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Jains at the Court of Akbar
- R. Krishnamurthi
In the chapter on Jains in ''Din-i-Ilahi", Mr. Roychoudhury has dismissed the relationship of Akbar with that community with scant attention. This is due to the fact that he has been ignorant of the numerous works in Sanskrit that give us a remarkably full idea of the subject. He has also been led into some errors of generalisation as well as of detail.
He starts by saying that during the early Muslim period the Muslims did not come into clash with Jainism. This is not so. There is plenty of evidence to show that the Muslim rulers contacted the Jains from the early Muslim rule in India' and the absence of mention of the Jains in the Muslim histories is due to the simple fact that the Muslims put down the Jains also as Hindus. Even during the time of Akbar and the later Mughals, the Muslim historians often mean Jains when they write Hindus.
Akbar's contact with the learned among the Jains did not begin in 1582 as Mr. Roychoudhury states but much earlier, i.e., a few years prior to 1568 and the close contact continued certainly till the death of Akbar and there is no ground to say that''we do not hear much of the Jains after the death of Hiravijaya Suri in 1592." The first Jain, so far as we know at present, to influence Akbar and gain his intelligent patronage was Padmasundara.? His work “Akbarshahisringaradharpana, written under the direct patronage of the Emperor, makes it clear that Akbar's interest in learned pundits of other faiths and his discussions on religious matters with them date back to his youth and the early years of his reign.
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TAH YEN 317 125-126
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