[Footnote 17:  Badaoni in Noer, II, 320.]

It is a familiar fact that the Hindus considered the Ganges to be a holy river and that cows were sacred animals.  Accordingly we can easily understand Akbar’s purpose when we learn that at every meal he drank regularly of water from the Ganges (carefully filtered and purified to be sure) calling it “the water of immortality,"[18] and that later he forbade the slaughtering of cattle and eating their flesh.[19] But Akbar did not go so far in his connivance with the Hindus that he considered all their customs good or took them under his protection.  For instance he forbade child marriages among the Hindus, that is to say the marriage of boys under sixteen and of girls under fourteen years, and he permitted the remarriage of widows.  The barbaric customs of Brahmanism were repugnant to his very soul.  He therefore most strictly forbade the slaughtering of animals for purposes of sacrifice, the use of ordeals for the execution of justice, and the burning of widows against their will, which indeed was not established according to Brahman law but was constantly practiced according to traditional custom.[20] To be sure neither Akbar nor his successor Jehangir were permanently successful in their efforts to put an end to the burning of widows.  Not until the year 1829 was the horrible custom practically done away with through the efforts of the English.

  [Footnote 18:  Noer, II, 317, 318.]

  [Footnote 19:  Ibid. 376, 317.]

  [Footnote 20:  J.T.  Wheeler, IV, I, 173; M. Elphinstone, 526; G.B. 
  Malleson, 170.]

Throughout his entire life Akbar was a tirelessly industrious, restlessly active man.  By means of ceaseless activity he struggled successfully against his natural tendency to melancholy and in this way kept his mind wholesome, which is most deserving of admiration in an Oriental monarch who was brought in contact day by day with immoderate flattery and idolatrous veneration.  Well did Akbar know that no Oriental nation can be governed without a display of dazzling splendor; but in the midst of the fabulous luxury with which Akbar’s court was fitted out and his camp on the march, in the possession of an incomparably rich harem which accompanied the Emperor on his expeditions and journeys in large palatial tents, Akbar always showed a remarkable moderation.  It is true that he abolished the prohibition of wine which Islam had inaugurated and had a court cellar in his palace, but he himself drank only a little wine and only ate once a day and then did not fully satisfy his hunger at this one meal which he ate alone and not at any definite time.[21] Though he was not strictly a vegetarian yet he lived mainly on rice, milk, fruits and sweets, and meat was repulsive to him.  He is said to have eaten meat hardly more than four times a year.[22]

  [Footnote 21:  Noer, II, 355-]

  [Footnote 22:  J.T.  Wheeler, IV, I, 169, following the old English
  geographer Samuel Purchas.]