Page:History of India Vol 5.djvu/398

 340 AUEANGZIB trated by some of his enactments in the eleventh year of his reign. Their effect is thus described in Khafi Khan's Tarikh, or history. A. D.), after his Majesty Aurangzib had sat for ten years upon his throne, authors were forbidden to write the events of this just and righteous emperor's reign. Nev- ertheless, some competent persons disobeyed this man- date, particularly Musta'idd Khan, who secretly wrote an abridged account of the campaign in the Deccan, simply detailing the conquests of the countries and forts without alluding to the misfortunes of the cam- paign; and Bindraban prepared a brief narrative of the events of some years of the second and third decades. I myself, however, have neither seen nor obtained any history that contains a full and detailed account of the forty remaining years of the reign of Aurangzib. Consequently, from the eleventh to the twenty-first year of the emperor's reign, I have not been able to relate the events in the order in which they occurred, giving the month and year; but after this year, with very great labour and pains, I have managed to collect information from the papers in the public offices and from truthful persons, confidential servants of the emperor, and aged eunuchs. This, to- gether with all that I myself observed for thirty or forty years, after attaining years of discretion, I laid up in the strongbox of my memory, and that I have written. And since I heard that Bindraban Das Baha- dur Shahi, who was long an accountant of Shah Alam
 * In the eleventh year of his reign, 1078 A. H. (1668