History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v4.c65.s12.2

v4.c65.s12.2

From a royal capital it became the seat of a provincial governor. The revenue of a kingdom was no longer spent on it; there was no resident royalty or nobility to foster the fine arts, no Court to maintain a vast crowd of idle but cultured dependents. Two years after its conquest, a terrible plague swept away more than half its population. A few years later, Bhimsen noticed how the city and its equally large suburb Nauraspur looked deserted and ruined; the population was scattered, and even the abundant water-supply in the city wells had suddenly grown scanty! (Dil. 203; M.A. 310.) Bijapur had formerly been a city of splendid sepulchres; and it henceforth continued as a dismal example of departed greatness,—a vast city covered with "long lines of fallen houses, ruined mansions and lonely patches of jungle, stretching far and near in a waste whose desolation glimpses of noble buildings, some fairly preserved, others in ruins, make the more striking... Half its interior is a dreary waste, with almost nothing save fallen palaces and roofless dwellings overgrown with custard apple and other wild shrubs, while an occasional unharmed tomb or mosque makes the surrounding desolation the more complete." "Mournful as is the desolation, the picturesque beauty of the buildings, the fine old trees and the mixing of hoary ruins and perfect buildings form an ever changing and impressive scene." (*Bombay Gazetteer*, xxiii, 568, 573.) Above the whole scene the lofty domes of many kingly tombs brood in silent but winkless reverie upon the buried royalty and departed greatness of a city that was the queen of Southern India for a century.