The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c16.98

v4.c16.98

He had examined the doctrine and the practices of many religions, Islām, Hinduism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Christianity, and had meditated on them but was satisfied with none. The formalism and the intolerance of the orthodox professors of the faith in which he had been bred had disgusted him. Many of the doctrines of Hinduism, Jainism and Zoroastrianism appealed to him but he could not join the bodies professing them, as members of those religious and social systems are born, not made. He would have been welcomed into the Christian Church, but as a lay member, and Christianity was as uncompromising as Islām, and made demands to which he was neither inclined nor able, without arousing the implacable hostility of the two great religious bodies in his empire, to submit. He was much attracted by the mysticism of the *Sūfīs*, but theirs was too vague a creed, and too bare of ritual, to which he inclined, to command his allegiance. Less fortunate in his counsellors than his predecessor, ‘Alā-ud-dīn Khaljī, who, when he conceived the idea of proclaiming himself the prophet of a new faith, had been dissuaded by a faithful and fearless servant from committing an act of such folly and presumption, Akbar had suffered himself for some years to be flattered by Shaikh Mubārak into the belief that he was something more than king, and that it was his duty to assume his place as the spiritual as well as the temporal sovereign of his peoples. With the aid of this adviser he had concocted an eclectic creed likely, as his vanity persuaded him, to command an assent from all men which neither Christianity nor Islām had been able to ensure.