History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v1.c17.79

v1.c17.79

The younger princes in their provinces got ready to contest the throne. Shuja and Murad crowned themselves. Aurangzeb played a cool and waiting game, while carefully increasing his resources and army. Even when Shah Jahan began to show his face to the public again, the mischief did not cease. It was openly said all over the empire that Shah Jahan was really dead, and that a slave who bore some resemblance to him, disguised in the Imperial robes, personated him on the high palace-balcony, and received the salams of the public standing below.† Letters in Shah Jahan's hand and seal were issued to the princes and the nobles, but they did not remove the suspicion. Murad echoed the sentiments of others when he asserted that these letters were really written by Dara, an expert imitator of Shah Jahan’s hand, and that the late Emperor’s seal was necessarily in the possession of his successor.[*] Even those who did not go so far, thought with Aurangzib that Shah Jahan was either dead or a helpless invalid entirely under Dara’s control, so that he had practically vacated the throne. Some even asserted that Dara had wickedly flung his helpless father into prison and was doing him to death.[†] The three younger brothers, therefore, very plausibly asserted in their letters to the Emperor that their loving minds had been unsettled by these alarming rumours, and they were marching on Agra to see their father with their own eyes and satisfy themselves as to his real condition. Thereafter (they promised) they would return peacefully to their provinces or loyally do whatever their father would personally command them. Their marching on Agra was no sign of rebellion. Had they not hastened thither from their head quarters without waiting and march on Agra.