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AKBAR, EMPEROR OF INDIA
A Picture of Life and Customs from the Sixteenth Century
by
Dr. Richard von Garbe
Rector of the University of Tubingen
Translated from the German by Lydia G. Robinson
Reprinted From “The Monist” Of April,
1909
Chicago
The Open Court Publishing Company
1909
[Illustration: Akbar directing the tying-up of A wild elephant. Tempera painting in the bar Namah by Abu’l Fazl. Photographed from the original in the India Museum for The Place of Animals in Human Thought by the Countess Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco.]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Akbar Directing the Tying-up of a Wild Elephant (Frontispiece)
Akbar, Emperor of India
Mausoleum of Akbar’s Father, Humayun
View of Fathpur
Akbar’s Grave
Mausoleum of Akbar at Sikandra
The Chakra, the Indian Emblem of Empire
AKBAR, EMPEROR OF INDIA.[A]
The student of India who would at the same time be an historian, discovers to his sorrow that the land of his researches is lamentably poor in historical sources. And if within the realm of historical investigation, a more seductive charm lies for him in the analysis of great personalities than in ascertaining the course of historical development, then verily may he look about in vain for such personalities in the antiquity and middle ages of India. Not that the princely thrones were wanting in great men in ancient India, for we find abundant traces of them in Hindu folk-lore and poetry, but these sources do not extend to establishing the realistic element in details and furnishing life-like portraits of the men themselves. That the Hindu has ever been but little interested in historical matters is a generally recognized fact. Religious and philosophical speculations, dreams of other worlds, of previous and future existences, have claimed the attention of thoughtful minds to a much greater degree than has historical reality.
[Footnote A: This essay is art enlarged
form of an address delivered
on the occasion of the birthday of King
Wilhelm II of Wuerttemberg, on
February 25, 1909.]