpers of the kingdom. Painful longing—the health, indeed. of Eternity—from being cripple has become a courier, and appears both as the runner and the winning-post. And why should this not be when we have, in this enlightened age, the chamber-lamp of the universe, the glory of Adam’s race, the unveiler of hidden secrets, the revealer of faultless forms? Or how should these things appear strange in the eyes of the far-seeing and wise, when he is (at once) composer (nāzim) of the institutes of sovereignty, distributor of the riches of the servants of God, hairsplitting discerner of microscopic subtleties, the great lapidary and assaymaster?