History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c86: Chapter LXIII. Aurangzib and Indian Nationality

History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c86

Language: English

v5.c86.s1 § 1. Character of Aurangzib : courage and coolness. — 19 parts
v5.c86.s2 § 5. True character and aim of the Mughal Government. — 28 parts
v5.c86.s3 § 9. Deterioration and inherent weakness of Hindu Society. — 10 parts
v5.c86.s4 § 12. The significance of Aurangzib's reign : how an Indian nationality can be formed. — 26 parts

Chapter LXIII. Aurangzib and Indian Nationality

§ 1. Character of Aurangzib : courage and coolness.

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In the mediæval world, and nowhere more so than in India, the king was held responsible for the happiness of his people,[*] and with good reason. He was regarded as a superman, as an incarnation of the Deity or at least God's representative on earth; he was invested with unlimited, unquestioned authority and the entire property in the land; he was, except in Catholic Europe, the head of Church and State alike.

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Therefore, when towards the close of Aurangzib's reign all things began to go wrong, the contemporary historians,—Bhimsen and Khafi Khan,—turned to examine their Emperor's character. And yet, to all outer seeming, he had no moral defect which might account for the destruction of the empire and of public peace.

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Aurangzib was brave in an unusual degree. All the Timurids, till the days of his unworthy great-

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* Cf. Upon the king! Let our lives, our souls,
Our debts, our careful wives,
Our children and our sins lay on the king!
(Shakespeare's *Henry V.*)

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grandsons, had personal courage; but in him this virtue was combined with a coldness of temperament and a calculating spirit which we have been taught to believe as the special heritage of the races of Northern Europe. Of his personal fearlessness he had given ample evidence from the age of fifteen, when he faced a furious elephant unattended, to his 87th year, when he stood in the siege trenches before Wagingera. And further testimony was borne to it by the fact that two of his sons fell on the battle-field, which were the first examples of such death among the descendants of Babur. [Dil. ii. 166b. Character sketch 159a-160b; K. K. ii. 550; A. N. 1070—1096; M.A. 525—533.] His calm self-possession, his cheering words amidst the thickest danger, and his open defiance of death at Dharmat and Khajwa have passed into the famous things of Indian history.

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§ 2. Aurangzib’s learning and self-preparation.

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In addition to possessing constitutional courage and coolness, he had early in life chosen the perils and labour of kingship as his vocation and prepared himself for this sovereign office by self-reverence, self-knowledge, and self-control. Unlike other sons of monarchs, Aurangzib was a widely read and accurate scholar, and he kept up his love of books to his dying day. Even if we pass over the many copies of the Quran which he wrote with his own hand, as the mechanical industry of a zealot, we cannot forget that he loved to devote the scanty leisure of a very busy ruler to reading Arabic works on jurisprudence and theology, and hunted for MSS. of rare old books like the *Nehayya*, the *Ahiya-ul-ulum*, and the *Diwan-i-Saib* with the passion of an idle bibliophile. His extensive correspondence proves his mastery of Persian poetry and Arabic sacred literature, as he is ever ready with apt quotations for embellishing almost every one of his letters. In addition to Arabic and Persian, he could speak Turki and Hindi freely. To his initiative and patronage we owe the greatest digest of Muslim law made in India, which rightly bears his name,—the *Fatawa-i-Alamgiri** and which simplified and defined Islamic justice in India ever after.

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Besides book-learning, Aurangzib had from his boyhood cultivated control of speech and action, and tact in dealing with others; and even the dizzy eminence of the Peacock Throne and lordship over "nine hundred thousand horsemen" did not intoxicate him into losing the curb over his tongue, temper and heart for a single day during an exceptionally long life. As a prince, his tact sagacity and humility made the highest nobles of his father's Court his friends; and as Emperor he displayed the same qualities in a degree which would have been remarkable even in a subject. No wonder his contemporaries called him "the darvish in the purple." [M.A. 334.]

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∗ Printed in Calcutta in six volumes. For its composition, A. N. 1086-'87, M. A. 530.

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§ 3. Aurangzib's industry moral purity and simplicity of life.

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His private life,—dress, food and recreations,—were all extremely simple, but well-ordered. He was absolutely free from vice and even from the more innocent pleasures of the idle rich. The number of his wives fell short even of the Quranic allowance of four,* and he was scrupulously faithful to wedded love. The only delicacies he relished,—the reader will smile to hear,—were the acid fruit corinda (Carissa carandas) and a sort of chewing gum called khardali.

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His industry in administration was marvellous. In addition to regularly holding daily Courts (sometimes twice a day) and Wednesday trials, he wrote orders on letters and petitions with his own hand and dictated the very language of official replies. Four volumes of these, relating only to his last four years, are still extant and testify to his prodigious working capacity. The Italian physician Gemeli Careri thus describes the Emperor giving public audience (21 March 1695): "He was of a low stature, with a large nose, slender and stooping with age. The whiteness of his round beard was more visible on his olive-coloured skin. . . I admired to see him endorse the petitions [of those who had business] with his own hand, without spectacles, and by his cheerful smiling countenance seem to be pleased with the employment." [Churchill's *Voyages*, iv. 222.]

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∗ Dilras Banu died in 1657; Nawab Bai was relegated to a retired life at Delhi after 1660; Aurangabadi seems to have stayed with him till her death in 1686, so that Udaipuri (married about 1660) was his only companion (after Aurangabadi) for the last half of his life.

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Historians have observed that though he died in his 90th year, he retained to the last almost all his faculties unimpaired. . . His memory was wonderful: "he never forgot a face he had once seen or a word that he had once heard." All his physical powers retained their vigour to the end, if we except a slight deafness of the ear, which afflicted him in old age, and a lameness of the right leg, which was due to his doctor's unskilful treatment of an accidental dislocation.

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§ 4. His besetting sin of over-centralisation: its disastrous effects on the administration.

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But all this long self-preparation and splendid vitality, in one sense proved his undoing, as they naturally begot in him a self-confidence and distrust of others, a passion for seeing everything carried to the highest perfection according to his own idea of it,—which urged him to order and supervise every minute detail of administration and warfare personally. This excessive interference of the head of the State kept his viceroys and commanders and even "the men on the spot" in far-off districts in perpetual tutelage; their sense of responsibility was destroyed, initiative and rapid adaptability to a changing environment could not be developed in them, and they tended to sink into lifeless puppets moved to action by the master pulling their strings from the capital. No surer means than this could have been devised for causing administrative degeneration in an extensive and diversified empire like India. High-spirited, talented and energetic officers found themselves checked, discouraged and driven to sullen inactivity. With the death of the older nobility, outspoken responsible advisers disappeared from his council, and Aurangzib in his latter years, like Napoleon I. after the climax of Tilsit, could bear no contradiction, could hear no unpalatable truth, but surrounded himself with smooth-tongued sycophants and pompous echoes of his own voice. His ministers became no better than clerks passively registering his edicts.

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Such a king cannot be called a political or even administrative genius. He had merely honesty and plodding industry. He was fit to be an excellent departmental head, not a statesman initiating a new policy and legislating with prophetic foresight for moulding the life and thought of unborn generations in advance. That genius, though unlettered and often hot-blooded, was Akbar alone among the Mughals of India.

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Obsessed by his narrow ideal of duty and supremely ignorant of his real limitations of character,—and not out of political cunning, as Manucci suggests,—Aurangzib cultivated saintly austerities and self-abasement and went regularly and even ostentatiously through all the observances of his religion. He thus became an ideal character to the Muslim portion of his subjects. They believed him to be a living saint (Alamgir, zinda pir!) who wrought miracles; and he himself favoured this idea by his acts.*

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Politically, therefore, Aurangzib with all his virtues was a complete failure. But the cause of the failure of his reign lay deeper than his personal character. Though it is not true that he alone caused the fall of the Mughal empire, yet he did nothing to avert it, but rather quickened the destructive forces already in operation in the land. And these I shall examine now.

§ 5. True character and aim of the Mughal Government.

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The Mughal empire did much for India in many ways. [See Mughal Administration, 2nd. ed., Ch. 13.] But it failed to weld the people into nation, or to create a strong and enduring State.

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The glitter of gems and gold in the Taj Mahal or the Peacock Throne, ought not to blind us to the fact that in Mughal India man was considered vile; —the mass of the people had no economic liberty, no indefeasible right to justice or personal freedom, when their oppressor was a noble or high official or land-owner; political rights were not dreamt of. While the nation at large was no better than human sheep, the status of the nobles was hardly any higher under a strong and cunning king; they had no assured constitutional position, because a constitution did not exist in the scheme of government, nor even had they full right to their material acquisitions. All depended upon the will of the autocrat on the throne. The Government was in effect despotism tempered by revolution or the fear of revolution. [Mughal Adm. Ch. 9.]

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∗ Storia, ii. 19, iii.-259; he writes spells on a paper and throws it into flooded rivers to still them (Dil. ii. 159a, also Akh.)

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The most exact parallel to the Mughal Government is supplied by the mediæval Italian kingdoms, as described by the great German historian Ranke: "We here see the whole character of the Italian principality, as it existed in the 15th century: based on judiciously-calculated political relations, it was absolute and unlimited in the power of its internal administration, surrounded by splendour, closely connected with literature, and jealous even of the very appearance of power... The whole power and all the resources of a country produce a Court, —the centre of the Court is the prince; finally, then, the ultimate product of all this gathered life is the self-sufficiency of the sovereign." [*Hist. of Popes*, Bohn's ed., ii. 66.]

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In Mughal India, as in all other absolute monarchies, popular happiness even under the best of sovereigns was unstable, because it depended upon the character of one man. "The Mughal system of education and training entirely failed to maintain a line of promising heirs-apparent. . . As the princes grew up, the jealousy of rival queens forbade their taking a leading part in the politics of the capital. . . A prince who took his proper part in the council of the State was suspected of intriguing against the monarch. . . Hereditary succession is only tolerable under a system where the responsibility falls on a ministry, which screens the viciousness or incompetence of the occupant of the throne."

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"Such a ministry the Mughals were never able to organise. The monarch was obliged to fall back on the mob of adventurers who crowded round his darbar, . . . whose function was more to amuse their master than to act as a modern Cabinet. . . It was never the Mughal policy to foster the growth of a hereditary aristocracy." [*Crooke's North-Western Provinces*, 102-104.]

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By its theory, Islamic Government is military rule—the people are the faithful soldiers of Islam, the Emperor (*Khalifa*) is their commander in war and in peace, (which is only another name for the unending preparation for war with infidels.) In an army it is not for the officers, any more than for the privates, to reason why or to seek reply from the supreme leader. The Khalifa-Emperor is the silhouette of God (*zill-i-subhani*), and in God's Court there is no "why or how." No more could there be in the Padishah's administration, which was a sample of God's Court (*namuna-i-darbar-i-ilahi*). By the basic principle of Islamic Government, the Hindus and other unbelievers were admittedly outside the pale of the nation. But even the dominant sect, the Muslims, did not form a nation; they constituted a military brotherhood, a perpetual camp of soldiers.

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§ 6. Difference in life and ideal makes fusion of Hindus and Muhammadans impossible.

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According to the root principles of Muslim polity, there can be no political rights for minorities, the nation must be merged in the dominant sect, and a community homogeneous in creed and social life must be created by crushing out all divergent forms of faith opinion and life. The nation as a purely political creation was inconceivable and impossible in such a state of things. The evil was aggravated by the fact that in India the politically depressed class or "official minority" was a numerical majority, outnumbering the dominant sect as three to one, and at the same time economically better qualified, stronger in capital and wealth-producing power, and not inferior in intellect or physical vigour.

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No fusion between the two classes was possible even with the passage of centuries, as they differed like poles in ideal and life. The Hindu is solitary, passive, other-worldly; his highest aim is self-realisation, the attainment of personal salvation by individual effort private devotions and lonely austerities. To him birth is a misfortune and his fellow-beings so many sources of distraction from his one goal. Not by enjoyment of God's gifts but by renunciation, not by joyous expansion but by repression of emotion, is he to attain to bliss.

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The Muslim, on the other hand, is taught to feel that he is nothing if not a soldier of the militant force of Islam; he must pray in congregation; he must give proof of the sincerity of his faith by undertaking jihad or active exertion for the spread of his religion and the destruction of unbelief among other men. He is a missionary, and cannot be indifferent to the welfare of his neighbours' souls; nay, he must be ever alive to his duty of promoting the salvation of others by all means at his command, physical as much as spiritual. Then, again, Islam boldly avows that it is good for us to be here, that God has given the world to the faithful as an inheritance for their enjoyment.

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The ancient Socratic ideal that "he who has the fewest wants is most like the gods", is peculiarly the Hindu's. No doubt, Islam too has its ascetics; no doubt Muslim theology recognises abstinence (parhez) as good for the soul even of the householder. But in practice the immense body of Islamites loved to enjoy and considered it as nowise wrong to enjoy the good things of the world.*

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The practical outlook and social solidarity of the Muslims have made them develop the arts and civilisation (excepting literature) in a much higher degree than the Hindus ; their pleasures are of a more varied and elegant kind, and the Hindu aristocracy in Mughal times were only clumsy imitators of the Muslim peers. The general type of the Muhammadan population (excepting beggars and menial labourers) are accustomed to a costlier mode of life and more refined, while Hindus of the corresponding classes, even when rich, are grosser and less cultured.† The lower classes of the Hindus, how-

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† Col. T. D. Pearse wrote to Warren Hastings in 1781 from Ellore : "The Hindus [of N. India] are nine out of ten in the numbers composing this army; ...but 29 Hindus have deserted for one Musalman. The cause is but too evident : an Hindu can live on Rs. 2 a month, and save 5 after paying for necessaries,—whereas the Musalman will live well whilst he can; is seldom worth a Rupee, and therefore has a tie upon the service that the other has not : for the Hindu with Rs. 100, returning to his home, can stock a farm, and live happily for the rest of his days." [Br. Ind. Mil. Repository, vol. ii. (1823) p. 19.]

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* Persian poetry is not lacking in melancholy musings on the mutability of things (like what we find in Chaucer and Spenser). We are told that the world is a caravan sarai, a goglet of gold now filled with sweet drink and now with a bitter draught,—the steed of death ever stands ready saddled, &c.

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But it was a literary fashion handed down from the middle ages, and did not influence life in India in the 17th century.

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ever, are distinctly cleaner and more intellectual than Muslims of the same grades of life.

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§ 7. Hindus politically depressed and degraded under Aurangzib.

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Apart from the restrictions about food, difference of religious doctrine and ritual, rules forbidding intermarriage, &c., this polar difference in the outlook upon life made a fusion between Hindus and Muslims impossible. In addition to these, the Quranic polity made life intolerable for the Hindus under orthodox Muhammadan rule. Aurangzib furnishes the best example of the effects of that polity when carried to its logical conclusions by a king of exemplary morality and religious zeal, without fear or favour in discharging what he held to be his duty as the first servant of God. Schools of Hindu learning were broken up by him, Hindu places of worship were demolished, Hindu fairs were forbidden, the Hindu population was subjected to special fiscal burdens in addition to being made to bear a public badge of inferiority; and the service of the State was closed to them, as we have seen in Ch. 34.

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Thus, the only life that the Hindus could lead under Aurangzib was a life deprived of the light of knowledge, deprived of the consolations of religion, deprived of social union and public rejoicing, of wealth and the self-confidence that is begotten by the free exercise of natural activities and use of opportunities,—in short, a life exposed to constant public humiliation and political disabilities.

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Heaven and earth alike were closed to him as long as he remained a Hindu. Hence, the effect of Aurangzib's reign was not only to goad the Hindus into constant revolt and disturbances, but also to make them deteriorate in intellect, organisation, and economic resources, and thereby weaken the State of which they formed more than two-thirds.

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§ 8. Decline of the Muslims in India; its causes.

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The Muslim portion of the population, too, did not prosper under such a polity, though for a different reason in their case. The Turks are soldiers and nothing else; their manhood is a naturally embodied army, and war is their only profession. A standing army is necessarily prevented from cultivating continuous domestic life. The ruling race among the so-called Mughals were really Turks. Hence, Muslim society in the Mughal period, in many of its civilian ranks also, frequently displayed garrison manners, as the organisation of their Government was of a military type and the soldiers set the tone to society.

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The intellectual decline of the Muslims was hastened by the peculiar position of the faithful in India. They had made India their permanent home; many of them were Indians by race; and all had become so in their personal appearance, thoughts, manners and customs. And yet their religious teachers urged them to look back to ancient Arabia and draw their mental sustenance from the far-off age of the Prophet. The language of their religion must be Arabic, which not one in a hundred fully understood; their cultural language was Persian, which a few more learnt with difficulty and used with an impurity that excited the laughter and scorn of the Persian born. The greatest Indo-Persian poet was Amir Khusrau, but even he was ranked with third-class poets among the natives of Persia. Faizi, our second best, was held to be still inferior. Witness the scorn poured by Babur and Shaikh Ali Hazin alike on the Indian use of Persian.

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The Indian Muslim considered it beneath his dignity (till well into the 18th century) to use the vernacular for literary purposes. Hence, the immense majority of this sect were without any literature of their own; their education was hampered and their private life, (except in the case of the few who could use Persian freely), was deprived of intellectual joys. They could not have even a living growing religious literature. Hindustani amatory or devotional songs and Sufi verses in Persian were not adequate instruments for the diffusion of culture or the removal of general ignorance among a whole community.

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Thus, the orthodox Muslim ever felt that he was in India, but not of it. He durst not, for peril to his soul,—so he was taught,—strike his roots deep into his native soil. He must not take to his heart its traditions language and cultural products; he must import these from Persia and Arabia. Even his civil and criminal law must be derived from the writings of jurists and the decisions of judges in Baghdad or Cairo. [*Mughal Administration*, 2nd ed., Ch. 6.] The Muslim in India was an intellectual exotic; he could not like Antæus replenish his strength by coming in contact with his mother earth. He must not adapt himself to his environment. The Quranic precepts for the guidance of civil society and the regulation of human conduct and relations, were framed in a far-off age for a nomadic people. It was absurd, as a rationalist like Akbar argued, that they should be considered binding on men of the 16th or 17th century living in a country that had nothing in common with Arabia.

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The intellectual vacuity caused by this unnatural straining after a foreign and impracticable ideal, not only arrested the mental and social progress of the Indian Muslims, but also made their hearts a fertile soil for noxious weeds. The eternal human craving for a personal religion, for a living faith, could not be satisfied by repeating an Arabic book by rote (*hifz-i-kalam-ullah*), or by going through one monotonous physical drill five times a day in a public gathering (*jamait*). The thirsty soul turned to every fabled living saint in its neighbourhood and to the successors in attendance at the tombs of famous saints of the past,—both of whom were believed to be capable of working miracles.

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The racial character of the Semitic peoples who created the Quran and Sunni Canon Law was essentially different from that of the Indians, and the mere fact of a body of the latter race having accepted the religion of the Arabs could not obliterate this ethnic difference. These were insurmountable handicaps to Indian Islam.

§ 9. Deterioration and inherent weakness of Hindu Society.

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The Hindus of mediæval India presented an equally unhappy spectacle. They could not possibly form a nation, or even one compact sect. A social solidarity like that of the Muhammadans was inconceivable among a people divided into countless mutually exclusive castes, with their rancorous disputes about rights to the sacred thread and the Vedic chant, access to public water-supplies, besides touchability, and in Southern India also approachability. And time and prosperity seemed only to aggravate these differences. "Caste grows by fission," and the multiplication of new sub-castes was in active progress through the operation of internal forces during Muhammadan rule, dividing and weakening Hindu society still further. A Hindu revival like the empire of the Peshwas, instead of uniting them only embittered caste bickerings by intensifying orthodoxy, leading to a stricter repression of the lower castes by the forces of the State, and provoking more wide-spread and organised caste feuds, like those between the different subdivisions of the Deccani Brahmans or between the only two literate and well-to-do castes of Maharashtra, *viz.*, the Brahmans and the Prabhus.

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No enlightened or patriotic priesthood arose to save the Hindu peoples. The separatist tendency is as strong in their religion as in their society; and, indeed, an organised priesthood or State Church is opposed to the root principles of the Hindu scheme of salvation. Stray sheep running after stray shepherds fall easy victims to the quack and the voluptuary. Even if we pass over the degrading forms of man-worship that marked the religious practices of the Vallabhacharya, Kartabhaja and other sects of *guru*-adorers, or the licentiousness promoted by temple dancers (*devadasis* or *muralis*) and small prurient esoteric sects, and turn our eyes to the ordinary idol-worship of the millions, we find the priesthood bringing their worshippers down to the lowest intellectual level by holding up to their adoration a god who eats, sleeps, falls ill of fever (as Jagannath does for a week every year), or pursues amorous dalliances which a Nawab of Oudh might envy or a Qutb Shah imitate in his own harem. Reform was possible only outside the regular Hindu Church followed by the masses,—*i.e.*, among the small non-conforming sects, where men were prepared to leave all things and follow truth; but even there only during the first generation or two after their foundation, before they too sank into gross guru-worship.

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§ 10. How Hindus and Muslims lived together in India; occasional union, latent danger of fight.

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In spite of what has been said before, Hindu and Muhammadan societies often touched each other at certain points. The true ideals of both creeds were the same, namely, the worship of one Supreme Being, abstinence from earthly joys, tenderness to all creatures. But bigots and the mass of ordinary people could not rise to such a high plane of thought. The holy men of each sect recognised the general truths underlying all sincere creeds; witness the delighted cry of Shaikh Nizam-ud-din Auliya on looking at a Hindu bathing festival, "Every sect has its own mode of adoration and centre of faith!" Muslim saints, famous for striking acts of self-mortification or miracle-working power, were often adored by Hindu princes and people.

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Similarly, the cult of Sufism brought members of the two sects together in friendly communion. Sufism, however, was not so much a living creed as an emotional-intellectual enjoyment,—a "fashion" of polished society like atheism in the France of Louis XV or Brahmoism in Bengal in the seventies and eighties of the 19th century. It affected the select few, being confined to the educated and official classes of the 17th century.

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The masses could not appreciate such lofty ideas as mystic pantheism and the universal brotherhood of man. Fanatics had greater sway over their hearts than philosophers. The lower classes, after some fighting between Hindus and Muslims or Shias and Sunnis, (the forces of Government being always on the side of the orthodox creed),—at last came to a settlement in every locality, recognising the boundaries rights and limitations of each creed on a basis which acquired the sacredness of custom with the passage of time. Thus they lived amicably within their own narrow limits. But this religious truce held good only so long as the local society was static. With the least change in the relative strength of the two sects or in their temper, with the visit of an active orthodox preacher from outside or the accession of a bigot to the throne, the sleeping volcano of mob-passions would again wake to fury. Examples of it are furnished by the massacre of the Shias at Srinagar in 1685, the destruction and pollution of Hindu temples by Aurangzib, the plucking of the jaziya-collector's beard by Rajputs in Malwa, and retaliation on mosques by some Rathor and Maratha princes of high spirit.* Indian society was, therefore, in a state of unstable equilibrium in every centre of mixed population in Aurangzib's reign.

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∗ E.g., complaint of Abdullah (a merchant of Alamgirpur) against Rajrup and Rustam Bhonslé, great-grandsons of Maloji's brother Vitoji, in the 40th year of Aurangzib. [Dhar papers.]

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§ 11. Indian peoples lack the spirit of progress; hence their decline.

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Finally, the Indian people of the Mughal age, both Hindus and Muslims, were stationary, prone to venerate the wisdom of their ancestors and look down upon the latest age as the worst. Experiment and free thought are hence apt to be condemned as an impious questioning of sacred authority and an insolent setting up of our own puny intellect against that of the sages of yore. The progressive spirit died out of India at the death of Akbar. Then followed a stationary civilisation, and such a civilisation is bound to decay as it finds improvement impossible.

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"The rigidity of Islam has enabled its followers in all lands to succeed up to a certain point. But there they have stopped, while progress is the law of life in the living world. While Europe has been steadily advancing, the stationary East has been relatively falling back, and every year that passes increases the distance between Europe and Asia in knowledge, organization, accumulated resources, and acquired capacity, and makes it increasingly difficult for the Asiatics to compete with the Europeans. The English conquest of the Mughal empire is only a part of the inevitable domination of all Africa and Asia by the European nations,—which is only another way of saying that the progressive races are supplanting the conservative ones, just as enterprising families are constantly replacing sleepy self-satisfied ones in the leadership of our own society." [*Mughal Administration*, 2nd ed., 255.]

§ 12. The significance of Aurangzib's reign : how an Indian nationality can be formed.

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The detailed study of this long and strenuous reign of fifty years that we have pursued through five volumes, therefore, drives one truth home into our minds. If India is ever to be the home of a nation able to keep peace within and guard the frontiers, develop the economic resources of the country and promote art and science, then both Hinduism and Islam must die and be born again. Each of these creeds must pass through a rigorous vigil and penance, each must be purified and rejuvenated under the sway of reason and science. That such a rebirth of Islam is not impossible, has been demonstrated in our own days by the conqueror of Smyrna. Ghazi Mustafa Kamal Pasha has proved that the greatest Muslim State of the age can secularise its constitution, abolish polygamy and the servile seclusion of women, grant political equality to all creeds, and yet not cease to be a land of Islam.

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But Aurangzib did not attempt such an ideal, even though his subjects formed a very composite population, even though the Indian world lay at his feet and he had no European rivals hungrily watching to destroy his kingdom. On the contrary, he deliberately undid the beginnings of such a national and rational policy which Akbar has set on foot.

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History when rightly read is a justification of Providence, a revelation of a great purpose fulfilled in time. The failure of an ideal Muslim king like Aurangzib with all the advantages he possessed at his accession and his high moral character and training,—is, therefore, the clearest proof the world can afford of the eternal truth that there cannot be a great or lasting empire without a great people, that no people can be great unless it learns to form a compact nation with equal rights and opportunities for all,—a nation the component parts of which are homogeneous, agreeing in all essential points of life and thought, but freely tolerating individual differences in minor points and private life, recognising individual liberty as the basis of communal liberty,—a nation whose administration is solely bent upon promoting national, as opposed to provincial or sectarian interests,—and a society which pursues knowledge without fear, without cessation, without bounds. It is only in that full light of goodness and truth that an Indian nationality can grow to the full height of its being.

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The history of Aurangzib which I began twenty years ago, is now complete. The task has been ceaselessly pursued in the midst of exacting professional duties and private cares that have only grown with age.

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That it has been possible to use in this book all the known original sources is due solely to the generous rule of the India Office, London, and the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain for lending their MSS. to students outside,—the enlightened liberality of the Nawab of Rampur (U. P.) and the Jaipur State (Rajputana) in permitting me to take copies of their Persian documents,—the unfailing kindness of Sir Edward Gait, who secured for me a loan of the Assam Buranjis and access to the Jaipur archives,—and the constant help of many friends in India, notably Thakur Narendra Singh of Jobner (State Councillor) and the officers of the Mahakuma Khas of Jaipur, and Govind Sakharam Sardesai, the greatest living historian of Maharashtra.

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For proof-reading from the 3rd volume onwards I am indebted to the tireless industry and minute accuracy of Brojendra Nath Banerji, a very promising and devoted investigator of history at Calcutta.

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PATNA, 14th December, 1924. } JADUNATH SARKAR the *Gesta Romanorum*, the *Legenda Aurea* of Jacobus de Voragine, and the *Speculum Historiale* of Vincent of Beauvais. These were the books that fed the imagination of the Middle Ages, and they were the books that the Church, in its wisdom, provided for the instruction and edification of the faithful.

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But the Church did not merely provide books; it also provided the means of their dissemination. The monastic scriptoria, where monks labored in silence to copy the sacred texts, were the precursors of the printing press. And when the press finally arrived, it was the Church that first harnessed its power, using it to spread the word of God to the corners of the earth. The Gutenberg Bible, the first major book printed in Europe, was a testament to the Church's commitment to the written word.

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Yet, even as the Church championed the spread of knowledge, it also sought to control it. The *Index Librorum Prohibitorum*, or List of Prohibited Books, was a tool used by the Church to suppress ideas it deemed dangerous or heretical. This tension between the desire to educate and the need to control would define the Church's relationship with literature for centuries to come.

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It is a complex history, one that is marked by both enlightenment and suppression. But it is a history that cannot be ignored, for it is the history of the very foundation of Western civilization. The Church, in its role as the guardian of knowledge, has shaped the way we think, the way we write, and the way we understand the world around us.

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the *Gesta Romanorum*, the *Legenda Aurea* of Jacobus de Voragine, and the *Speculum Historiale* of Vincent of Beauvais. These were the books that fed the imagination of the Middle Ages, and they were the books that the Church, in its wisdom, provided for the instruction and edification of the faithful.