avourite with Akbar, for of all the Rajputana nobles he had been the
first to pay his respects to him, and had ever rendered him true and
loyal service. He had married a daughter of Raja Udai Singh of
Jodhpur, a princess possessing great strength of will. When the news
of her husband's death reached Ambar she positively refused to become
a Sati. Under the orders of the Emperor she had an absolute right to
use her discretion. But when she did use it to refuse, the outcry
against her, headed by Udai Singh, her son, became so uncontrollable,
that it was resolved to force her to the stake. Information of this
reached Akbar, and he determined to prevent the outrage. He was just
in time, for the pile was already lighted when his agents, one of
them the uncle of the deceased, reached the ground, seized Udai
Singh, dispersed the assembly, and saved the princess.

Attached as Akbar was to his learned and liberal-minded friends,
Faizi and Abulfazl, he encouraged all who displayed a real love for
learning, and a true desire to acquire knowledge. He hated pretence
and hypocrisy. He soon recognised that these two qualities underlay
the professions of the 'Ulamas (Muhammadan doctors of learning) at
his court. When he had found them out, he was disgusted with them,
and resolved to spare no means of showing up their pretensions.

'He never pardoned,' writes Professor Blochmann, 'pride and conceit
in a man, and of all kinds of {167} conceit, the conceit of learning
was most hateful to him.' Hence the cry of the class affected by his
action that he discouraged learning and learned men. He did nothing
of the sort. There never has flourished in India a more generous
encourager of the real thing. In this respect the present rulers of
India might profit by his example. One of the men whose knowledge of
history was the most extensive in that age, and who possessed great
talents and a searching mind, was Khan-i-Azam Mirza, son of his
favourite nurse. For a long time this man held fast to the orthodox
profession of faith, ridiculing the 'new religion' of Akbar, and
especially ridiculing Faizi and Abulfazl, to whom he applied
nicknames expressing his sense of their pretensions. But at a later
period he had occasion to make the pilgrimage to Mekka, and there he
was so fleeced by the priests that his attachment to Islam insensibly
cooled down. On his return to Agra, he became a member of the Divine
Faith. He wrote poetry well, and was remarkable