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CHAPTER VI.

DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE.

Section 1: Decline of the Empire.-Section 2: The rise of the Mahratta Confederacy, and of the English Company in India.-Section 3: The development of those powers.

SECTION I. The abundant materials provided for the history. of the reign of Sháh-Jahán fail soon after the accession of his son. Bernier, Tavernier, and Manucci, all left India about the same time, and no European observer of the same skill and industry arose to take their place. The records of contemporary Muslim observers were suppressed by the policy of the new Emperor who disliked and forbade this recourse to the bar of public opinion: Kháfi Khán, one of the best of Indian historians had to take his notes in secret,* and reserve the publication of his record till a more liberal era. It is, at the same time, clear that this historian, a most able and conscientious writer, was far from judging the Emperor as he has been since judged by European writers.

Kháfi Khán attributes much of Alamgir's ill-success to the gentleness of his disposition and his religious convictions. He notices, especially, that, in the 2nd year of his reign, the Emperor remitted many items of separate revenue-the octroi in towns among them. But, by reason of the impunity attending on disobedience, the orders were generally disregarded by local authorities; who pretended, indeed, to obey, but kept up the forbidden imposts for their own benefit. Thus, as he

* Khafi Khan is a pen-name equivalent to "Mr. Secret"; and was probably assumed purposely with that significance.

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assures us, "the order abolishing most of these imposts had no effect." The transit-duties, in particular, became so heavy that the price of goods often doubled between departure from the port or factory where they were issued and arrival at the market to which they had been consigned.

Apart from this writer's personal testimony it is difficult to get a clear notion of the period under notice. Whether from an affectation of humility or for some other reason which has not been explained, Alamgir had the strongest objection to the history of his reign being written; insomuch that Kháfi Khán has to confess that, after the tenth year, materials were collected only with the utmost difficulty. Moreover, the provinces north of the Narbada-which formed the Empire of Hindustan Proper-had been so completely pacified and settled by his predecessors that there was but little occasion for historical record until towards the end of the period the people of Hindustan were in the happy condition of those whose annals are a blank. And indeed, the events in the south, where the most eventful part of Alamgir's reign was passed, present little of agreeable interest. The story is one of monotonous and vain struggle against a destiny prepared at once by the Emperor's qualities and by his defects. The ambition which led him to usurp the throne, and the attachment to Islám which urged him to exertion, were causes which gave him a certain glory, as the head of the Muslim empire, while yet they combined to make him the beginner of its ruin.

The

Necessarily, therefore, the period is dull and depressing; one barren of great ideas, great transactions, and great men. This much is clear, in the dearth of ordered information. Emperor began well enough. He had a large civil and military machinery and an ample revenue: good subordinates bred by years of administrative experience on sound principles: with a contented and submissive people. Competition rapidly disappeared: Dára was executed, as a heretic; Shujá, chased out

of Bengal, perished obscurely in Arakan where he had taken refuge; the two sons of Dára died-like their uncle Murádin arrest at Gwalior. The year 1661 opened on a sovereignty which none appeared to dispute. The Emperor sought a means of strengthening his position by pardoning Rája Jaswant Singh, of Marwar (now Jodhpur), who had valiantly espoused the cause of the late Sultan Dára so long as that cause survived. He also instituted energetic measures of famine relief to meet the effects of a great drought which was afflicting Hindustan. He gave further indications of preserving the wise and humane policy of his house by marrying his eldest son, Sultan Muazzam to the daughter of a Hindu Rája.

There was, however, one source of trouble from the Hindus just coming into notice; one, apparently of no great importance, yet which it would be well to strangle in birth. This was from an obscure tribe in the eastern Deccan, where the Yadavas had once held sway, from Deogiri, over the land commanded by the western Ghats. The chief place was now Ahmadnagar, which had been incorporated in the empire; and some of the adventurous spirits of Máháráshtra had for some time sought a career further south, under the Adil-Sháhi princes of Bijapur Yusuf Shah, who founded that dynasty, is said to have employed a chief of this race before the end of the 15th century; and in another forty years their employment had become so general at Bijapur that their language had to be adopted as the official medium of public accounts at head quarters.

In the reign of Jahangir one of their chiefs, whose name indicated a claim to Yádava ancestry, had given his daughter to the head of an immigrant family, Shahji Bhonsla, who had risen to notice under Malik Ambar the Abyssinian champion of the Nizám Sháhi dynasty of Ahmadnagar in its last struggles. In 1636 the Bijápur ruler made peace with the Sháh Jáhán, and about the same time was joined by Sháhji Bhonsla, who had become rich and powerful as a leader of

partizan horse. His Yádava wife had borne him a son, whom he named Sivaji, brought up to arms and adminstration, and, on his attaining maturity, got appointed to the charge of Poona district. He soon began to withhold tribute, and seize and strengthen commanding elevations on the mountains. The connivance of the father Shahji seems more than doubtful, since it was often to himself that was due the money embezzled by his son: but this was not observed by the authorities at Bijapur who accordingly put Sháhji under arrest, and announced their intention of holding him as a hostage for his son's behaviour. The latter kept quiet until, by intercession from Shah Jahán, his father's release was obtained: then Siváji resumed his selfaggrandising operations, and stood forth as the declared enemy of the Bijapur government. At the beginning of Àlamgir's reign he obtained terms from that State which left him in control of the Poona district, and an army of nearly 60,000 followers. He next began to forage and plunder in the imperial dominions near Aurangabad.

While far from forseeing all that Siváji would grow to, the Emperor had seen enough of the freebooter-when commanding in the Deccan for his father Sháh-Jehán-to feel that he would be a danger to public order. He therefore sent his mother's brother, Nawáb Sháyista Khán, with what appeared an adequate force, for Siváji's immediate suppression. The Nawab was brother to the late Minister Asaf Khan, and to the wife of Shah Jahan whose tomb is at "The Taj”; a typical Persian, grave and politic: he led a well-appointed Mughal army out of Aurangabad, at first with good omens. But confidence begets carelessness; and the stately nobleman soon met with a reverse which not only entailed defeat but covered him with ridicule; on which he was recalled from the Deccan and relegated by his nephew to the Government of Bengal, where, he fought the Portuguese pirates and conquered Chittagong and part of Burma. The vacant command was

divided between the Hindu Rájas, Jai Sinh (of Amber) and Jaswant (of Marwar). They were so far successful that they persuaded Siváji to surrender and appear at court. He arrived at a moment when the glory and urbanity of ShahJahan's ceremonial were already waning. An edict for remitting the minor assessed taxes and customs levied in the last reign had been issued, and the Emperor affected the most rigid economy in his own person and household he gave example of an almost ascetic frugality, professing to find his own subsistence by the sale of embroidered skull-caps.

In such an atmosphere the quondam outlaw found nothing that could please. To a man, in the prime of life, accustomed to command every one around him, living in the sea-breeze and the free air of the wooded mountains, there was no compensation in a life of ceremony at Delhi, from which splendour and pleasure had been alike banished, and where he was treated with no consideration. Siváji left the city in disguise, and never again trusted himself among the weariful solemnities of Mughal civilisation. These events occurred 1664-5.

The next year witnessed another important change. Rája Jai Sinh dying at his post, Sultan Muazzam was appointed, with Jaswant Sinh as his military tutor and virtual commander of the army, Viceroy of the Deccan. About this time Sivaji heard of the death of his father, whereupon he assumed the title of "Rája," and began to coin money in his own name. He also attempted the formation of a navy, which became ultimately a school of pirates.

In the last month of the year 1666 the ex-Emperor Shah Jahan died, as already mentioned, and Alamgir seemed to have reached his highest point of success. But from that very period his bad fortunes dated. A weak-minded system of concession to Siváji in the Deccan led to the imposition of a species of blackmail on Bijapur and Golkonda, by which the freebooter laid the foundation of the Mahratta tribute or blackmail,