# Aurangzíb and the Decay of the Mughal Empire

RULERS OF INDIA
Aurangzíb
AND THE DECAY OF THE MUGHAL EMPIRE
By STANLEY LANE-POOLE, B.A. Author of the Catalogue of Oriental and Indian Coins in the British Museum The Life of Visct. Stratford de Redcliffe, etc.
Third Thousand
Oxford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS: 1896
Oxford Printed at the Clarendon Press By Horace Hart, Printer to the University
NOTE ON AUTHORITIES
The most important contemporary European authority for the early part of Aurangzíb's reign is the French physician Bernier, who lived in India from 1659 to 1666, and whose Travels have recently been admirably edited by Mr. Constable. Bernier writes as a philosopher and man of the world: his contemporary Tavernier (1640-1667) views India with the professional eye of a jeweller; nevertheless his Travels, of which Dr. Ball has produced a scientiﬁc edition, contain many valuable pictures of Mughal life and character. Dr. Fryer's New Account of India is chieﬂy useful as a description of the Maráthá power under Sivají, for the author during his visit to India (1672-81) did not extend his travels further north than Súrat. Like Fryer, Ovington (1689-92) did not go to the Mughal Court, and his Voyage to Suratt contains little beyond what the English merchants of Bombay and Súrat (the only places he visited) chose to tell him. Something may be gleaned from Yule's elaborate edition of Hedges’ Diary as to the Mughal provincial administration in 1682-4; and Dr. Gemelli Careri's visit to Aurangzíb’s camp in the Deccan in 1695 throws light on an obscure portion of the reign. Catrou’s Histotre Générale de l’Empire du Mogol (1715), founded on the Portuguese memoirs of ‘M. Manouchi,’ would be invaluable if there were any means of authenticating it by comparison with Manucci’s MS.; as it is, the work is too full of errors, and savours too strongly of the chronique scandaleuse of some malicious and disappointed backstairs underling at the Mughal Court, to be esteemed as an authority. The contemporary Indian chroniclers, Kháfi Khán, Musta’idd Khán, ’Abd-al-Hamíd Láhorí, Ináyat Khán, Bakhtáwar Khán, and others, may be consulted in Elliot and Dawson's invaluable History of India as told by its own Historians, vol. vii. Elphinstone’s History of India has been followed in its admirable account of the Deccan campaigns. All dates are given in New Style, and the varying spellings of Indian names have been reduced to uniformity. I have to express my gratitude to Sir William W. Hunter, who had originally undertaken this volume of the series, for making over to me in the most generous manner all the MS. materials which he had collected in India for this purpose.
S. L.-P.
CONTENTS
NOTE ON THE VOWEL SOUNDS
The orthography of proper names follows generally the system adopted by the Indian Government for the Imperial Gazetteer of India. That system, while adhering to the popular spelling of very well-known places, such as Punjab, Poona, Deccan, &c., employs in all other names the vowels with the following uniform sounds:-
a, as in woman: d, as in father: i, as in kin: í, as in intrigue: o, as in cold: u, as in bull: ú, as in rule.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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