Storia do Mogor 356.2.6

356.2.6

The friendly reader should reflect here on the designs of this aged king, who gave this order to Dā,ud Khān solely that the ambassadors and agents of different princes, as also the spies of various rajahs who are found in numbers at the court, should be able to write [196] to their princes that to his (Aurangzeb's) court had come ambassadors from a strange king bringing a magnificent present. Aurangzeb thought that by so doing he could make a display of his greatness, and that he would be looked on as a mighty potentate, a reputation which he desires to have. There can be no doubt that some princes among the Rajputs do entertain this belief, as Aurangzeb wishes them to do, since, as I have said, they are in the habit of accepting what is commonly asserted. The Shivā Jī, however (i.e., the Mahrattahs), are not highly impressed by these artifices; on the contrary, they press on him straitly more and more. When the doings of the Mahrattahs are reported to him, he has no other answer than that there are robbers everywhere. This is to save his dignity, but in his heart he is acutely pained without being able to devise a remedy. [Here I omit an account of Dā,ūd Khan's proceedings at San Thomé and Madras, which I have already given from the Portuguese version in Part IV., fols. 245, 246. I have inserted there one or two emendations from the Italian and Portuguese versions in Part V. I pass on to fol. 202.]