Page:Aurangzíb and the Decay of the Mughal Empire.djvu/74

68 every day in his Court of Audience with a pleasing countenance and mild look to dispense justice to complainants, who come in numbers without any hindrance; and as he listens to them with great attention, they make their representations without any fear or hesitation, and obtain redress from his impartiality. If any person talks too much or acts in an improper manner, he is never displeased, and he never knits his brows. His courtiers have often desired to prohibit people from showing so much boldness, but he remarks that by hearing their very words and seeing their gestures, he acquires a habit of forbearance and tolerance. Under the dictates of anger and passion he never issues orders of death. ...

'He is a very elegant writer in prose, and has acquired proficiency in versification; but agreeably to the words of God, Poets deal in falsehoods, he abstains from practising it. He does not like to hear verses except those which contain a moral. "To please Almighty God, he never turned his eye towards a flatterer, nor gave his ear to a poet."'

This is the character of a strict Muslim. The description is avowedly a panegyric, but nevertheless perfectly natural and probable in the judgment of every man who knows what the life of a really rigid Muslim is; such a life as a strict Wahhábi's. There is nothing in the portrait which is inconsistent with the whole tenour of Aurangzíb's career or with the testimony of European eyewitnesses. Exaggerated as it must seem to a western reader, the Indian historian's picture of his revered Emperor does not present a single touch which cannot be traced in the writings of contemporary French and English travellers, and in the statements of other native chroniclers who were less under