History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c85.s6.46

v5.c85.s6.46

The clerks, both Hindus and Muhammadans, formed a brotherhood bound together by community of duties and interests, education and ideals, social life and even vices. We find in the memoirs of one of them, Bhimsen of Burhanpur, a pleasing picture of the clerkly world, with its mutual dancing parties, dinners, aid in trouble, consolation in sorrow, and union at sittings of Sufi devotional exuberance. The official world was marked by its hatred and contempt for intruders into its preserves. Offices were expected to be reserved for old families of clerks and accountants. Any official who was not a ‘hereditary servant’ (*khanahzad*) of State but had sprung from the ranks, was despised as a *novum homo* was in the official world of the dying republic of Rome. The speedy ruin of the State from the employment of such interlopers and upstarts was predicted. [*Dil.* ii. 140*b*.] This attitude was universal, from the higher nobility to the petty clerks.