Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/147

Rh governor of Bengal; Aurangzib was south in the Deccan; and Murad Bakhsh was in the west, making merry in Gujarat. To Dara was assigned the government of Multan and Kabul; but he had become so necessary to his father that he deputed his functions to others, and himself remained at Delhi, attached to the king's person. Each of the princes behaved more like an independent sovereign than a lieutenant of the emperor. They had the command of rich revenues, which they devoted to the formation of large armies in preparation for the struggle which they knew to be inevitable.

Shah Shuja' was first in the field. He at once announced that his father had been poisoned by Dara; proclaimed himself emperor; engraved his name on the coinage of Bengal, and set out to march upon Agra. Almost at the same moment Murad Bakhsh caused coins to be struck at Ahmadabad and the prayer for the king to be recited in his own name, and displayed his lordly instinct by immediately assaulting the city of Surat and extorting six lacs of rupees from its luckless merchants. Aurangzib, in the Deccan, alone of the four brothers, assumed no royal function. Whatever his designs may have been, for the present he kept them to himself.

Dara lost no time in sending out the imperial armies to chastise Shuja' and Murad Bakhsh. The former was easily repulsed: Raja Jai Singh surprised him at his camp near Benares, and attacked before sunrise, while the careless bon vivant was yet heavy with wine. After a brief contest the rebels gave way, and the