Page:Aurangzíb and the Decay of the Mughal Empire.djvu/117

Rh allowance, for a one-horse trooper was regarded as little better than a one-legged man.

The possessions and lands of an Amír, as well as of the inferior classes of mansabdárs, were held only at the pleasure of the Emperor. When the grantee died, his title and all his property passed legally to the Crown, and his widows and children had to begin life again for themselves. The Emperor, however, was generally willing to make some provision for them out of the father's savings and extortionate peculations, and a mansabdár often managed to secure a grant for his sons during his own lifetime. Careful Amírs, or their heirs, moreover, were expert in the art of concealing their riches, so as to defeat the law of imperial inheritance; and it is a question whether Aurangzíb did not repudiate in practice, as he certainly did in writing, the obnoxious principle that the goods of the grantee should lapse to the Emperor to the exclusion of his natural heirs. The object, however, of keeping the control of the paid army, which these mansabdárs maintained, in the royal hands, was effectually secured by the temporary character of the rank.

The cavalry arm supplied by the Amírs and lesser mansabdárs and their retainers formed the chief part of the Mughal standing army, and, including the troops of the Rájput Rájas, who were also in receipt of an imperial subsidy, amounted in effective strength to more than 200,000 in Bernier's time (1659-66), of whom perhaps 40,000 were about the Emperor's person.