Akbar, the Great 1542 - 1605

Can a man – all alone - foist a god upon his fellows Even if it’s only himself And they his subjects G.. is Akbar! Does the muezzin from the minaret of Qoutoub-Minar look up or down to the illiterate savant emperor whose newly-ordered cosmos much as Tamerlane and Genghis Khan's blood mixed gods invented the Gysin-Burroughs cut-up and fold-in method a cornucopian chimera shi'ite-sunnite-kharidjites hindu/buddhist-jain confucian-taoist/zoroastrian orthodox-christian/judaic saivite-vaisnavite mahayanist-theravadite shintoist-zen-chan agnostic-atheist A…. is Great! In the begining there was no VERB for him In the end from "brahmana" Himalayas to the "asurya" Deccan from Ghazna and Kabul to the spent chugged mouth of the Ganges where bloomed the Allah-Upanishad One common language One uncommon religion One classless society One mutually nourishing art One scientific quest and the sweet music of friendly disputation within then the world’s vastest book and art collection though knowingly took to wife an Hindu princess chose his prime counsellor from among the Brahmin élite where within hearing distance lithesome nymphs bathed in scented milk his victoriously wearied warrior limbs back from punitive expeditions through Panipat Delhi Agra Punjab Gwalior Ajmer Gujarat Bengal Sind Orissa Baluchistan Ahmadnagar Kashmir Khandesh to circumscribe the sub-continent a Ceasar at the court of Fatehpur-Sikri Akbar is ___! Who would parse and complete or conclude the syllogism For « One » who dared abolish the jiziyah Note: Jalal ud-Din Muhammad Akbar (1542-1605), the third Mughal Emperor, edicted that muezzins should herald the rising of the sun by the call: Allah-u-Akbar! The « jiziyah » , a word of Arabic origin, meaning a tax levied on non-Muslims who wished to conserve their own property, and imposed by the Moghul sovereigns – on and off - in India, was abolished by Akbar in his seventh year of accession to the throne. ©: T. Wignesan, March 13, 1992 (from the sequence/collection: "Words for a Lost Sub-Continent")