The Book of Akbar 328.2.7

328.2.7

Whilst every one of the heroes was being brought into the presence and was receiving rewards temporal and spiritual, Shah Quli Khan brought in Hēmu bound. Though they questioned him, he out of uncouthness (jahālat) made no reply. Perhaps he was unable to speak, or he was overwhelmed by shame and indisposed to say anything. Bairām Khan Khan-Khanan begged H.M. the Shahinshah to slay with his own sacred hand this stock of sedition, and to acquire merit by a holy combat. That lord of wisdom and master of sages, who regarded his youth as the veil of his divinely-bestowed wisdom, and abode under the screen of incognito and so obtained a respite from the vexatious disbelief of infidels, and the faith of the sincere, replied in words that were the interpretation of truth and were for the instruction of the wise, that his lofty spirit did not permit him to slay a captive and that it seemed to him that in the justice-hall of the Only One there was nothing meritorious in such an act. Though simple loyalists importuned and pressed him, the Shahinshah showed himself more and more averse to the proceeding. I extol the lofty intelligence of which no trace is to be found in the contents of books or in the minds of supreme sages; but the wise of the great court well know that this is not to be met with save in the lucid home of the holy heart of a pure spirit who shall have received the light of true knowledge from the Creator without the intervention of human means or earthly aids.