Mughal Administration c12.s4: § 4. How Akbar was adored as a religious guide.

Mughal Administration c12.s4

Language: English

§ 4. How Akbar was adored as a religious guide.

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I quote from his courtly flatterer Abul Fazl:—

"Whenever, from lucky circumstances, the time arrives that a nation learns to understand how to worship truth, the people will naturally look to their king,...and expect him to be their spiritual leader as well ; for a king possesses, independent of men, the ray of divine wisdom...Now, this is the case with the monarch of the present age...Men versed in foretelling the future knew this when his Majesty was

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born, and they have since been waiting in joyful expectation.

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"His Majesty, however, wisely surrounded himself for a time with a veil, as if he were an outsider or a stranger to their hopes. But can man counteract the will of God? He could not help revealing his intentions...He is now the spiritual guide of the nation. He has now opened the gate that leads to the right path and satisfies the thirst of all that wander about panting for truth.

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"Men of all nations, old and young, friends and strangers, the far and the near, look upon offering a vow to his Majesty as the means of solving all their difficulties, and bend down in worship on obtaining their desire when his Majesty leaves the Court, there is not a hamlet town or city that does not send forth crowds of men and women with vow-offerings in their hands and prayers on their lips, touching the efficacy of their vows [made to the Emperor] or proclaiming the accounts of the spiritual assistance received [by secretly praying to him]...His Majesty gives satisfactory answers to every one, and applies remedies to their religious perplexities. Not a day passes but people bring cups of water to him, beseeching him to breathe upon it...Many sick people whose diseases the most eminent physicians pronounced incurable, have been restored to health by this divine means.

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"Notwithstanding every strictness and reluctance shown by his Majesty in admitting novices, there are many thousands, who have cast over their shoulders the mantle of belief, and look upon conversion to the New Faith as the means of obtaining every blessing.” (*Ain.* i. 163-165.)

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The initiation ceremony and rules of life of the members of this new sect are described in the *Ain-i-Akbari*, i. 165-167, and I need not quote them here.

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In addition to the *kurnish* and the *taslim* which all persons presented at Court had to make to the sovereign, the disciples of Akbar had to perform the *sijdah* or prostration by bowing down the forehead to the ground. This is an exercise performed at the Muslim prayer, and therefore the orthodox regarded it as a ceremony exclusively due to God. Akbar yielded to the public discontent and very prudently restricted the prostration to the hall of private audience. Its popular name was *zamin-bos* or kissing the ground before the throne. This abject mode of showing respect prevailed in ancient Persia as well as the Hindu States. Religious leaders are entitled to it, as we see daily around us. Abul Fazl justifies it by saying that “They look upon a prostration before his Majesty as a prostration before God ; for royalty is an emblem of the power of God.” (i. 159).

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It was a practice intensely hateful to the Muslims, and though Jahangir continued it, Shah Jahan had to yield to public opinion and abolished it at his accession.

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The *darshaniyas*, or men who did not begin their day’s work nor break their fast without first gazing on the Emperor’s face as on an idol in the morning, formed another sect of his worshippers, and they followed a special set of rules. (*Ain*, i. 207.)

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Even the slaves of the imperial household were, in name at least, converted into the Emperor's disciples. As the Court-historian writes,

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"His Majesty, from religious motives, dislikes the name *banda* or slave ; for he believes that mastership belongs to no one but God. He, therefore, calls this class of men *chelas*, which Hindi term signifies a faithful disciple. Through His Majesty's kindness, many of them have chosen the road to happiness (i.e. embraced the divine faith of Akbar)". (*Ain.* i. 253.)