Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c13.s1.2

v1.c13.s1.2

The decline went on with increasing speed till at the end of the second year of his reign we find that "the administration had grown very weak and degraded; the pillars of the State were daily shaken; the Emperor never inquired about the realm, the soldiery, or the treasury,—the three foundations of an empire. . . . Jāvid Khan, who had usurped the entire control of the State, governed according to his (poor) natural capacity, assuring the Emperor that everything was being done according to the regulations; so that the Emperor withdrew his hand even from what (little) he formerly used to look after. He became so absorbed in pleasure that a whole kos (an area of four square miles) was turned into a women's preserve by excluding all males from it, and there the Emperor used to disport himself in female company for a week or a month in bower and park." [*TAh.*, 13b-14a, 21a, 25a; *Siyar*, iii. 27.]