Storia do Mogor 211.2.1678

211.2.1678

It is not difficult to have a valid farman, but if the officials are not your friends, it serves you very little. This is why those who want to carry out their business must always make some presents to these men, a custom followed throughout India. For I have always noted that in order to succeed well, you must gain the goodwill of the employes, for they do and undo everything with their masters, as to them seems fit.
The figure opposite is a representation of the seal with which the Mogul attests all the farmans and the grants that he accords. Usually the seal is stamped in ink, and below it the king, dipping his hand into a red liquid, impresses its shape upon the document to be dispatched. This serves as a still more authentic confirmation of the favour or gift that he makes. This ceremony is only employed in matters of importance, for in other cases they use another small seal, with which letters and dispatches are sealed [33].
After this digression, which I have thought necessary to make to display the bad faith of the Moguls and their officials, and the very little reliance to be placed upon their word, I go on with the relation I began about the prince and his conduct in paying his army, et cetera.
When any general or great commander quits the service, either from old age or any other reason, the king as a favour continues always to pay to him an allowance for his support. But there is no fixed rule. To some less, to some more, is assigned, according to the king's inclination towards them. For example, Shaistah Khan had two brothers, one called Bamenear (Bahman-yar) and the other Faracfal (? Farrukh-fal). The first was incapacitated by hernia, and the other declined to serve, being very misshapen. The king allowed to these gentlemen one hundred thousand rupees. Yet to the son of Ja'far Khan, called Namdar Khan, who declined service upon the death of his father, Ja'far Khan, because he considered the post offered him was above [query read ' beneath '] him, he gave no more than ten thousand rupees. The reason was that Namdar Khan was the son of one of Ja'far Khan's wives, named Farsanah Begam, who had been the wife (I should say the mistress) of Shahjahan, as I have stated in my First Part (I. 129). They even said that he was son of that prince ; as for myself, I have no doubt about it, for he was very like Prince Dara.
This gentleman (Namdar Khan) was a great friend of mine, and as I knew him intimately, I may say that his qualities and his actions were altogether those of royalty ; he was also a great soldier. But all that did not prevent the king, when this great man fell ill of a cancer which formed in his throat, from sending his physicians to cure him, and forbidding anyone else to approach him, of which he died in the year 1678.