Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/141

Rh tially an affectionate "family man," while denying himself none of the pleasures of the zenana, became engrossed in his devotion to his eldest daughter, the Princess Begam, Jahan Ara. He was still the benevolent and popular king that he had always been since his accession, but his strength of character was gone; he had become a mere pageant of royalty, given over to ease and the aesthetic delights of the eye and taste. Dryden has drawn the contrast in "Aureng-Zebe":

"O! had he still that character maintain'd Of Valour which in blooming Youth he gain'd! He promised in his East a glorious Race; Now, sunk from his Meridian, sinks apace. But as the Sun, when he from Noon declines, And with abated heat less fiercely shines, Seems to grow milder as he goes away, Pleasing himself with the remains of Day: So he who in his Youth for Glory strove Would recompense his Age with Ease and Love."

The burden of state interfered with his enjoyment, and he sought to devolve his power upon his four sons, to each of whom he gave the viceroyalty of a distant province, in the hope of stilling their dangerous jealousies. The sceptre was falling from his hand, and he tried to secure peace by breaking it in pieces. It was a fatal policy. The fragments of the sceptre, like the rods of Pharaoh's sorcerers, turned into so many serpents, which strangled the remnant of his power, till the rod of Aurangzib swallowed up the rest, and with them the Peacock Throne itself.

The Deccan was the Dauphine of the Moghul em-