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The Jain Teachers of Akbar
By Vincent A. Smith
The concluding section Āin 30 of Book of II of the Ain-i-Akbari is entitled 'The Learned Men of the Time', who are enumerated as being 140 in number divided into five classes. The first class, 'such as understand the mysteries of both worlds', headed by the name of Abu-l-Fazl's fathers, Shaikh Mubārak, ends with No. 21, Adit (Aditya), probably a Brahmanical Hindu. The first twelve names are Muslim. Nos. 13-21 are all Hindu in form. Blochmann evidently knew nothing about the persons indicated by those nine names, as he gives no note on any one of them. No. 16, Hariji Sür, was, as will be explained, an eminent Jain.
We need not trouble ourselves now with Abu-I Fazi's second, third and fourth classes. His fifth class, such as understand sciences resting on testimony (nakl) comprises Nos 100-140, all of whom, except the last two, are Musamans. The names of those two, Nos. 139 and 140, are given respectively as Bijai Sēn Sur and Bhău Chand, again without comment by Blochmann. They also were distinguished Jains.
The important fact that Akbar welcomed Jain teachers and listened to their instruction for at least twenty years has been ignored in the extremely unsatisfactory account of his life and actions given in modern history books. Indeed, this fact has been made known only by an anonymous article in an obscure publication in 1910, which will be described presently.
The erroneous notion that Buddhists took part in the debates on religion, held first in the Ibadat-khāna or House of Worship, and subsequently in the private apartments of the palace at Fathpur-Sikri rests on the mistranslation of a passage in the Akbarnāma committed by Chalmers in his manuscript version and copied first by Elliot and Dowson and then by Von Noer.
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