Page:Aurangzíb and the Decay of the Mughal Empire.djvu/67

Rh They merely represent the difference between Christian bigotry and Muhammadan bigotry. To the Musalmán of India Aurangzíb is the ideal type of the devout and uncompromizing Muhammadan King, and his sanguinary advance to the throne is forgotten in his subsequent zeal for the faith and undeviating observance of the law and practice of Islám. On the other hand, Christian observers of the Great Mogul could not divest themselves of the western idea that a prince who says his prayers in public, like the Pharisee in the street, must necessarily be an ostentatious hypocrite; while they failed to reconcile the enormity of fratricide with piety or even common humanity. They did not understand the nature of the religion which could be honestly professed by such a man as Aurangzíb, any more than the royalists of the Restoration could discover in the ambitious regicide the sincere Christian that Cromwell really was.

The executions which paved the path of Aurangzíb to the throne lie at the root of the denunciations of his detractors. They forgot the proverb which Sultán Báyazíd used effectively in his negotiations with his brother, Prince Jem: 'Kingship counts no kinship.' They did not remember the repeated lessons of oriental history which taught Aurangzíb, and many before and after him, that a monarch's deadliest enemies are those of his own household. The 'Othmánlí Sultáns had long recognized the principle of political fratricide. Muhammad 'the Gentle-