The Book of Akbar 319.2

319.2

Whoever has received felicitations from those who have been nurtured in this light-increasing gathering of the spiritual and the temporal, well know what good wishes for long life, inward and outward prosperity, and spiritual and temporal balance are conveyed by them, and there are descriptions of them in ancient chronicles. But who can tell the inner and outer bliss of a nursling of light whose felicitations are conveyed by Light in person, without man’s intervention and by the effectual voices of action, to wit that of world-adorning spring? Inasmuch as the wise of the past and the present are agreed that whenever some glorious event is made the foundation of an era, the latter should begin from the proximate New Year, without regard to a discrepancy either in previousness or in lateness; the sundry days before the New Year were reckoned as included in the New Year, and the latter was made the beginning of the Divine Era. Accordingly this has been recorded in the proclamation which has been set forth above. Whenever the Divine Era be referred to, it shall be understood as commencing from the heart-expanding Spring. Among the great boons conferred by H.M. the Shāhinshāh in the beginning of this year was the remission of taxes (bāj u tamghā). How can the amount of these be estimated? Undoubtedly it was more than a clime’s revenue.