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'He never pardoned, writes Professor Blochmann, 'pride and conceit in a man, and of all kinds of conceit, the conceit of learning was most hateful to him. Hence the cry of the class affected by his action that he discouraged learning and learned men. He did nothing of the sort. There never has flourished in India a more generous encourager of the real thing.
At the age of fifteen he had read works on all branches of those sciences that are based on reason and traditional testimony, and before he was twenty had begun his career as a teacher. 'An incident, writes the lamented Professor Blochmann, 'is related to shew how extensive even at that time his reading was. A manuscript of the rare work of Içfahání happened to fall into his hands.
'Impressed, writes Professor Blochmann, 'with a favourable idea of the value of his Hindu subjects, he had resolved when pensively sitting in the evenings on the solitary stone at Fatehpur-Síkrí, to rule with an even hand all men in his dominions; but as the extreme views of the learned and the lawyers continually urged him to persecute instead of to heal, he instituted discussions, because, believing himself to be in error, he thought it his duty as ruler to "inquire." These discussions took place every Thursday night in the Ibádat-Khána, a building at Fatehpur-Síkrí, erected for the purpose.
Blochmann states that he imbibed this belief from his study of the religion of Zoroaster, of which it forms a feature. His courtiers, especially those who were secretly opposed to his religious innovations, attributed his undoubted success to luck.
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