Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/13

Book VI in rebellion against his father the emperor Jehanguire; but it was recovered the next year. Shaw Jehan succeeded to the throne in 1627, and in 1638 sent his son Sujah to command in Bengal. Sujah continued lord of the province until 1661, when he was driven to take refuge in Arracan by Emir Jumla the vizir of his brother Aurunzebe, who had confined their father Shaw Jehan, and ascended his throne. From this time until a revolution which has happened in our days, Bengal continued in uninterrupted submission to the authority of the great Mogul. The peculiar patience of the Gentoos in Bengal, their affection to business, and the cheapness of all productions either of commerce or necessity, had concurred to render the details of the revenue the most minute, voluminous, and complicated system of accounts which exist in the universe, insomuch that the emperor Jehanguire, although the Mahomedans had then been sovereigns of the country for three centuries, says in his note book, that the application of ten years was necessary to acquire a competent notion of them. The military pride of the Mahomedans, their indolence and sensuality, their ignorance of the language, and the inferiority of their numbers, rendered them inadequate to a task they detested and obliged them, however unwilling, to leave the collection of the revenues, as they found it, with the Gentoos, and the same insufficiencies reduced them to continue the Rajahs or princes, amongst whom the country was divided, in the superintendance of the municipal regulations of their respective districts, subject to regulated tributes, and the arbitrary fines and extortions of victorious authority. The greatest part of Bengal remains at this day under the intermediate jurisdiction of these Rajahs, several of whom are descended from ancestors who ruled the same districts before the Mahomedan conquest.

The Portugueze appear in Bengal before the present dynasty of Moguls; for an armament was sent by the viceroy of Goa in 1534 to assist the reigning Sultan against the invader Shere Cawn. This nation, however, never established regular governments or garrisons in the province, as in most other parts of India. But different bands at