Storia do Mogor 65.18.2

65.18.2

The whole of this was falsehood, for have I not seen with my own eyes that one day he (Shahjahan) gave audience, ailing as he was, for more than half an hour in his royal apartments, seated at a window looking towards the river. There were present a very great number of men from the army and the common people, all of whom heard and saw. But the greater part of them said that it was not Shahjahan, but a made-up figure prepared by Prince Dara for that purpose. That could not be truly said by those who were present. There were many traitors at the court friendly to Aurangzeb. They wrote to him that he should arrange to reach Agrah before the arrival of Prince Sulaiman Shukoh from Bengal. This prince had been ordered by Dara to rejoin at headquarters. They also wrote that the illness of Shahjahan was mortal. Letters of this sort which had been despatched by Xastecan (Shaistah Khan) and Muhammad Amin Khan, son of Mir Jumlah, were seized by Prince Dara. Thereupon he (Dara) arrested those two nobles and confined them in a room of his palace. The whole court supposed that without a doubt he would order them to be beheaded, and the whole of that day I waited on in the court solely to learn the end of the business. At seven o'clock at night they were liberated on the prayer of Roshanara Begam and other princesses, who persuaded the king that the captured letters were forgeries. Dara had afterwards to repent that he had not then and there ordered their decapitation.