stated the law. The mir-i-adal passed judgment and may therefore be regarded as a superior authority. The kazi was the organ of the holy law, but the mir-i-adal could introduce modifications according to the will of the king and the customs of the country.

All privileges being in practice granted to the church by the crown were liable to be revoked by the same authority. There was never a serious breach between the supporters of the sovereign rights of the crown and the upholders of the church. The personal character of allegiance was asserted to the full. The principle of the divine basis of royal authority being accepted, the nation as a whole was profoundly loyal to the monarchy. The royal authority was controlled only by custom. Under these circumstances no person could set up, under any pretence whatsoever, any independent coaotive power, either ecclesiastical or popular, for that would have undermined the great royal office. People knew that even oppressive regal authority was better than weak central government which would not have taken long to develop into anarchy. No one ever cared to dwell upon the distinction between a de facto and a de jure sovereign so long as the royal sceptre was wielded by a member of the royal family. Royal power was clothed with mysterious sanctity and separated by a wide gulf from all other forms of power. Ecclesiasticism never became impor tant as a political force. The officers of the church were under the throne and were never allowed to upset the organisation of the state at their pleasure. The Mughal practice never recognised the spiritual subjection of the prince, as a layman, to the officers of the church, though he might be regarded as the minister and executant of the church's decrees. The civil magistrates never became the nurses and the servants of the church who must throw down their crowns before it. The state wielded the sovereign power and the church was not allowed to dictate how it should be wielded.

The submission of the clergy to the Mughal king was as complete as it was in the case of Henry VIII of England.

There are not many fatwas issued by the ulama against the Mughal kings. It is true that the heretical doctrines of Akbar did provoke an adverse criticism, and Mulla Muhammad Yazdi, the kaziul-kuzzat of Jaunpur, issued a fatwa insisting on the duty of taking the field and rebelling against the emperor on this account, the net result was nil. The lay power succeeded in establishing its supremacy, even to the point of persecuting the teachers of all doctrines which it regarded as harmful. When the Mulla Muhammad Yazdi excited a rebellion against Akbar and was joined by Muhammad Magum Kabuli, Muhammad Magum Khan Farankhudi, Mir Muizz-ul-Mulk, Nayabat Khan, Arab Bahadur and others, the whole thing ended in a failure. In vain did the imam condemn the emperor for having made serious encroachments on the grant-lands belonging to the church and to God. The mulla was decoyed and put in a boat. When the boat got in deep waters, as we learn from Badaoni, "the sailors were ordered to swamp the boat of the mulla's life." The mullas of Lahore were banished and all the mullas who were suspected of disaffection by Akbar were sent to "the closet of annihilation.”

The moral and religious claims of the state to the allegiance of its subjects were never successfully questioned. In no case was resistance lawful, and the omni-competence of the state was asserted and universally admitted, though the legal omnipotence of the Islamic law always existed in theory. "L'état, c'est moi" was the recognised principle on which the Mughal government was based. Implicit obedience was exacted by the king to all his orders, and no opposition was brooked. During the reign of Bahadur Shah the ulama successfully asserted themselves when the emperor wanted the word "wasi" or heir to be added to the titles of Ali in the recital of Prophet's successors. Haji Yar Muhammad and other ulama objected to it, as the formal attribution of heirship to Ali was naturally offensive to the Sunnis. After discussing the point with the ulama of Lahore it was decided to read the Khutba in the old form, and though there were many honorific titles attached to the name of

Ali, the word "wasi" did not appear. But this success of the ulama was not due to their own power but to the fact that there were thousands of men assembled ready for an outbreak if the emperor had persisted in the innovation. But for this popular backing the ulama would have been worsted in the struggle. We have also to remember that they displayed this strength in a religious and not a political matter. Akbar had wanted to get the legality of mutah marriages recognised. When Kazi Yakub opposed it he was suspended and sent to Gaur as a mere district kazi.

Akbar tried to free the government completely from clerical interference. When the doctrine of infallibility of the king was subscribed to by the ulama in his reign, the secular authority was placed on the highest pedestal and cast its shadow on those below including the members of ecclesiastical organisations. This made Akbar not only the king but also the spiritual guide of his subjects. He came to occupy the same position in Mughal India as was occupied by Henry VIII in Tudor England.

Thus we find the Mughal empire never become a sacerdotal state. The king was certainly God's vicegerent upon earth and the Defender of the Faitha nd Guardian of Islam, but his authority was never dependent upon the verdict of the doctors of Islamic law. Except the holy law which the king was powerful enough to interpret as he liked, there were hardly any written laws in the country which could place limits on that absolute authority which the king exercised over his subjects. It is true the king, like every other Muslim, was obliged to submit to the ordinances of the Shariat, but he demanded and received unhesitating obedience from his subjects. It was an uncompromising doctrine of civic obedience. God being the sole bestower of authority, he to whom that authority was given did not hold himself resposible to any earthly power. Royalty according to Abul Fazl is a light emanating from God, the Divine light, the Sublime halo. It was a sin to rebel against the will and person of the king.

Though the Mughal kings were Sunnis, their belief in the divine right of their power was as strong as that of the Shia kings of Persia. They regarded themselves as the chosen representatives of God, supernaturally gifted and divinely appointed leaders whose right to the allegiance of their subjects was derived directly from heaven. The idea of popular and democratic election which was current among the Arabs never obtained prominence under the Mughals. The agreement of the church to the succession of a king was theoretically essential, but the church being entirely under the state never offered any opposition except in the case of Aurangzeb who was not considered fit to ascend the throne as his hands were soiled in the blood of his brothers. However the objection raised by the kazi-ul-kazzat was very feeble and quite ineffective. The church always acquiesced in the succession of the most powerful clai mant. No divine under Akbar or Aurangzeb ever wielded the power which was wielded by Anselm under Henry I or Becket under Henry II of England. The guardianship of the people was a trust committed to the king by God as Aurangzeb wrote to his sons in his last letter. When Aurangzeb took possession of the throne he proclaimed that it was with the design of insisting upon the law of the Prophet being observed in all its strictness, as it had been relaxed during the reigns of Shah Jahan, his father, and Jahangir, his grandfather; but even he never allowed the exponents of that law to grow too powerful a body. He kept them as much in check as any of his predecessors. The ulama issued a fatwa in September 1659 proclaiming Dara guilty of heresy, but it was in accordance with the wishes of the reigning sovereign.1 The Mughal system of government was never a theological system, and Aurangzeb was wise enough not to allow spiritual or religious considerations to stand in the way of his political ambitions, He certainly tried to serve Islam according to his lights, but he never allowed the Mubam,

'Dara was put to death apparently because he had apostatized from the law, had vilified religion, and had allied himself with heresy and infidelity; but really because he was an unsuccessful claimant to the throne.

madan clerics to put any limit on his temporal power. He never recognised the church as an authority to which political power should be subordinated. He never tolerated a state within a state. The Mughal kings as well as their subjects regarded an all-powerful monarchy as the mcst perfect form of government, if the monarch was benevolent. Its antiquity and universality strengthened that view and invested the king with a dignity and charm most irresistible. Under the circumstances the only check on the power of a Mughal king was the danger of a successful rebellion; and the government was so centralised that a successful rebellion was not possible so long as the emperor was not an imbecile or a fool. Rebellions there were many, but they were mostly abortive and had no chance of success so long as a powerful personality occupied the throne.

In this secularisation of the state the Mughal kings showed - themselves to be good statesmen. In a country where the bulk of the population consisted of non-Muslims the views of the orthodox nlama would not have proved very helpful in matters of state craft, and any successful insistence on the observance of the ulama's views would have been followed by disastrous results for the stability of the state. Thus the state never became the mere handmaid of an ecclesiastical corporation, and the supreme direction of politics was never placed in the hands of the rulers of the church. The policy of the government during the greater part of the Mughal period was not regulated in the interests of a theological system. The Mughal kings never bowed their heads before the clerical power. Any departure from this policy of maintaining the supremacy of the secular power would have placed the action of the state under the control of a body of persons who were not experts in statesmanship and whose acquaintance with the intricacies of the governmental machinery was not very intimate. The supremacy of the temporal power was on the whole good for the state and ensured its stability.