The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s9.t4.52

c14.s9.t4.52

In all essentials the *Ain-i-Akbari* has turned out to be a joint Hindu-Moslem literary work so characteristic of the Indo-Saracenic renaissance of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nay, it is perhaps one of the first creative specimens of Hindu-Moslem cultural fusion such as has marked the evolution of Indian arts and sciences since then. And in his emphasis on goodness and moral life as the foundation of spirituality and the key to the kingdom of God he is an avatar of positivism representing thereby the very spirit of the renaissance. For, no student of *nītiśāstras*, oriental or occidental, can afford to forget that the statement "that every man of sense and understanding knows that the best way of worshipping God consists in allaying the distress of the times and in improving the condition of the poor" (*Ain* 2) came from the pen of the Indian Mussalman of the sixteenth century.