Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/218

174 ization were discovered. The tedious war in the Deccan exhausted his armies and destroyed his prestige, and no sooner was the dominating mind stilled in death than all the forces that he had sternly controlled, all the warring elements that had struggled for emancipation from the grinding yoke, broke out in irrepressible tumult. Even before the end of his reign Hindustan was in confusion, and the signs of coming dissolution had appeared. As some imperial corpse, preserved for ages in its dread seclusion, crowned and armed and still majestic, falls to dust at the mere breath of heaven, so fell the empire of the Moghul when the great name that guarded it was no more. To adapt an image drawn by Keene from the well-known Indian tree ficus religiosa, it was as though some splendid palace, reared with infinite skill with all the costliest stones and precious metals of the earth, had attained its perfect beauty only to collapse in undistinguishable ruin when the insidious roots of the creeper sapped the foundations.

Even had Aurangzib left a successor of his own mental and moral stature, it may be doubted whether the process of disintegration could have been stayed. The disease was too far advanced for even the most heroic surgery. To increase the confusion, the Great Moghul had made no nomination to the throne he was vacating, and as usual all the sons claimed the sceptre. The contest was brief; Prince A'zam was slain in battle near Agra, Kam Bakhsh died of his wounds after a defeat near Haidarabad, and the first-born, Mu'azzam,