Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/120

90 ship of Shah Jahan – for in his father-in-law Asaf Khan, and Mahabat (who died in 1634), and Ali Mardan he had counsellors as wise and upright even as Sa'd Allah – was a reign of extraordinary prosperity. The French traveller Tavernier writes of the gracious rule of the emperor that it resembled "that of a father over his children," and testifies to the firm administration of justice and the universal sense of security. A Hindu contemporary almost outshines the Moslem and Christian eulogists in extolling the equity of the government, the wise and generous treatment of the cultivators, the probity of the law-courts, and the honesty of the exchequer personally audited by this magnificent paragon of monarchs. There is, no doubt, exaggeration in these panegyrics. Shah Jahan knew how to tickle the imaginations of his subjects by gorgeous pageants and profuse expenditure, and he could be good-natured and generous when it did not interfere with his personal comfort. But he was too shrewd a man to pamper the people, and his expensive tastes demanded so much money that there must have been severe pressure on the taxpayers, who naturally had no voice in revising the eulogies of contemporary chroniclers.

That such was the case may be gathered from the observations of Mandelslo, who ranks quite as high, as an intelligent traveller, as the more famous Della Valle. He was a native of Mecklenburg, and was educated as a page at the court of the Duke of Holstein. When this potentate in 1633 despatched an embassy to "the Great Duke of Muscovy and the King of Persia," Johann