Page:History of Aurangzib (based on original sources) Vol 1.djvu/218

188 Jahan had urged Aurangzib to pay special attention to the improvement of the peasantry and the extension of cultivation. Aurangzib had promised to do his best for these objects, and appealed to his exertions in the same direction during his first viceroyalty. He only pleaded for a sufficiently long tenure and the men and money necessary for his purpose. The Emperor, however, soon lost patience. Order after order was sent to the Prince to increase the cultivation and population. Aurangzib was hastily censured for his failure as an administrator, as the Emperor imagined it to be, and he was threatened with loss of income in order to make him increase his exertions. But he rightly pleaded that the depopulation and ravage caused by a generation of warfare, followed by ten years of mal-administration, could not be undone in two or three years. He had been (he said) silently and steadily promoting his object and had in three years succeeded in doubling the revenue of many mahals. Very soon his viceroyalty was destined to become memorable for ever in the history of land-settlement in the Deccan.