Din-i-Ilahi, and a new profession of faith, which, instead of the old Islamic formula, “There is no God but God, and Mahomed is his prophet,” proclaimed indeed in the same words the unity of God, but declared Akbar to be the one Viceregent of God.  The new religion, theistic in doctrine, not only borrowed its prayers chiefly from the Parsees and its ritual from the Hindus, but practically abolished all Mahomedan observances.  The orthodox Mahomedans naturally held up their hands in horror, and many preferred honourable exile to conformity.  But the awe which Akbar inspired, and perhaps the acknowledged elevation of his motives, generally compelled at least outward acceptance during his lifetime.  His Mahomedan subjects had, moreover, to admit that his desire to conciliate Hinduism did not blind him to its most perverse features.  Whilst he abolished the capitation tax on Hindus and the tax upon Hindu pilgrims, he forbade infant marriages and, short of absolute prohibition, did all he could to discountenance the self-immolation of Hindu widows.  To the Brahmans especially his condemnation, both implied and explicit, of the caste system was a constant stone of offence.

Great as was his genius and admirable as were many of his institutions, Akbar, to use a homely phrase, fell between two stools to the ground.  He himself ceased to be a Mahomedan without becoming a Hindu, whilst the great bulk at least of his subjects still remained at bottom Mahomedans and Hindus as before.  Neither community was ripe for an eclectic creed based only upon sweet reasonableness and lofty ethical conceptions.  His son and successor, Jehanghir, at once reverted to Mahomedan orthodoxy, but the reaction only became militant when Aurungzeb succeeded Shah Jehan.  The profound incompatibility between Islam and Hinduism reasserted itself in him with a bitterness which the growing menace of the rising power of the Hindu Mahrattas probably helped to intensify.  The reimposition of the poll-tax on the Hindus destroyed the last vestige of the great work of conciliation to which Akbar had vainly applied all his brilliant energies.  Like Fatehpur Sikri itself, which for lack of water he had been compelled to abandon within fifteen years of its construction, it was a magnificent failure, and it was perhaps bound in his time to be a failure.

Aurungzeb was the first of the Moghuls to reside in the Mahomedan atmosphere of Delhi throughout his long reign.  But, begun in usurpation at the cost of his own father, it ended in misery and gloom.  His sons had revolted against him, his sombre fanaticism had estranged from him the Rajput princes of whom Akbar had made the pillars of the Moghul throne, and though he had reduced to subjection the last of the independent Mahomedan kingdoms of India, he had exhausted his vast military resources in long and fruitless endeavours to arrest the growth of the new Mahratta power, to which Shivaji had not unsuccessfully attempted to rally the spiritual forces of disaffected Hinduism.