Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/216

172 I have done, I carry the consequence with me. Strange that I came with nothing into the world, and now go away with this stupendous caravan of sin! Wherever I look I see only God. I have greatly sinned, and I know not what torment awaits me. Let not Moslems be slain and reproach fall upon my useless head. I commit you and your sons to God's care, and bid you farewell. I am sorely troubled. Your sick mother Udaipuri would fain die with me. Peace!"

On Friday, the 4th of March, 1707, in the fiftieth year of his reign, and the eighty-ninth of his life, after performing the morning prayers and repeating the creed, the emperor Aurangzib gave up the ghost. In accordance with his command, "Carry this creature of dust to the nearest burial-place, and lay him in the earth with no useless coffin," he was buried in all simplicity near Daulatabad beside the tombs of Moslem saints.

"Every plan that he formed came to little good; every enterprise failed": such is the comment of the Mohammedan historian on the career of the sovereign whom he justly extols for his "devotion, austerity, and justice," and his "incomparable courage, long-suffering, and judgment." Aurangzib's life had been a vast failure, indeed, but he had failed grandly. It is his glory that he could not force his soul, that he dared not desert the colours of his faith. The great Puritan of India was of such stuff as wins the martyr's crown.