fatuated with her." So much so, that one day
she offered him a cup of wine and pressed him
to drink it. All his entreaties and excuses were
disregarded, and the helpless lover was about to
taste the forbidden drink when the sly enchantress snatched away the cup from his lips and
said, "My object was only to test your love for
me, and not to make you fall into the sin of
drinking !" Death cut the story short when
she was still in the bloom of youth. Aurangzib
bitterly grieved at her loss and buried her close to the big tank at Aurangabad.[1]
More than half a century afterwards, when this early love-passage had become How she was won. mere memory, the following inaccurate version of it was recorded by Hamiduddin Khan, a favourite servant of the Emperor, in his Anecdotes of Alamgir. It is extremely amusing, as showing that the puritan in love was not above practising wiles to gain his end!
"When Aurangzib as Governor of the Deccan was going to Aurangabad, on arriving at Burhanpur he went to visit his aunt. The Prince entered the house without announcing himself.
- ↑ Masir-ul-Umara, i. 790 — 792. Mir Khalil was posted to the Deccan shortly before Aurangzib's second viceroyalty began, so that the earUest possible date of the episode is 1653, when Aurangzib was 35 years old.
