'He is the everlasting. He is sufficient.' It will be observed that the characters in the two readings are almost identical.
7. The Empress had been a good deal exasperated against the Portuguese and Dutch by the treatment her husband received from them when a fugitive, after an unsuccessful rebellion against his father; and her hatred to them extended, in some degree, to all Christians, whom she considered to be included in the term 'Kāfir', or unbeliever. [W. H. S.] Prince Shāh Jahān (Khurram) rebelled against his father, Jahāngīr, in A.D. 1623, and submitted in A.D. 1625. The terrible punishment inflicted by Shāh Jahān when Emperor on the Portuguese of Hūgli (Hooghly) is related by Bernier (Constable's ed., pp. 177, 287). The Emperor had previously destroyed the Jesuits' church at Lahore completely, and the greater part of the church at Agra.
8. The cleverness, astuteness, energy, and business capacity of Aurangzēb are undoubted, and yet his long reign was a disastrous failure. The author reflects the praises of Muhammadans who cherish the memory of the 'namāzī'. The Emperor himself knew better when, in his old ago, he wrote to his son Azam the pathetic words, 'I have not done well by the country or its people. My years have gone by profitless' (Lane-Poole's version in Aurangzib (Rulers of India), p. 203. Letter No. 72 in Bilimoria, Letters of Aurungzbe, Bombay, 1908. Another version in E. and D. vii, 562.) His reign lasted for almost forty-nine years, from June 1658 to February 1707, and not for only forty years.
9. The real tombs are in the vault below. Beautiful cenotaphs stand under the dome. The inscription on the tomb of the Empress is exactly repeated on her cenotaph, and runs thus:-
'The splendid sepulchre of Arjumand Bānō Bēgam, entitled Mumtāz Mahall, deceased in the year 1040 Hijrī.'
The epitaph on Shāh Jahān's tomb is as follows:-
'The sacred sepulchre of His Moat Exalted Majesty, nesting in Paradise, the Second Lord of the Conjunction, Shāh Jahān, the Emperor. May his mausoleum ever flourish. Year 1076 Hijrī.'
The inscription on Shāh Jahān's cenotaph adds more titles and gives the exact date of death as 'the night of Rajab 28, A.H. 1076'. 1040 Hījrī corresponds with the period from July 31, A.D. 1630 to July 19, 1631; and 1076 Hijrī with the period July 4, A. D. 1665 to June 23, 1666, Old Style. The dates in New Style would be ten days later.
The epithet 'nesting in Paradise' (firdaus āshiyānī) was the official posthumous title of Shāh Jahān, frequently used by historians instead of his name.
The title 'Second Lord of the Conjunction' means that Shāh Jahān was held to have been born under the fortunate conjunction of Venus and Jupiter, as his ancestor Tīmūr had been.
10. The details in the text are inaccurate. Arjumand Bānō Bēgam, daughter of Āsaf Khān, brother of Nūr Jahān, the queen of Jahāngīr, was born in A.D. 1592, married in 1612, and died July 7, 1631 (o.s.), at Burhānpur in the Deccan. After a delay of six months her remains were removed to Agra, and there rested six months longer at a spot in the Tāj gardens still remembered, until her tomb was sufficiently advanced for the final interment. Her titles were Mumtāz-i-Mahall, 'Exalted in the Palace'; Qudsia Bēgam, and Nawāb Aliyā Bēgam. She bore her husband eight sons and six daughters, fourteen children in all, of whom seven were alive at the time of her death. The child whose birth cost the mother's life was Gauharārā Bēgam, who survived for many years (Irvine, Storia do Mogor, iv. 425). Beale wrongly gives her name as Dahar Ārā.