Page:History of Aurangzib (based on original sources) Vol 1.djvu/362

332 adherents might reside in safety during his absence and even tide over any temporary reverse to his arms, some refuge to which he himself might gallop for shelter after the wreck of his army on an adverse field. Junagarh, at first contemplated, was rejected as too far off; Champanir was finally chosen.

From the very outset Murad was for drawing the sword and throwing the scabbard away, while Aurangzib urged on him a cautious and temporising policy. Murad proposed that the brothers should march at once from the South and attack Dara before he had time to consolidate his power and win over the captains of the Imperial army posted far and near. Aurangzib pressed him not to take any compromising step or set up the banner of revolt openly, but to wait, to dissimulate, and to send hollow friendly letters to Dara, till they should know for certain that Shah Jahan was dead. He, therefore, condemned Murad's siege of Surat and public coronation as acts of too precipitate and open a character. But to such remonstrances Murad replied that Shah Jahan was already dead and that Dara's cunning hand had forged their father's style of writing and affixed the Imperial