Akbar the Great Mogul, 1542-1605

Front matter

DS 461.3 . S5 Smith, Vincent Arthur.

Akbar the Great Mogul, 1605

THE GREAT MOGUL 1542-1605

Preface

Twenty-four years ago, when I was editing the Rambles and Recollections of Sir William Sleeman and was under the influence of that author’s enthusiastic comment that ‘ Akbar has always appeared to me among sovereigns what Shakespeare was among poets I recorded the opinion that ‘ the competent scholar who will undertake the exhaustive treatment of the life and reign of Akbar will be in possession of perhaps the finest great historical subject as yet unappropriated Since those words were printed in 1893 nobody has essayed to appropriate the subject. The hope that some day I might be able to take it up was always present to my mind, but other more urgent tasks prevented me from seriously attempting to realize my old half-formed project until January 1915, when I resolved to undertake a life of Akbar on a scale rather smaller than that at first contemplated. The result of my researches during two years is now submitted to the judgement of the public.

The long delay in coming to close quarters with the subject has proved to be of the greatest advantage, both to myself and to my readers. The publication of sound, critical versions of Abu-1 Fazl’s Akbarnama, Jahangir’s authentic Memoirs, Gulbadan Begam’s Memoirs , and certain minor works has rendered accessible in a convenient form all the principal Persian authorities for the reign. The discovery in a Calcutta library of the long-lost manuscript of the Mongolicae Legationis Commentarius, by Father A. Monserrate, S.J., and the publication of a good edition of the text of that manuscript

VI by the Rev. H. Hosten, S.J., have placed at the disposal of the historian a practically new contemporary document of the highest value. The claims of the Jesuit writings to credit and attention having been amply set forth in the Introduction and Bibliography need not be further emphasized here. The free use made of those writings is a special feature of this work.

The few authors who have touched the subject of Akbar at all have not only neglected the Jesuit authorities, but have also failed to subject the chronicles written in Persian, and now available in good versions, to rigorous critical study. The minor fountains of knowledge, too, have not been tapped. The immense mass of accurate archaeological and numismatic facts accumulated by modern experts has not been utilized. The literature of the reign has been treated so lightly that no historian, except Mr. R. W. Frazer, even mentions the fact that Tulsi Das, the greatest, perhaps, of Indian poets, lived and wrote in the reign of Akbar. Many matters of moment, such as the Jain influence on the policy of the emperor, his malicious persecution of Islam, and the great famine of 1595-8, have been altogether omitted from the current books. The course of my investigation has disclosed numberless cases of the omission or misrepresentation of material facts. The necessity for a thorough scrutiny of the authorities for Akbar’s life is thus apparent, and the importance of his reign needs no exposition.

This book being designed as a biography rather than as a formal history, it has been possible to dispense with the discussion of many details which would require notice in an exhaustive chronicle.1 The Greek motto on

1 In order to avoid overcrowding list appended : (1) ‘ De Laet, On this volume with appendices many Shahjahan, &c.’ (Ind. Ant., vol. special studies have been pub- xliii, Nov. 1914, pp. 239-44) ; (2) lished separately, as given in the ‘ The date of Akbar’s Birth ’

PREFACE vii

the title-page, to the effect that ‘ the half is more than the whole neatly expresses my view that a comparatively brief biography enjoys many advantages over a voluminous history crowded with names and details. Long Indian names, whether Muhammadan or Hindu, offer such difficulty to most European readers by reason of their unfamiliar forms, that I have done my best to confine the number of such names to the lowest possible limit, and to reduce the indispensable ones to their simplest dimensions.

The spelling of names follows the principle observed in The Early History of India, except that popular literary forms such as ‘ Mogul ’ and ‘ Parsee ’ have been used more freely. In the text long vowels are marked so as to indicate the pronunciation, but no other diacritical marks are used. In the notes, index, and appendices the transliteration is more formal and substantially that of the Indian Antiquary. Consonants are to be pronounced as in English. Ch, in particular, is sounded as in the word ‘ church ’ ; I decline to use the spelling unfortunately adopted by the Asiatic Societies which would transmute ‘ church ’ into ‘ cure ’ and actually produces unlimited confusion in the minds of ordinary readers. Vowels are pronounced as in Italian, so that pul, Mir, Mill-, nau are respectively pronounced as the English ‘ pull ’, ‘ Meer ’, ‘ Mool- ’, and ‘ now ’. Short a with stress on it is pronounced like u in ‘ but ’, and when without

(ibid., vol. xliv, Nov. 1915, pp. 233-44). This paper was disfigured by many misprints owing to the non-receipt of a proof, but a list of Errata is bound with the volume ; (3) ‘ The Treasure of

Akbar ’ (J. R. A. S., Nov. 1915, pp. 235-43) ; (4) ‘ The Credit due to the book entitled The Voyages and Travels of J. Albert de Mandelslo into the East Indies ’ (ibid., pp. 245-54) ; (5) ‘ Akbar the

Great Mogul, &c.’ (The Asiatic Review, July 1915, pp. 136-69) ; (6) ‘ Reply ’ to discussion on

above (ibid., August 1915) ; (7) ‘ The Death of Hemu ’ (J. R. A. S., 1916, pp. 527-35) ; (8) ‘ The Confusion between two consorts of Humayun, &c.’ (ibid., 1917) ; and (9) ‘ The Site and Design of the Ibddat-Khdna or House of Worship ’ (ibid.).

viii

stress is an indistinct vowel. The name Akbar consequently is pronounced ‘ Ukbur ’ or ‘ Ukber Any system for securing approximate uniformity in the spelling of strange Asiatic names must cause some worry. The plan adopted in this book gives as little as possible. We cannot revert to seventeenth- or eighteenth-century practice and perpetrate the unrecognizable barbarisms which disfigure old books. .

The most interesting of the illustrations is the coloured frontispiece — a perfect facsimile of the original in the India Office Library — prepared by Messrs. Stone & Co., of Banbury. No other portrait of Akbar as a boy of fifteen or thereabouts is known to exist. The picture seems to be contemporary, not a copy, and must have been executed about 1557 or 1558. It is not signed, but may be the work of Abdu-s samad, who was Akbar’s drawing-master at about that date, and long afterwards was appointed his Master of the Mint. The portrait possesses additional interest as being the earliest known example of Indo-Persian art, about a dozen years anterior to the Fathpur-Sikri frescoes. Several other illustrations are now published for the first time. The plans of Fathpur-Sikri, in Chapter XV, are from E. W. Smith’s excellent book, but have been redrawn with some slight correction.

Mr. Henry Beveridge, I.C.S. Retired, rendered an invaluable service by lending and permitting the use of most of the proof-sheets of the unpublished third volume of his translation of the Akbarnama. He has also favoured me with correspondence on various points. I am indebted for kind communications to William Crooke, Esq., I.C.S. Retired ; Sir George Grierson, K.C.I.E., I.C.S. Retired ; and the Rev. H. Hosten, S.J., of Calcutta.

My special thanks are due to the Library Committee

PREFACE

IX and Dr. F. W. Thomas, Librarian of the India Office, for the facilities which rendered possible the production of the coloured frontispiece. For help in providing or suggesting other illustrations acknowledgements are tendered to the Secretary of State for India in Council ; the Government of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh ; the Council of the Asiatic Society of Bengal ; the Curators of the Bodleian Library, Oxford ; C. A. Oldham, Esq., I.C.S.. Commissioner of Patna ; Rai Bahadur B. A. Gupte, Curator of the Victoria Memorial Exhibition, Calcutta ; and Maulavi A. Hussan, Secretary and Librarian of the Oriental Public (Khuda Baksh) Library, Bankipore. The last-named gentleman furnished me with a detailed account of the magnificent manuscript of the Tarikh-i Khandan-i Timuriya, or History of the Timurid Family.

V. A S.

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

INTRODUCTION. General View of the Authorities ....... 1

I. Akbar’s Ancestry and Life before his Accession ; India in 1556 ; Akbar’s Task . . 9

Introduction

GENERAL VIEW OF THE AUTHORITIES

The historian who undertakes to deal with the life, Paucity character, and reign of Queen Elizabeth of England, King p^pejg6 Henry IV of France, or any other notable European sovereign of the sixteenth century, is confronted by a gigantic mass of State Papers and other contemporary documents of various kinds, manuscript and printed, so voluminous that the lifetime of a diligent student hardly suffices to master the whole. The biographer of Akbar or any other Asiatic prince of the same period, with possible Chinese exceptions, is in a position very different. The contents of even one record room have not survived. Copies of a few letters and other official papers, with occasional specimens of land-grants or other semi-private documents, often embedded in the text of books, have been preserved, and private individuals here and there hold original documents of interest to their families. But no great collection of public documents exists to which reference can be made, nor is there material for the preparation of a calendar of State Papers.

The surviving documents of Akbar’s reign, whether originals or copies, although not negligible as a source for the biography and history of the emperor, are not sufficient in number or importance to justify the compilation of a separate catalogue.

Perhaps the most interesting of the contemporary documents is the ‘infallibility decree ’ of 1579 preserved in textual copies by two historians. Some, if not all, of the letters sent by Akbar to various civil and ecclesiastical authorities at Goa are included in the printed collection of Abu-1 Fazl’s correspondence. The translations in various languages by sundry authors agree substantially and undoubtedly

Records kept by Akbar.

reproduce correctly the substance of those communications, which throw much welcome light on the character and opinions of Akbar.

The collection of letters in Persian by Abu-1 Fazl, Akbar’s Secretary of State, above referred to, has been often printed but not translated. It is believed that the documents do not contain much matter of historical importance inaccessible elsewhere. The opinion of a competent scholar on their merits is given in the note.1

A volume of letters by Abu-1 Fazl’s elder brother also exists. One specimen has been translated. The collection, as a whole, is said to be of slight value for the purposes of the historian.2

Examples of land-grants will be found in Modi’s book on the relations of the Parsees with Akbar.3

The lack of State Papers dealing with the reign of Akbar is not due to any failure of his to keep a record of his sayings and doings. Each day while he was giving public audience watchful scribes standing below him committed to paper every word uttered by his august lips, and recorded with painstaking minuteness the most ordinary and trivial actions of his life. The public service was divided into many departments, each well organized and provided with an

1 ‘As a finished diplomatist, his letters to recalcitrant generals

and rebellious viceroys are Eastern models of astute persuasion, veiling threats with compliments, and insinuating rewards and promises without committing his master to their fulfilment.

‘But these epistles which form one of his monuments to fame, consist of interminable sentences involved in frequent parentheses difficult to unravel, and paralleled in the West only by the decadence of taste, soaring in prose, as Gibbon justly remarks, to the vicious affectation of poetry, and in poetry sinking below the flatness and insipidity of prose, which characterizes Byzantine eloquence in the tenth century ’ (Jarrett, Ain, vol. ii, p. v).

1 have not felt bound to undertake the labour of examining the text of those difficult compositions.

See also Blochmann, Ain, vol. i, p. xxx.

2 E. & D., vi, 147. Dowson says :

‘ The letters are of a gossiping, familiar character, and are embellished with plenty of verses ; but they contain nothing of importance, and throw little light upon the political relations of the time. All these letters were translated for Sir H. M. Elliot by Lieutenant Prichard, and it is to be regretted that they were not more worthy of the labour bestowed upon them.’ I do not know where the manuscript translation is now. Faizi died in 1595.

3 Modi ; see Bibliography.

INTRODUCTION elaborate system for the transaction and record of business. When the emperor was travelling a camp record office always accompanied him. Record rooms, built for the purpose, existed at the capital and at each head-quarters town in the provinces. Father Manrique, while staying at Rajmahal in or about 1640, when that town was the capital of Bengal, was allowed partial access to the governor’s record room, and was permitted to copy from an official document the complete inventory of the treasure left by Akbar in 1605.

Several European writers affirm, and no doubt with perfect truth, that there were no secrets in the Mogul administration. A copy of any document, however confidential, could be obtained without difficulty by means of a moderate payment to the custodians. The works of the early European authors contain many particulars which certainly were derived from official records.

The scarcity of State Papers is due simply to their destruction, which has been almost absolutely complete. A large part of the destruction of writings in India, which is always going on, must be ascribed to the peculiarities of the climate, and the ravages of various pests, especially white ants. The action of those causes can be checked only by unremitting care, sedulous vigilance, and considerable expense, conditions never easy of attainment under Asiatic administration, and wholly unattainable in times when documents have been deprived of immediate value by political changes. The rapid decay of the Mogul empire after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 and the consequent growth of independent mushroom powers quickly deprived the documents in the imperial and viceregal secretariats of their value for practical, material purposes. In the whole country there was not a man who cared to preserve them for the sake of their historical interest. Mere neglect by itself is sufficient to account for the disappearance of nearly all the State Papers of Akbar’s time. Active destruction completed the work of passive neglect. The imperial capitals of Agra, Delhi and Lahore, as well as every important provincial

Records

perished

by

neglect

and

destruc-

tion.

Official matter in the Ain-i Akbari.

city, suffered from repeated violence of every kind. If by good fortune anything had escaped during the innumerable wars of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, it perished utterly during the disturbances of the mutiny period from 1857 to 1859.

The destruction of Akbar’s well-kept official records has been partially neutralized by Abu-1 Fazl’s unique compilation entitled Ain-i Akbari, or ‘ Institutes of Akbar ’, the result of seven years’ hard labour by the author, with the assistance of a numerous staff.1 That book gives summaries of many official regulations, besides much descriptive matter and copious statistics extracted or compiled from the records of the government. It is, in short, a descriptive and statistical survey of the empire, combined with a detailed account of the court and of the administrative system. Nothing at all resembling such a work was ever compiled in Asia, unless, perhaps, in China. Even in Europe it would be difficult to find an authoritative compilation of a like kind until quite recent times, when the preparation of statistical tables and gazetteers began to be fashionable.

Abu-1 Fazl’s book, happily, has been made fully accessible to European students by the scholarly versions of Blochmann and Jarrett, which are as serviceable as the original Persian for most purposes.2 The annotations of the translators, especially those of Blochmann in volume i, add immensely to the value of the text.

The third volume (Books IV and V), which is mostly devoted to a careful account of Hindu religion, philosophy, science, and customs, is not as good as its model, the great treatise written by Alberunl more than five centuries earlier. The same volume includes a collection of Akbar’s ‘ Happy Sayings ’, which give authoritative expression to his opinions on many subjects and have much importance as biographical material.

The historian, however, is concerned chiefly with the first

1 Ain, vol. iii, p. 402. ties impairs the value of his

2 Colonel Jarrett’s lack of translation of volume ii. knowledge of revenue technicali-

INTRODUCTION and second volumes (Books I-III), which describe the court and administration, and present a statistical survey of the empire from official sources.

The other authorities for the reign of Akbar are surprisingly numerous and copious, a large number being contemporary. The subject is of so much interest from many points of view that it is astonishing that nobody in any country has yet thought it worthy of serious critical treatment. The one German attempt at such treatment is so defective that its existence does not invalidate the statement that no tolerably adequate critical biography or history of Akbar is to be found in any language.

The authorities comprise (1) a considerable number of histories and memoirs in Persian, mostly contemporary; (2) a long series of writings by observant Jesuit missionaries who resided at the court of Akbar ; (3) the notes of early European travellers and authors, other than Jesuits, and contemporary to some extent ; (4) later European books, which contain various traditions and certain facts based on earlier documents ; (5) the archaeological evidence, comprising the testimony of monuments, inscriptions, and coins ; and (6) contemporary portraits, drawings, and paintings.

Details of all these six classes of authorities will be found in the Bibliography, Appendix D.

In this place my observations will be confined to pointing out in general terms the evidential value of each class of authorities.

Muhammadans, as is well known, differ from Hindus in being fond of historical composition as a branch of literature. Every Muslim dynasty in India has had its chronicler or chroniclers, who ordinarily wrote in Persian. India never has produced an historian justly deserving the name of great, or at all worthy to be ranked with the famous historians of Europe, ancient or modern. Most of the writers are mere annalists, content to give a jejune summary of external facts concerning kings, courts, countries, and wars, sometimes relieved by anecdotes and stories, usually of a trivial kind. A sense of artistic proportion is rarely indicated, and

Six other classes of authorities.

Muham-

madan

histories

in

general.

Persian histories of Akbar.

The

Jesuits.

we must not look for the philosophy of history, for explanations of the inner causes of events, or for notices of the common people and economic development. Nevertheless, the Muhammadan histories in Persian are invaluable, and must always be the foundation of the history of India from the time of the Muhammadan conquest to the beginning of the British period. All other sources of information are merely subsidiary. Chronicles written by contemporaries, which are numerous, are, of course, the most important.

Akbar’s reign has received its full share of attention from the Muslim chroniclers. By good fortune the three principal works have been translated in full by competent scholars, and the more important parts of the minor works also are accessible in English. Translations into other European languages are few and unimportant. The leading authority for the narrative of events in Akbar’s reign is the Akbarnama, written by Abu-1 Fazl in obedience to an imperial order and partly revised by Akbar himself.1 The chronology is more accurate than that of other books.

The next two long histories of high value are the works by Nizamu-d din and Badaonl, both of whom were in Akbar’s service. The former is a straightforward chronicle of the usual type, good so far as it goes, except that the chronology is erroneous. The latter is a peculiar composition written from the point of view of a Musalman bigot bitterly opposed to Akbar’s heresies and innovations. The book, in spite of defects of form, is of surpassing interest.

The numerous minor historians add considerably to our knowledge. Full details concerning all the books will be found in the Bibliography.

The next source of authentic information concerning Akbar is to be found in the writings of the Jesuit Fathers who visited and resided at his court from 1580. The chief merit of von Noer’s book is that he made considerable use of the works of the Jesuit authors, which had become rare and were almost forgotten. In the seventeenth century they were highly popular and were printed repeatedly in 1 Ain, vol. iii, p. 414.

INTRODUCTION most of the languages of Europe. During the eighteenth century and the greater part of the nineteenth they were overlooked by nearly all authors writing in English, and appear to have been wholly unknown to Elphinstone and Malleson. Failure to read the Jesuits has resulted in the currency of much false history. The Fathers were highly educated men, trained for accurate observation and scholarly writing. They made excellent use of their opportunities at the imperial court, and any book which professes to treat of Akbar while ignoring the indispensable Jesuit testimony must necessarily be misleading. The long-lost and recently recovered work by Father Monserrate, entitled Mongolicae Legationis Commentarius (1582), is an authority of the highest credit and importance, practically new. The historian Du Jarric, who condensed the original letters of the missionaries into narrative form, is an extremely accurate and conscientious writer, entitled to high rank among the historians of the world. Unfortunately, his great book is extremely rare and little known.

The fundamental authorities for the story of Akbar’s life and reign must always be the Aln-i Akbarl, the works of the historians written in Persian, and the accounts recorded by the Jesuit missionaries. But the sidelights to be derived from minor luminaries are not to be despised. Two English pioneer merchants who visited Akbar’s court, Ralph Fitch in 1585, and John Mildenhall, twenty years later, have left a few brief notes. The Fragmentum Historiae Indicae by van den Broecke, published by de Laet in 1631, written about two years earlier, and based on an Indian chronicle, contains much matter deserving of consideration.

When we come to later times the most important European book is Tod’s Annals of Rajasthan, 1829-32, which preserves many traditions not available elsewhere, and gives an estimate of Akbar’s character and deeds as seen from the Rajput point of view. It is a book to be used with critical caution. Modi’s book on the Parsees at the court of Akbar is excellent. Other works will be found mentioned in the Bibliography.

Little need be said about the value of expert study of the

Other

European

authori-

ties.

Later

European

works.

Archaeo-

logical

evidence.

Portraits,

drawings,

and

paint-

ings.

The

sources

numerous

and

various.

archaeological evidence, comprising monuments, inscriptions, and coins, which is essential for a right understanding of the history of art during the reign, while incidentally helping to clear up and illustrate sundry matters of chronology and historical detail. The published material for the study, although not absolutely complete, is fairly adequate. The art and literature of the reign are discussed in the concluding chapter of this work.

The cognate evidence obtained from portraits, drawings, and paintings is of special interest as helping the student to visualize the leading personages of the story exactly as they lived. Only a moderate exercise of imagination is required to call up the vision of Akbar surrounded by his courtiers and friends at Fathpur-Sikri, where the buildings which he used are still standing for the most part.

It is thus apparent that the sources for the biography of Akbar, the estimation of his genius, and the history of his reign are extraordinarily abundant and various. All the kinds of evidence enumerated above have been utilized freely in the composition of this work, but the attempt to exhaust the recorded particulars has not been made. The treatment of the material has been selective, not exhaustive. The author has aimed at the object of drawing a just picture of Akbar, supporting his presentation of the emperor by so much historical detail as is indispensable for the correct framing of the portrait, and by no more. The details of campaigns and court intrigues which do not directly concern the personality of Akbar will not be found in this volume, but events in which he took an active part are narrated with considerable minuteness. The attentive reader will not fail to observe that authors, even when contemporary, often contradict one another. It would be too much to expect that my efforts to ascertain the exact truth can have been successful in every case. The evidence on each doubtful point has been weighed with care and impartiality. If any reader feels inclined to dissent from any of the conclusions embodied in the text, the references given should be sufficient to enable him to form an independent opinion.

Chapter I

AKBAR’S ANCESTRY AND LIFE BEFORE HIS ACCESSION ; INDIA IN 1556; AKBAR’S TASK

Akbar was a foreigner in India. He had not a drop of Indian blood in his veins.1 On the father’s side he was a direct descendant in the seventh generation from Marlowe’s Tamerlane, the great Amir Timur, a Central Asian Turk.2 In some manner, the exact nature of which is not known, he was descended through a female from the same stock as Chingiz Khan, the Mongol ‘ scourge of Asia ’ in the thirteenth century.3 The particular branch of the Turks to which Akbar’s ancestors belonged was known by the name of Chagatai or Jagatai, because they dwelt in the regions beyond the Oxus which had

1 Nevertheless, Mr. Havell boldly asserts that Akbar was ‘ an Indian of the Indians ’ ( Indian Architecture, 1913, p. Ii62).

2 The names in the pedigree

are Timur : (1) Miran Shah ;

(2) Muhammad Sultan ; (3) Abu S’ald ; (4) ’Umar Shaikh ; (5) Babur; (6) Humayun; (7) Akbar.

For full genealogy see end of Ain, vol. i, or Elphinstone, ed. 5.

Babur or Babur, not Babar as usually written, is a Turk! name, having no connexion with the Arabic babar, 4 a lion ’ (E. D.

Ross, J. cfc Proc. A. S. B., 1910, extra no., p. iv). Monserrate correctly writes ‘ Baburus ’.

3 ‘ Porro autem Zelaldinus [Jalalu-d din] maternum genus a Cinguiscano ducit, quod Rex ipse Sacerdotibus signiflcavit . . .

Khan] uxor. Quare in Cingiscani genus vel ab avia vel ab alia Cingiscani stirpis heroide quasi insitione adjunctus est, quam pridem autem ab eo non accepimus.

Vera tamen narrare cum sibi ab illo muliebre genus esse affirmaret credidimus ’ (Commentarius, pp. 652, 656). I understand the author’s suggestion to be that the unnamed female who transmitted the blood of Chingiz Khan was in the ancestry of Akbar’s father, not in that of his Persian mother, who was called Chuli ’ because of her wanderings in the desert ( chut ). The statement that she had been previously married or betrothed to another man before her union with Humayun is not found elsewhere. She was distantly related to Humayun, although not of royal descent.

The name of Chingiz is variously spelt. The Ency cl. Brit., ed. 11, retains the old-fashioned ‘ Jenghiz’.

In quotations from Monserrate I distinguish u and v, i and j, as usual in modern books.

Akbar a foreigner in India.

Chagatai or Jagatai, the second son of Chingiz.1 The blood of the Turk! tribes in Central Asia was much blended with that of the Mongols. Jahangir, Akbar’s son, recognized the relationship by priding himself on observing the customs of Chingiz as well as the regulations of Timur.2 ‘ Mogul the designation by which European writers usually indicate the Timurid dynasty of India, is merely another form of ‘ Mongol Akbar was much more a Turk than a Mongol or Mogul, and his mother was a Persian.

The character of Akbar, so far as it depended upon heredity, was thus based on three distinct non-Indian strains of blood existing in his proximate ancestors, namely, the Turk or Turk!, the Mongol or Mogul, and the Persian or Iranian strains. The manners and customs of his court exhibited features which were derived from all the three sources, Turk!, Mongol, and Iranian. During the early years of his reign Indian influences counted for little, the officers and courtiers surrounding him being divided into two parties, the Turks — Mongol or Chagatai and Uzbeg — on the one side,3 and the Persians on the other. But after Akbar had attained maturity the pressure exercised by his Indian environment rapidly increased, so that in sentiment he became less and less of a foreigner, until in the later years of his life he had become more than half an Hindu. His personal conduct was then guided mainly by Hindu dharma ,4 or rules of duty, modified considerably by the precepts of Iranian Zoroastrianism. The Turk! and Mongol

1 Sir Ch. Elliot in Encycl. Brit., ed. 11, s.v. ‘Turks’.

3 ‘ The Timurids [of Samarkand] were overthrown and succeeded by the Shaibani dynasty, a branch of the house of Juji, Jenghiz Khan’s eldest son, to whom his father had assigned dominions in the region north of the kingdom of Jagatai. About