permitted widows to marry again, and set his face resolutely against the burning of widows on their husband's pyres: wholly to abolish suttee was beyond his power, but he ordained that the sacrifice must be voluntary, and he took personal pains to see that no compulsion should be used. He also insisted that "the consent of the bride and bridegroom and the permission of the parents are absolutely necessary in marriage contracts" – a new idea in a country where girls were married without regard for their own wishes or desires.
Akbar was too shrewd a man to suppose that the hereditary pride of the Rajputs was to be conquered merely by kind words and mild measures. He knew that often the best way to make friends with a man is to knock him down. Udai Singh, the great rana of Mewar (son of Sanga, Babar's adversary), left him in no doubt as to his hostility. He sheltered Baz Bahadur when driven from Malwa by the imperial army, and when other rajas came and tendered their allegiance to the Moghul, Udai Singh stood aloof, apparently secure in his rocky fortresses and numerous array of troops and elephants. Akbar, he thought, could never take his strong castle of Chitor, standing on an isolated crag, four hundred feet high, and with almost perpendicular sides towards the top. The summit was occupied by an immense fortress, well supplied with provisions, wells, and water-tanks, and garrisoned by eight thousand veterans of the Rajput race under a famous leader, Jai Mai, the rana himself having prudently
