The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c24.69

v3.c24.69

Zain-ul-‘Ābidīn may be regarded as the Akbar of Kashmīr. He lacked the Mughul’s natural genius, spirit of enterprise, and physical vigour, and his outlook was restricted to the comparatively narrow limits of his kingdom, but he possessed a stock of learning and accomplishments from which Akbar’s youthful indolence had, to a great extent, excluded him, his views were more enlightened than the emperor’s, and he practised a tolerance which Akbar only preached, and found it possible to restrain, without persecution, the bigotry of Muslim zealots. He was in all respects, save his love of learned society, the antithesis of his father, the Iconoclast, and in the one respect in which he most resembled him he most differed from him in admitting to his society learned Hindus and cultured Brāhmans. His learning delighted his hearers, and his practical benevolence enriched his subjects and his country. He founded a city, bridged rivers, restored temples, and conveyed water for the irrigation of the land to nearly every village in the kingdom, employing in the execution of these public works the malefactors whom the ferocious penal laws of his predecessors would have put to death. Theft and highway robbery were diminished by the establishment of the principle of the responsibility of village communities for offences committed within their lands, and the authoritative determination of the prices of commodities, economically unsound though it was, tended, with other regulations framed with the same object, to prevent the hoarding of food supplies and imported goods.