or degrades them to obscurity according to his own pleasure and caprice."
Bernier goes on to show that the total insecurity of all private property, land revenue exactions, instability of government, the denial of justice, the tyranny and cupidity of the sovereign and his subordinates, "a tyranny often so excessive as to deprive the peasant and artisan of the necessaries of life, that drives the cultivator of the soil from his wretched home" – and that was ruining agriculture – accounted abundantly for the rapid decadence of all Asiatic states. "The country is ruined," he says, "by the necessity of defraying the enormous charges required to maintain the splendour of a numerous court, and to pay a large army maintained for the purpose of keeping the people in subjection. No adequate idea can be conveyed of the sufferings of that people"; and he continues: "It is owing to this miserable system that most towns in Hindustan are made up of earth, mud, and other wretched materials; that there is no city or town which, if it be not already ruined or deserted, does not bear evident marks of approaching decay." He thus touches upon the symptoms, already perceptible to a close observer, of the empire's political and economical decline.
Soon after the date at which Bernier wrote, Aurangzib entered upon the interminable wars in South India which gradually involved him in the misfortunes and difficulties that darkened the last years of his reign. He succeeded in upsetting the minor Mohammedan kingdoms which had been strong enough to hold down
