namely, the recovery of the captives, the surrender of all
firearms, the payment of the fine inflicted by government, the
complete submission of the tribe and the survey of the country.
AKALKOT, a native state of India, in the Deccan division
of Bombay, ranking as one of the Satara Jagirs, situated
between the British district of Sholapur and the nizam's
dominions. It forms part of the Deccan table-land, and has
a cool and agreeable climate. Area 498 sq. m.; pop. (1901)
82,047, showing an increase of 8% in the decade. Estimated
revenue, L. 26,586; the tribute is L. 1000. The chief, who
is a Mahratta of the Bhonsla family, resides at Poona on
a pension, while the state is under British management.
The town of Akalkot is situated near the Great Indian
Peninsula railway, which traverses the state. Pop. 8348.
AKBAR, AKHBAR or AKBER, JELLALADIN MAHOMMED (1542-1605),
one of the greatest and wisest of the Mogul emperors. ' He
was born at Umarkot in Sind on the 14th of October 1542, his
father, Humayun, having been driven from the throne a short time
before by the usurper Sher Khan. After more than twelve years'
exile, Humayun regained his sovereignty, which, however, he
had held only for a few months when he died. Akbar succeeded
his father in 1556 under the regency of Baira n Khan, a
Turkoman noble, whose energy in repelling pretenders to the
throne, and severity in maintaining the discipline of the army,
tended greatly to the consolidation of the newly recovered
empire. Bairam, however, was naturally despotic and cruel;
and when order was somewhat restored, Akbar found it necessary
to take the reins of government into his own hands, which he
did by a proclamation issued in March 1560. The discarded
regent lived for some time in rebellion, endeavouring to
establish an independent principality in Malwa, but at last
he was forced to cast himself on Akbar's mercy. The emperor
not only freely pardoned him, but magnanimously offered him
the choice of a high place in the army or a suitable escort
for a pilgrimage to Mecca, and Bairam preferred the latter
alternative. When Akbar ascended the throne, only a small
portion of what had formerly been comprised within the Mogul
empire owned his authority, and he devoted himself with great
determination and success to the recovery of the revolted
provinces. Over each of these, as it was restored, he placed a
governor, whom he superintended with vigilance and wisdom.
He tried by every means to develop and encourage commerce; he
had the land accurately measured for the purpose of rightly
adjusting taxation; he gave the strictest instructions to
prevent extortion on the part of the taxgatherers, and in
many other respects displayed an enlightened and equitable
policy. Thus it happened that, in the fortieth year of Akbar's
reign, the empire had more than regained all that it had lost,
the recovered provinces being reduced, not to subjection only as
before, but to a great degree of peace, order and contentment.
Akbar's method of dealing with what must always be the chief
difficulty of one who has to rule widely diverse races, affords
perhaps the crowning evidence of his wisdom and moderation
In religion he was at first a Mussulman, but the intolerant
exclusiveness of that creed was quite foreign to his
character. Scepticism as to the divine origin of the
Koran led him to seek the true religion in an eclectic
system. He accordingly set himself to obtain information
about other religions, sent to Goa, requesting that the
Portuguese missionaries there should visit him, and listened
to them with intelligent attention when they came. As the
result of these inquiries, he adopted the creed of pure
deism and a ritual based upon the system of Zoroaster. The
religion thus founded, however, having no vital force, never
spread beyond the limits of the court, and died with Akbar
himself. But though his eclectic system failed, the spirit
of toleration which originated it produced in other ways many
important results, and, indeed, may be said to have done more
to establish Akbar's power on a secure basis than all his
economic and social reforms. He conciliated the Hindus by
giving them freedom of worship; while a- the same time he
strictly prohibited certain barbarous Brahmanical practices,
such as trial by ordeal and the burning of widows against their
will. He also abolished all taxes upon pilgrims as an
interference with the liberty of worship, and the capitation
tax upon Hindus, probably upon similar grounds. Measures
like these gained for him during his lifetime the title of
``Guardian of Mankind,'' and caused him to be held up as a
model to Indian princes of later times, who in the matter of
religious toleration have only too seldom followed his example.
Akbar was a munificent patron of literature. He established
schools throughout his empire for the education of both
Hindus and Moslems, and he gathered round him many men of
literary talent, among whom may be mentioned the brothers
Feizi and Abul Fazl. The former was commissioned by Akbar
to translate a number of Sanskrit scientific works into
Persian; and the latter (see ABUL FAzl) has left, in the
Akbar-Nameh, an enduring record of the emperor's reign.
It is also said that Akbar employed Jerome Xavier, a Jesuit
missionary, to translate the four Gospels into Persian.
The closing years of Akbar's reign were rendered very
unhappy by the misconduct of his sons. Two of them died in
youth, the victims of intemperance; and the third, Salim,
afterwards the emperor Jahangir, was frequently in rebellion
against his father. These calamities were keenly felt by
Akbar, and may even have tended to hasten his death, which
occurred at Agra on the 15th of October 1605. His body was
deposited in a magnificent mausoleum at Sikandra, near Agra.
See G. B. Malleson, Akbar (``Rulers of India'' series), 1890.
AKCHA, a town and khanate of Afghan Turkestan. The town lies
42 m. westward of Balkh on the road to Andkhui. It is protected
by a mud wall and a citadel. Estimated population d000, chiefly
Uzbegs. The khanate is small, but well watered and populous.
The rivers rising in the southern mountains, which no longer
reach the Oxus, terminate in vast swamps near Akcha, and into
these the debris of such vegetation as yearly springs up on the
slopes of the southern hills is washed down in time of flood.
AKEN, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Prussia, on the
Elbe, 25 m. E. S. E. of Magdeburg, with a branch line to
Cothen (8 m.). Pop. (1900) 7358. It has manufactures of
cloth, leather, chemicals and optical instruments; large
quantities of beetroot sugar are produced in the neighbourhood;
and there is a considerable transit trade on the Elbe.
AKENSIDE, MARK (1721-1770), English poet and physician.
was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne on the 9th of November 1721.
He was the son of a butcher, and was slightly lame all his
life from a wound he received as a child from his father's
cleaver. All his relations were dissenters, and, after attending
the free school of Newcastle, and a dissenting academy in the
town. he was sent (1739) to Edinburgh to study theology with
a view to becoming a minister, his expenses being paid from
a special fund set aside by the dissenting community for the
education of their pastors. He had already contributed ``The
Virtuoso, in imitation of Spenser's style and stanza'' (1737)
to the Gentleman's Magazine, and in 1738 ``A British
Phillipic, occasioned by the Insults of the Spaniards, and the
present Preparations for War'' (also published separately).
After he had spent one winter as a student of theology, he
entered his name as a student of medicine. He repaid the
money that had been advanced for his theological studies, and
with this change of mind he seems to have drifted to a mild
deism. His politics, says Dr Johnson, were characterized by
an ``impetuous eagerness to subvert and confound, with very
little care what shall be established,'' and he is caricatured
in the republican doctor of Smollett's Peregrine Pickle. He
was elected a member of the Medical Society of Edinburgh in
1740. His ambitions already lay outside his profession,
and his gifts as a speaker made him hope one day to enter
parliament. In 1740 he printed his ``Ode on the Winter
Solstice'' in a small volume of poems. In 1741 he left
Edinburgh for Newcastle and began to call himself surgeon,
though it is doubtful whether he practised, and from the
next year dates his life-long friendship with Jeremiah Dyson
(1722-1776). During a visit to Morpeth in 1738 he had
conceived the idea of his didactic poem, ``The Pleasures of
the Imagination.'' He had already acquired a considerable
literary reputation when he came to London about the end of
1743, and offered the work to Dodsley for L. 120. Dodsley
thought the price exorbitant, and only accepted the terms
after submitting the Ms. to Pope, who assured him that this
was ``no everyday writer.'' The three books of this poem
appeared in January 1744. His aim, Akenside tells us in the
preface, was ``not so much to give formal precepts, or enter
into the way of direct argumentation, as, by exhibiting the
most engaging prospects of nature, to enlarge and harmonize
the imagination, and by that means insensibly dispose the
minds of men to a similar taste and habit of thinking in
religion, morals and civil life.'' Akenside's powers
fell short of this lofty design; his imagination was not
brilliant enough to surmount the difficulties inherent in a
poem dealing so largely with abstractions; but the work was
well received by the general public. His success was not
unchallenged. Gray wrote to Thomas Wharton that it was
``above the middling,'' but ``often obscure and unintelligible
and too much infected with the Hutchinson1 jargon.''
Into a note added by Akenside to the passage in the third
book dealing with ridicule, William Warburton chose to read
a reflexion on himself. Accordingly he attacked the author
of the Pleasures of the Imagination---which was published
anonymously--in a scathing preface to his Remarks on Several
Occasional Reflections, in answer to Dr Middleton (1744).
This was answered, nominally by Dyson, in An Epistle to the
Rev. Mr Brarburton, in which Akenside no doubt had a hand.
It was in the press when he left England in 1744 to secure a
medical degree at Leiden. In little more than a month he had
completed the necessary dissertation, De ortu et incremento
foetus humani, and received his diploma. Returning to
England he attempted without success to establish a practice in
Northampton. In 1744 he published his Epistle to Curio,
attacking William Pulteney (afterwards earl of Bath) for having
abandoned his liberal principles to become a supporter of the
government, and in the next year he produced a small volume
of Odes on Several Subjects, in the preface to which he
lays claim to correctness and a careful study of the best
models. His friend Dyson had meanwhile left the bar, and had
become, by purchase, clerk to the House of Commons. Akenside
had come to London and was trying to make a practice at
Hampstead. Dyson took a house there, and did all he could
to further his friend's interest in the neighbourhood. But
Akenside's arrogance and pedantry frustrated these efforts,
and Dyson then took a house for him in Bloomsbury Square,
making him independent of his profession by an allowance
stated to have been L. 300 a year, but probably greater,
for it is asserted that this income enabled him to ``keep a
chariot,'' and to live ``incomparably well.'' In 1746 he wrote
