fore I
myself am guided;' and, as he listened to other doctrines and other
creeds, his honest doubts became confirmed, and, noting daily the
bitter narrowness of sectarianism, no matter of what form of
religion, he became more and more wedded to the principle of
toleration for all.

The change did not come all at once. The historian, Badauni, a
bigoted Musalman, who deplored what he considered the backsliding of
the great sovereign, wrote: 'From his earliest childhood to his
manhood, and from his manhood to old age, his Majesty has passed
through the most various phases, and through all sorts of religious
practices and sectarian beliefs, and has collected everything which
people can find in books, with a talent of selection peculiar to him
and a spirit of inquiry opposed to every (Islamite) principle. Thus a
faith based on some elementary principles traced itself on the mirror
of his heart, and as the result of all the influences which were
brought to {149} bear on his Majesty, there grew, gradually as the
outline on a stone, the conviction on his heart that there were
sensible men in all religions, and abstemious thinkers, and men
endowed with miraculous powers, among all nations. If some true
knowledge were thus everywhere to be found, why should truth be
confined to one religion, or to a creed like Islam, which was
comparatively new, and scarcely a thousand years old; why should one
sect assert what another denies, and why should one claim a
preference without having superiority conferred upon itself?'

Badauni goes on to state that Akbar conferred with Brahmans and
Sumanis, and under their influence accepted the doctrine of the
transmigration of souls. There can be no doubt, however, but that the
two brothers, Faizi and Abulfazl, like himself born and brought up in
the faith of Islam, greatly influenced the direction of his studies
on religion. It is necessary to say something regarding two men so
illustrious and so influential. They were the sons of a Shaikh of
Arab descent, Shaikh Mubarak, whose ancestors settled at Nagar, in
Rajputana. Shaikh Mubarak, a man who had studied the religion of his
ancestors to the acquiring of a complete knowledge of every phase of
it, who possessed an inquiring mind and a comprehensive genius, and
who had progressed in thought as he acquired knowledge, gave his
children an education which, grafted on minds apt to receive and to
retain knowledge, qualified them to shine in any soci