. Indian historical studies . throne of Ferghana,three years later he conquered Samarcaud, the birth-place of Timur. Driven out of Samarcand, he was stillhardly more than a boy when he seized the kingdomof Kabul. Not content with Kabul, he was tempted,in 1526, to follow his predecessors in the congenialpastime of raiding the Panjab. Beating the Mahom-medans at Panipat in the same year, and the Piajputsat Agra in the next, he died in 1530, under fifty,but ruler of an empire which stretched from theGanges to the Oxus. His son, the brilliant, recklessHumayun—capax imperii nisi imperasset, as theR
. Indian historical studies . throne of Ferghana,three years later he conquered Samarcaud, the birth-place of Timur. Driven out of Samarcand, he was stillhardly more than a boy when he seized the kingdomof Kabul. Not content with Kabul, he was tempted,in 1526, to follow his predecessors in the congenialpastime of raiding the Panjab. Beating the Mahom-medans at Panipat in the same year, and the Piajputsat Agra in the next, he died in 1530, under fifty,but ruler of an empire which stretched from theGanges to the Oxus. His son, the brilliant, recklessHumayun—capax imperii nisi imperasset, as theRoman historian would have said—spent a troubledtwenty-six years in alternately beating his numerousfoes and being beaten by them. After at one timeflying through the desert for his life, he returned intriumph, only to die from a fall on the marble stepsof his palace in 1556. Such was the parentage of Akbar. Born while hisfather was a fugitive in the wilds of Sind, he passeda wild and adventurous childhood. Yet, though it. The Taj Mahal.(Photo hij the Author.) \_To face page 107. AKBAR 107 fitted the boy for coping with the thousand and onedangers which beset him who dared to aspire in thosedays to the throne of Delhi, it did not debase orbrutalize him. Alibar was filled with the kindlyhumour, the grace, the sense of the poetry of life,which flashes out on every page of his grandfathersmemoirs, and which shines in every line of thetombs and palaces of his graceless grandson. Theline of Babar was a race of poets; the Taj Mahal,most glorious of shrines, is an epitome of their aspira-tions, their achievements, and their failings. Akbarwas almost as young as his grandfather when hiscareer began. He was barely fourteen when the newsof his fathers death reached him, but he had alreadyseen fighting, under the tutelage of his guardian,Bairam Khan. For a moment it seemed as if the Emperorsdemise must ring the death-knell of Moghul aspira-tions in India ; the revolting Afghans, led by
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