Storia do Mogor 294.5
Storia do Mogor (Irvine) 294.5
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294.5.1
Aurangzeb replied that with all his heart he pardoned him, but there was one act for which there was no pardon possible, and he well knew what it was. With these words he withdrew, giving orders for the throne on which he had been seated to be removed to his own quarters. In spite of all the investigations made to find out this fault of Bahadur Khan's, which Aurangzeb would not pardon even on an occasion when nothing is refused, either among Mahomedans or among Hindus, no one ever succeeded in knowing what it was exactly. Only it was suspected that it was something involving the honour of the royal family. However, people murmured at this hard-heartedness of Aurangzeb, and the number of those who talked about it was so great that he was forced to conceal the displeasure which he felt. One man paid for all; and he was the brother-in-law of Sambha Ji, Madou Ji (Madhu Ji) by name. This man's free remarks about the prince's harshness were reported. As he had a large following the king was afraid to chastise him; but, pretending a wish to do him higher honour, Aurangzeb changed his employment, and sent him to command the fortress of Gwaliyar. That place having a full number of troops, the king told him it was unnecessary to take his own men with him. This noble, delighted at the honour that he believed was being done to him in confiding to his charge the chief fortress in Hindustan, obeyed blindly; but as soon as he had entered the place he was decapitated by his majesty's orders.
294.5.2
[121] After the taking of Khelna, of which I spoke above (IV. 116), and the disasters following upon it during Aurangzeb's withdrawal, the Shiva Ji (i.e., the Mahrattahs) threw himself once more upon the Mogul, and captured five of his officers. These men were of such importance that the king paid one hundred thousand rupees for the ransom of each of these gentlemen. After that, Aurangzeb made an attack on the fortress of Kondena (Kandanah), where he is at present, and pressing the siege. Nevertheless, the Mahrattahs, without putting themselves out about that, have gone across the Narbada with fifty thousand horse. They have been formed into two divisions, and these have robbed and ravaged several provinces, among other places the town of Ceronge (Sironj), which they have plundered most fearfully. I have spoken several times of Qasim Khan, who was governor over the Pathans, as may be seen in my Second Part (II. 172). He was the man who betrayed them through the cutting up of a melon. Subsequently he governed in the country of Adouni (Aduni) in the kingdom of Visiapour (Bijapur), where an adventure happened to him which is rather curious.
294.5.3
There were two twin brothers, young and well grown, sons of a Hindu prince called Darumdas (Dharm Das). The mother of the youths died, and their father subsequently married again. As they did not get on with their step-mother, they quitted their father's house and went elsewhere in search of fortune. Fate decreed that they should enter the service of Qasim Khan, and they served him for a year and a half without receiving anything. At the end of that time they presented a petition, begging him to order them to be paid. But, disregarding this application, he put them off with pleasant words for another six months. At last they could endure it no longer; neither they nor their horses could last any further time. They seized the opportunity one day when he was reading the Quran; they entered his darbar, and prayed him most humbly to take compassion upon them. But instead of doing that, he replied: 'Get out of my sight, kafirs!' (that is, 'infidels.') But one of them pricked up courage and, drawing his sword, fell upon him and cut him to pieces.
294.5.4
The servants and other bystanders attempted to lay hold of the young man, and punish him for the crime that he had committed. The brother then drew his sword. Both of them turned and faced their assailants with such desperate courage that they slew twenty-five of them. At this point several persons came, and seeing what was going on, lost no time in closing the door; those who were still outside did the same, and then mounted on the wall and shot at the two Hindus with arrows and musket bullets. On seeing this, and feeling sure they could never escape alive, the young men preferred to take their own lives rather than suffer at the hands of others. Exclaiming, 'Let us die, as we were born, together,' and embracing, they plunged their daggers [122] each into the other's breast, and thus ended their existence. A similar occurrence took place in the previous year, when one Attach Kan (Atash Khan) was killed in exactly the same manner because he refused to pay his men. [Pages 123 and 124 are blank.]
294.5.5
[125] I have often spoken in the preceding parts of this history of the bad conduct of the Portuguese in India, and the disorder thereby occasioned. In the present Part (IV.) I have already set forth to what lengths the passion for enriching themselves has carried the reverend Jesuit fathers. I have also stated somewhere or other (III. 229) that the tribunal of the Inquisition, ordered and established by the Church for good ends, was at Goa a perpetual source of injustice. They made use of it chiefly to overwhelm and ruin the innocent who had the misfortune to fall into its hands. Among several instances I had chosen that of the reverend Father Ephraim, Capuchin, meaning to give an account of it to the public just as I learnt it from the father himself. But the haste with which I finished off my first three parts precluded me from so doing. I therefore insert it here. This good father was a native of Nevers, of a distinguished family. Having embraced the religious life, he entered the Order of St. Francis, and was sent by his superiors to preach the Gospel in India. Passing through Madras, he was stopped there by the agent of the English Company for the purpose of affording spiritual food to the Christians inhabiting that place.
294.5.6
There he had continued to live in all innocence, having acquired a high reputation, not only as an honest man, but as a most zealous priest. He was a most rigid observer of the rules of his order. Thus things remained till 1649, when he had the misfortune to fall into the hands of the commissaries of the Inquisition established at San Thomé. First of all, it must be explained what were the real reasons for his arrest, for what appeared on the surface was a mere pretext. The true reason was always concealed ; it was, as one will see later on, nothing but an irreconcilable hatred and an excessive envy entertained against him by some persons of that place, the cause thereof being his virtues, his strict conduct, and the office that he held. The first reason, then, for the detention of this excellent friar was, as admitted by the Grand Inquisitor of Goa himself on St. Mark's Day, 1651, a letter that Father Ephraim had written to Manuel Mascaregna (? Mascarenha), Governor of San Thomé, in which he objected to certain abuses then practised there and tolerated by him. The reason for this toleration was that the Portuguese took them for so many saintly acts, and consequently held Father Ephraim's condemnation to be a great liberty — nay, an attack upon religion. The reasons he alleged in his letter, hoping to bring them back to the true views of the Church, they looked on as so much damnable heresy.
294.5.7
So fully persuaded were they of the orthodoxy of their belief in the disputed matter, and of the father's error, that the above inquisitor said to him that by Divine permission he had been allowed to sign that letter, affording thus an authentic proof that it proceeded from him. 'What it contains,' he went on, 'has been condemned not only by bachelors of law, but also by five doctors. The whole of them unanimously hold that it proceeded from a spirit tainted with the errors of Luther.' The reason for this opinion was that at every line the father cited the Holy Scriptures, but said nothing about Saint Augustin or Saint Ambrose. The inquisitor added that, had the cardinals of the Holy Office read but once the propositions contained in the letter, they could never refrain from forthwith condemning the author to be, at the very least, stripped of his habit. 'This is why I must examine you strictly upon the doctrine and opinions of Luther.' This he said, and carried out his word most scrupulously in the first interrogatory to which the father was subjected. This was in the month of May, 1650, and they call it the general examination.