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 322 THE BOURBON AGE nominally recognising the sovereignty of the Mogul. Afghan- istan had been lost, to Persia, in the reign of Shah Jehan. , On Aurangzib's death the empire practically fell to pieces. Under the later Imperial system, it was divided into huge provinces, whose governors or viceroys made themselves virtually inde- pendent, the sovereignty of the Moguls who followed each other Break up of * n c i uic ^- succession being more shadowy than that the Mogul of the German emperor over the German princes. Empire. Q ne v j cerov ru i e d nominally over the whole Deccan, though the Maratha confederacy did much as they chose on the west and all through Central India. Rajput princes held sway in Rajputana; the Ganges basin was divided between two Mohammedan viceroys, and anarchy prevailed in the Punjab, through which Nadir Shah from Persia swooped down on Delhi in 1739, dealing the last fatal blow to the Moguls, though they still remained sovereigns in the theory of Indian law. Such was the state of India in 1740 : when the English were in possession of three main trading stations, at Calcutta, at Madras, and at Bombay ; and the French, who had entered on the commercial competition at the initiative of Colbert, the minister of Louis xiv., had their rival stations near Calcutta and Madras, at Chandernagore and Pondicherry. The moment of the struggle for European ascendency was at hand.