Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/62

40 AKBAR'S REFORMS faiths, but no one creed could hold the master-key of the infinite. As Abu-1-Fazl wrote: " God, in every temple I see those who see thee, and in every tongue that is spoken, thou art praised. Polytheism and Islam grope after thee. Each religion says, ( Thou art one, without equal.' Be it mosque, men murmur holy prayer; or church, the bells ring, for love of thee. Awhile I frequent the Christian cloister, anon the mosque : But thee only I seek from fane to fane. Thine elect know naught of heresy or orthodoxy, whereof neither stands behind the screen of thy truth. Heresy to the heretic dogma to the orthodox But the dust of the rose-petal belongs to the heart of the perfume-seller." Tennyson has finely expressed Akbar's dream of a pure and universal faith: " I can but lift the torch Of reason in the dusky cave of Life, And gaze on this great miracle, the World, Adoring That who made, and makes, and is, And is not, what I gaze on all else Form, Ritual, varying with the tribes of men." It had taken many years to develop this new relig- ion of catholic comprehension. Akbar would often sit, in the first hour of dawn, on a stone in his palace court, watching the rising of the sun and meditating on the mystery of life. He was passing through a stage of earnest doubt. He listened eagerly to the words of the Christian fathers, to the Vedanta philosophy of ascetic yogis, and he must have known the Buddhist doctrine and the profound motaphysic of India. He had versions of the Sanskrit classics to be made for