ing at home, yet argued that as the making of pilgrimages
constituted a part of the Hindu religion, and was, in a sense, a
Hindu form of rendering homage to the Almighty, it would be wrong to
throw the smallest stumbling-block in the way of this manifestation
of their submission to that which they regarded as a divine
ordinance. He accordingly remitted the tax.

Similarly regarding the jizya, or capitation tax imposed by
Muhammadan sovereigns on those of another faith. This tax had been
imposed in the early days of the Muhammadan conquest by the Afghan
rulers of India. There was no tax which caused so much bitterness of
feeling on the part of those who had to pay it: not one which gave so
much opportunity to the display and exercise of human tyranny. The
reason why the sovereigns before Akbar failed entirely to gain the
sympathies of the children of the soil might be gathered from the
history of the proceedings connected with this tax alone. 'When the
collector of the Diwan,' writes the author of the Tarikh-i-Firuz
Shahi, 'asks the Hindus to pay the tax, they should pay it with all
humility and submission. And if the collector wishes to spit into
their mouths, they should open their mouths without the slightest
fear of contamination, so that the collector may do so.... The object
of such humiliation {175} and spitting into their mouths is to prove
the obedience of infidel subjects under protection, and to promote
the glory of the Islam, the true religion, and to show contempt for
false religions.' That the officials who acted in the manner here
described contravened the true spirit of Islam, I need not stop to
argue. There is not a religion which has not suffered from the
intemperate zeal of its bigoted supporters; and Muhammadanism has
suffered at least as much as the others. But the extract proves the
extent to which it was possible for the agents of an unusually
enlightened prince to tyrannise over and to insult the conquered race
in the name of a religion, whose true tenets they perverted by so
acting.

Akbar recognised not only the inherent liability to this abuse in the
collection of such a tax, but also the vicious character of the tax
itself. The very word 'infidel' was hateful to him. 'Who is certain
that he is right,' was his constant exclamation. Recognising good in
all religions, he would impose no tax on the conscientious faith of
any man. Early then, in the ninth year of his reign, and in the
twenty-thi