Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/160

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120
SHAH JAHAN

Emperor of India was betrayed into the hands of his enemy. He was paraded through the streets of Delhi dressed in the meanest clothes, on a wretched elephant, covered with filth; and the tumult which this barbarous humiliation stirred up among the people nearly amounted to a rebellion. "Everywhere," wrote Bernier, "I observed the people weeping and lamenting the fate of Dara in the most touching language: men, women, and children wailing as if some mighty calamity had happened to themselves." In face of such alarming sympathy Aurangzib resolved upon a speedy execution. A council was held; Dara was found to be an apostate and the friend of infidels; and on September 15, 1659, he was ordered to death. Many bewept his fate.

Meanwhile Shuja' was again in arms as viceroy in Bengal, and was pushing his way up the Ganges valley, but in vain. He was soon hunted away to Arakan, conveyed by Portuguese pirates, who at once robbed and saved him, in 1660. The last glimpse we get of him is pitiable; wounded and insulted, he fled over the mountains, with but one woman and three faithful followers, and was heard of no more. The last rival was accounted for, but Aurangzib had not waited for this. He had already twice assumed the throne: first hurriedly in the garden of Shalimar outside Delhi in the dosing days of July, 1658, and then formally ascending it in state on the 26th of May, 1659.