The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan | Page 9

with her shapely arms covered nearly to the
elbow with cheap glass armless. Every one is smiling, showing rows of
well-kept teeth, talking kindly and gently; here a little boy leads a pony
on which his white-bearded grandfather is smilingly seated; there a
baby perches, with eyes of solemn satisfaction, on its father's shoulder.
Scenes of the immemorial East are reproduced before our modern eyes;
now the "flight into Egypt," now St. John and his lamb. In hundreds
and in thousands, the orderly crowds stream on. Not a bough is broken
off a way-side tree, not a rude remark addressed to the passenger as he
threads his horse's way carefully through the everywhere yielding ranks.
So they go in the morning and so return at night.
But, on the other hand, it is not to be rashly assumed that, as India is
the Italy, so are the Indian races the Italians of Asia. All Asiatics are
unscrupulous and unforgiving. The natives of Hindustan are peculiarly
so; but they are also unsympathetic and unobservant in a manner that is
altogether their own. From the languor induced by the climate, and
from the selfishness engendered by centuries of misgovernment, they
have derived a weakness of will, an absence of resolute energy, and an
occasional audacity of meanness, almost unintelligible in a people so
free from the fear of death. Many persons have thought that moral
weakness of this kind must be attributable to the system of caste by
which men, placed by birth in certain grooves, are forbidden to even
think of stepping out of them. But this is not the whole explanation.
Nor, indeed, are the most candid foreign critics convinced that the
system is one of unmixed evil. The subjoined moderate and sensible

estimate of the effects of caste, upon the character and habits of the
people is from the Bishops' letter quoted above. "In India, Caste has
been the bond of Society, defining the relations between man and man,
and though essentially at variance with all that is best and noblest in
human nature, has held vast communities together, and established a
system of order and discipline under which Government has been
administered, trade has prospered, the poor have been maintained, and
some domestic virtues have flourished."
Macaulay has not overstated Indian weaknesses in his Essay on Warren
Hastings, where he has occasion to describe the character of Nand
Komar, who, as a Bengali man-of-the-pen, appears to have been a
marked type of all that is most unpleasing in the Hindoo character. The
Bengalis, however, have many amiable characteristics to show on the
other side of the shield, to which it did not suit the eloquent Essayist to
draw attention. And in going farther North many other traits, of a far
nobler kind, will be found more and more abundant. Of the Musalmans,
it only remains to add that, although mostly descended from hardier
immigrants, they have imbibed the Hindu character to an extent that
goes far to corroborate the doctrine which traces the morals of men to
the physical circumstances that surround them. The subject will be
found more fully treated in the concluding chapter.

CHAPTER II.
A.D. 1707-19.

Greatness of Timur's Descendants—Causes of the Empire's
Decline—Character of Aurangzeb—Progress of Disruption under his
Successors—Muhamadan and Hindu enemies—The Stage emptied.

For nearly two centuries the throne of the Chaghtais continued to be
filled by a succession of exceptionally able Princes. The brave and
simple-hearted Babar, the wandering Humayun, the glorious Akbar, the

easy but uncertain-tempered Jahangir, the magnificent Shahjahan, all
these rulers combined some of the best elements of Turkish character
— and their administration was better than that of any other Oriental
country of their date. Of Shahjahan's government and its patronage of
the arts — both decorative and useful — we have trustworthy
contemporary descriptions. His especial taste was for architecture; and
the Mosque and Palace of Dehli, which he personally designed, even
after the havoc of two centuries, still remain the climax of the
Indo-Saracenic order, and admitted rivals to the choicest works of
Cordova and Granada.
The abilities of his son and successor ALAMGIR, known to Europeans
by his private name, AURANGZEB, rendered him the most famous
member of his famous house. Intrepid and enterprising as he was in war,
his political sagacity and statecraft were equally unparalleled in Eastern
annals. He abolished capital punishment, understood and encouraged
agriculture, founded numberless colleges and schools, systematically
constructed roads and bridges, kept continuous diaries of all public
events from his earliest boyhood, administered justice publicly in
person, and never condoned the slightest malversation of a provincial
governor, however distant his province. Such were these emperors;
great, if not exactly what we should call good, to a degree rare indeed
amongst hereditary rulers.
The fact of this