Travels in India (Tavernier) 54.13

54.13

They would have enjoyed it longer, but for the impatience of this young Prince, who, having an active and ambitious spirit, made a new plot against the King, which proved to be the cause of their total ruin. For the plot having been precipitated without success, the King, roused to anger, commanded that the whole family should be straightway exterminated, even including the young Princess whom he had espoused, although she was enceinte. As for what became of Sultan Shuja, who was the most advanced of all in the flight, the accounts of his fate are so different that one does not know which to believe. But, if all vary in the circumstances, they agree so far that he is no longer alive, and that he either died by the hands of soldiers who were sent to seize his person, or was torn to pieces by the tigers or lions, which abound in the forests of these countries. This, then, is what I have been able to ascertain concerning this famous war which lasted six years, and I have not met with any other version of it at Surat, Agra, Jahānābād, or in Bengal, where I was precisely informed by those who were present at its principal events, having been myself a witness of a portion of them, as I have related in this account. Let us now see what were the first acts of the reign of Aurangzeb, and what was the fate of Shāh Jahān, his father.