INDIA 321 though still a boy, seized the reins of government for himself. His rule, which ended with his death in 1605, was almost exactly contemporary with that of Queen Elizabeth. A soldier and statesman, a lover of learning and philosophy, daring to recklessness, boundlessly generous, a ruler who enjoyed his own life to the uttermost, yet made the welfare Akbar, 1556- of his countless subjects his supreme aim, Akbar is 1605 - one of the most splendid and attractive figures in history. An avowed but very unorthodox Mohammedan, he instituted the practice of making in effect no distinction in his treatment of Hindu and Moslem. No oriental monarch could abstain from conquest, and he extended his dominion from Kabul on the north-west to the mouth of the Ganges, and over most of Central India, yet not so much as to be beyond control. Order, justice, prosperity, and comparative peace marked his long reign. There was a falling off in the reign of his son, Jehangir, in whose day the English East India Company, chartered in 1600, obtained from a native prince its first trading station at Surat on the west coast, and the first English envoy visited the court of the Great Mogul, the most magnificent in the world. Corruption was then shah already setting in among the governing classes. Jekan. Jehangir's son Shah Jehan was a more worthy descendant of his grandfather, and in his time the splendour of the Moguls reached its highest point. He built one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, the Taj Mahal at Agra. The principle of tolera- tion, of treating the whole empire as one, was on the whole maintained through these reigns. But after Shah Jehan came Aurangzib, a sort of counterpart to Philip 11. of Spain ; a fanatical Moslem who oppressed the Hindus and revived the old antagonism of races and religions. Half his long reign, which ended in 1707, was spent on a very incomplete subjugation of the Deccan, where all the kingdoms which had flourished for the last two centuries were overthrown. But the seeds of disintegration were sown. Sivaji, a Hindu adventurer of extraordinary ability, united the Maratha peoples occupying the hill-country of the western Deccan, and made them into a tremendous power, though x
