Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/193

Rh struggle in which he was now to engage in the Deccan. As it was, he alienated them for ever. So long as the great Puritan sat on the throne of Akbar, not a Rajput would stir a finger to save him. Aurangzib had to fight his southern foes with the loss of his right arm.

"Delhi is distant," says an old Deccan proverb, and many an Indian king has realized its force when grappling with the ineradicable contumacy of his southern province. The Deccan was never intended by nature to have any connection with Hindustan. The Vindhya and Satpura Mountains and the Narbada River form a triple line of natural barricades, which divide the high table-land of Central India from the plains of the Ganges and its tributaries, and should have warned the sovereigns of Delhi that it was wiser to keep to their own country. But the Deccan lands were fertile; their wealth in diamonds and gold was fabulous; and every great ruler of the northern plains has turned his eyes to the mountain barriers and longed to enter the land of promise beyond. They entered, however, at their peril. To conquer the Deccan was risking the loss of Hindustan; for he who invaded the southern people who dwelt between the Ghats was but teaching them the road to the north.

The affairs of the Deccan were no new thing to a prince who had twice been viceroy there, but some years passed before the initial difficulties of settling his kingdom left the new emperor leisure to attend to the southern province. Meanwhile a new power had