1 PREFACE. x1
2 under whom tndia prospered, and whose example was worthily
3 followed by some others. To the memory of these kings every
4 respect is ustly due. Their great names have been handed down to
5 posterity as benefactors of their people and country. But monarchs
6 of this description have been so few that they can be counted on
7 one’s ANgers.
8 z have recounted to you the history of the Great Moghal before
9 he had sunk to the condition of a pensioner and a puppet. What
10 does it disclose ? Corruption, degradation and treachery stalked
11 openly through the land. Confusion and disorder of every kind
12 ran riot over the length and breadth of the empire. The country
13 was desolate, and vice, cruelty, extravagance and profligacy over-
14 spread its surface. Strife became chronic, and anarchy reared
15 its head everywhere. The money which enabled the Moghal and
16 his Omerahs to embellish their palaces, was wrung from helpless
17 people in the interior of the country. The land was farmed out to
18 contractors who exercised arbitrary power to satisfy their cupi-
19 dity ; and these had, in their turn, to disgorge to the Imperial Trea-
20 sury a portion of their plunder, if they could not bribe the officers
21 who had access to the throne. Murders of the most horrible type,
22 robberies of a most outrageous and shocking character, were the order
23 of the day. Honour, justice and position were bought and sold.
24 The rulers of the land were sunk in voluptuousness and pollution of
25 the most revolting description, and immersed in an abyss of enfeebling
26 debauchery. They had, in most instances, thrown themselves into
27 the arms of vile panders and parasites, who were slaves of their
28 own sensual appetites. Barbers and fiddlers, pimps, eunuchs and
29 mountebanks, acquired considerable fortunes, and usurped the func-
30 tions and prerogatives of royalty. Sometimes a puppet king was
31 set up to suit the private ends of the Omerahs. He was either an
32 inexperienced youth, picked up at random from the innermost re-
33 cesses of the zandnd, who was absorbed in the pleasures of the
34 seraglio, and to whom affairs of State were disagreeable interruptions,
35 or a crippled old man, on the brink of the grave, respectable only
36 in his feebleness. The money squeezed out of the poor raiyat
37 was wasted in expensive feasts, pageants and shows ; in glittering
38 trappings for horses, or in richly caparisoned housings of costly
39 elephants—in short, in folly and pomp of every conceivable de-
40 scription, not to mention the sumptuous salaries and allowances of
41 a multitudinous host of idle attendants, bands of singers, musi-
42 cians, dancing girls, and crowds of sycophants and impostors. The
43 court of the king was a hotbed of intrigue. The ministers were
44 divided, and party spirit ran high. Viceroys and satraps of differ-
45 ent provinces, farmers of revenue and others in power, sought to
46 build up asovereign rule for themselves on the basis of plunder and
47 blackmail. The Government was rapacious, tyrannical and hated
48 to a degree, Intestine broils and commotions, incessant bloodshed
49 Sri Satguru J agjit Singh Ji eLibrary NamdhariElibrary@ gmail.com