History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c85.s3: § 4. Pestilence and natural calamities.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c85.s3
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§ 4. Pestilence and natural calamities.
v5.c85.s3.1
In 1688, Bijapur was visited by a desolating epidemic of bubonic plague, which is estimated to have carried off a hundred thousand lives in three months. [M.A. 318.] So, too, we read of a plague in Prince Azam's camp in Aug. 1694. [Akh. 29 Aug.] The English factors at Surat report similar devastating epidemics throughout Western India in 1694 and 1696 (95,000 men perished.)* To take one example only, the drought and plague of 1702—04 killed two millions of men. [*Storia*, iv. 96.] Thus, war and its constant attendant pestilence broke the placid repose of rural life in the Deccan and disturbed the old distribution of economic resources and activities.
v5.c85.s3.2
The waste of army horses was terrible. In the news-letters, we constantly read of commanding officers begging for the grant of horses, as their troopers had lost their animals in the campaigns.. Bhimsen describes how Nusrat Jang's cavalry had mostly to march on foot after a long chase of the Marathas. [*Dil.* ii. 135b.] This loss had to be made good by the Government every year purchasing remounts in Afghanistan through its subahdar, and in Surat from Persian and Arab importers, as well as by sending an agent of its "Purchase Officer" stationed at Surat to Persia for buying horses there and sending them to India. [*Akhbarat.*]
v5.c85.s3.3
In addition to disease, great natural calamities like flood, drought and excessive and unseasonable rainfall were frequent in the Deccan at the beginning of the 18th century, which aggravated the sufferings of invaders and natives alike and still further reduced the population. The state of war, spread over nearly a generation of time, had left no savings, no power of resistance in the common people; everything they produced or had stored up was swept away by the hordes on both sides, so that when famine or drought came, the peasants and landless labourers perished helplessly like flies. Scarcity was chronic in the imperial camp and often deepened into famine. The former remarkable cheapness of grain in many parts of Khandesh, Berar and Konkan now became a forgotten myth; and even in the best years, in no place south of the Narmada did grain sell cheaper than six seers a Rupee [Dil. ii. 146a], while in Multan and Bengal a bumper crop still brought prices down to two or even eight maunds a Rupee. The Mughal army at last found life intolerable.
v5.c85.s3.4
∗ Surat to Bom. 6 Oct. 1694; Madras Diary 31 Dec. 1696; Karwar to Bom. 18 Nov. 28 Dec. 1696.