The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Mogul 1.3.5

1.3.5

He had been on the throne of Hindustan a little more than ten years, having succeeded his father, the great Akbar, in 1605. Some characteristics were common to both father and son—the love of hunting and other sports, the painstaking administration of justice, the considerate bearing towards strangers—but in other respects there was a great contrast between them. Of Akbar's administrative ability, as of his military skill, Jahangir had not a trace. Both monarchs interested themselves in religious discussions; but while Akbar had been actuated by a sincere desire to find a faith which should reconcile the clashing tenets of the creeds around him—"a temple neither pagod, mosque, nor church"—Jahángír, though even in drink he would "dispute of the lawes of Moses, Jesus and Mahomett," felt but a languid interest in such questions, and his tolerance was the outcome not of reason but of indifference. What in the father had been the eager workings of a mind desirous of embracing and utilising information of all kinds, became in the son a childish curiosity which (as evinced in his extraordinary diary) found as much satisfaction in watching the birds of his aviary, or counting the number of cups of wine he drank, as in hearing of the weightiest matters of state. But, on the whole, despite his drunkenness, his occasional lapses into cruelty, his weak-minded submission to the influence of his wife and of his favourite son, the portrait of Jahangir drawn by Roe is not unfavourable.