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e adopted to attain this end, I propose to say a few words on a subject which may be said to underlie the whole question, the conformation of his mind and the manner in which it was affected by matters relating to the spiritual condition of mankind. Than this there cannot be any more important investigation, for it depended entirely on the structure of his mind, and its power to accept {147} without prejudice, and judge impartially, views differing from those of his co-religionists, whether the chief of the Muhammadans, few in number when compared with the entire community, could so obtain the confidence and sympathy of the subject race, doomed to eternal perdition in the thought of all bigoted Musalmans, as to overcome their prejudices to an extent which, had they been consulted previously, they would have declared impossible. The period was undoubtedly unfavourable to the development of what may be called a liberal policy in this matter. The Muhammadans were not only conquerors, but conquerors who had spread their religion by the sword. The scorn and contempt with which the more zealous among them regarded the religion of the Hindus and those who professed it may be traced in every page of the writings of Badauni, one of the contemporary historians of the period. Nor was that scorn confined solely to the Hindu religion. It extended to every other form of worship and to every other doctrine save that professed by the followers of Muhammad. Akbar was born in that creed. But he was born with an inquiring mind, a mind that took nothing for granted. During the years of his training he enjoyed many opportunities of noting the good qualities, the fidelity, the devotion, often the nobility of soul, of those Hindu princes, whom his courtiers, because they were followers of Brahma, devoted mentally to eternal torments. He noted that these men, and men who {148} thought like them, constituted the vast majority of his subjects. He noted, further, of many of them, and those the most trustworthy, that though they had apparently much to gain in a worldly point of view by embracing the religion of the court, they held fast to their own. His reflective mind, therefore, was unwilling from the outset to accept the theory that because he, the conqueror, the ruler, happened to be born a Muhammadan, therefore Muhammadanism was true for all mankind. Gradually his thoughts found words in the utterance: 'Why should I claim to guide men be
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