AKBAR, EMPEROR OF INDIA.	17
is also said to have invented a mill cart which served as a
mill as well as for carrying freight. With regard to these
inventions we must take into consideration the possibility
that the real inventor may have been some one else, but that
the flatterers at the court ascribed them to the Emperor be-
cause the initiative may have originated with him.
The details which I have given will suffice to show
what perfection the military and civil administration at-
tained through Akbar's efforts. Throughout his empire
order and justice reigned and a prosperity hitherto un-
known. Although taxes were never less oppressive in
India than under Akbar's reign, the imperial income for
one year amounted to more than $120,000,000, a sum at
which contemporary Europe marveled, and which we must
consider in the light of the much greater purchasing power
of money in the sixteenth century.15 A large part of Ak-
bar's income was used in the erection of benevolent insti-
tutions, of inns along country roads in which travelers
were entertained at the imperial expense, in the support
of the poor, in gifts for pilgrims, in granting loans whose
payment was never demanded, and many similar ways. To
his encouragement of schools, of literature, art and science
I will refer later.
Of decided significance for Akbar's success was his
patronage of the native population. He did not limit his
efforts to lightening the lot of the subjugated Hindus and
relieving them of oppressive burdens; his efforts went
deeper. He wished to educate the Mohammedans and
Hindus to a feeling of mutual good-will and confidence,
and in doing so he was obliged to contend in the one case
against haughtiness and inordinate ambition, and in the
other against hate and distrustful reserve. If with this
(II, 372) because of the so-called "organ cannons** which were in use in
Europe as early as the I5th century.
15 Noer, I, 439.