CHAPTER XV
AKBAR, THE GREATEST MOGUL OF THEM ALL
T Agra, Akbar, the greatest of all the Mogul sovereigns, descendant of Baber and Timur, and of tribal connection with Genghis Khan, becomes a very real personage. He lived in that age of great sovereigns when Henry IV, Philip II, and Queen Elizabeth ruled in Europe. He has been called the Marcus Aurelius and the Frederick the Great of India, and he was the greatest builder the country had then known. Forts, palaces, tombs, and whole cities sprang up by his command, and at his court literature, art, and all religions were honored. Brahmans, Mohammedans, Sikhs, Jains, and Catholic priests expounded and argued with him in a first parliament of religions, and, regarding them all impartially, he devised a universal theology, a compromise creed which his vizier and not a few courtiers adopted. He himself worshiped the sun every morning, as representative of the divinity which animates and rules the world. He was a strenuous sort of ruler too, walking twenty and thirty miles a day, to the dismay of his courtiers; and once he rode from Ajmir to Agra in two days,
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