Then once again he found the impracticability of subduing an enemy which, at the first attack, reduced itself to a horde of units, each one animated by individual love of fight, love of plunder. It was guerilla war with a vengeance, so after a time the emperor was not sorry to have his attention drawn from it to the northwest frontier. On his return from this unsuccessful expedition, he settled down for a time to govern his kingdom, which he did in a way that irritated and exasperated both Hindus and Mahomedans. The former almost rose in revolt at the reimposition of the poll tax on infidels; the latter, especially in the court, objected to the prohibition of all amusements. Amongst other prohibitions was the curious one of forbidding history to be written, or court annals to be kept; the result being that no real record of the last forty years of this reign is extant.
As time went on, he bore more and more hardly on the Hindus, until discontent spread on all sides, and in the Dekkan every one was at heart a partisan of Siva-ji.
Finally, an attempt on Aurungzebe's part to get into his power the infant children of Râjah Jâi-Singh of Ambêr, whom he had caused to be poisoned in his distant viceroyalty of Kâbul, joined to the iniquity of the jizya, or infidel tax, set the whole of Râjputana in a flame. In this connection the letter sent to the Emperor by Rana Râj-Singh of Chittore may be quoted in part, as an example of the dignified remonstrances which preceded the appeal to the sword.
"How can the dignity of the sovereign be preserved who employs his power in exacting heavy tribute from a people thus miserably reduced?... If your Majesty places any faith in those books, by distinction called divine, you will there be instructed that God is the god of all mankind, not the god of Mahomedans alone. The pagan and the Mussulman are equally in His presence ... to vilify the religion or customs of other men is to set at naught the pleasure of the Almighty ... In fine, the tribute you demand from Hindus is repugnant to justice; it is equally foreign to good policy, as it must impoverish the country."
The appeal, needless to say, was fruitless; but after a long and mutually disastrous war a sort of peace was patched up between the Râjputs and the Moghuls, leaving Aurungzebe free to attempt yet once again to repress the irrepressible Siva-ji, who by this time had been crowned King of the Mahrattas, and had become a still more ardent Hindu, minutely scrupulous to ceremonial and caste.
Thus the two great rival powers in India were bigoted Hinduism, bigoted Islâmism. A far cry, indeed, from dead Akbar's Dream of tolerant Unity.
So the struggle recommenced. But Siva-ji was more elusive than ever. He fought by sea as well as by land, and the first record of a naval war in India is that which he waged along the shores of Western India. Only the English settlement at Surat defied him. They put their factory into what state of defence was possible, garrisoned it with their crews, and met the marauding Mahrattas with a sally which effectually drove them off. For which valiant defence of their own, Aurungzebe exempted the English for ever from a portion of the customs duty paid by other nations, and remitted the transit charges.
Siva-ji thus indirectly did a good turn to English commerce.
Years passed, bringing advantage to the Mahratta side, when, in 1680, death suddenly intervened and carried off the clever, astute little Siva-ji in the fifty-third year of his age.
A bit of a genius was Siva-ji, quick to seize on the mistakes of his adversary, and far-seeing enough to appeal to natural spirit and religious enthusiasm in his adherents. Thus, though his death was a great blow, it did not crush the rising fortunes of the Mahrattas, despite the fact that Samba-ji, his heir, had shown no capability for kingship during his youth, and on his accession gave himself up to cruelty and passion. Still the war dragged on; defeat was indeed impossible to an army which had no cohesion, and which now, in consequence of the failure of regular pay under Samba-ji's career of idle luxury, degenerated into plundering hordes of mere freebooters.