The Book of Akbar 299.2

299.2

“O God, make me wholly Thine. Acquaint me with Thine attributes. Tyrannous Reason hath crippled my soul. Call me Thine own madman and set me free.” Tears fell from his truth-seeing eyes while he was reciting these lines, and complete detachment was manifested on his irradiated brows. About the time, too, when the Court was at Delhi, the eye-brightener of the Khilafat, to wit, His Majesty the Shahinshah, one night beheld in a dream that someone was pulling up his musky (black) locks. When he awoke he told the dream to Maham Anaga, the mother of Adham Khan. She summoned all the skilled interpreters and asked them what the dream portended. When this question was put to His Majesty Jahanbani he said: “Evil will be far from his (Akbar’s) head.” Afterwards he told them quietly of his own inevitable doom, and administered consolation to them. Constantly during those days he was uttering words which had for the organs of the farseeing among the courtiers the savour of a passage from this transitory world which all must quit, and which divided the joints and marrow of the faithful of soul. Among other things, he wrote with his own hand on the arch of his portico these opening lines of a poem by Shaikh Azari:— Verse. I’ve heard that on this gilded dome (the sky) ’t is writ The end of all things is praiseworthy.