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Chapter IX – The Deccan

‘Delhi is distant,’ says an old Deccan proverb, and many an Indian king has realized its force, when grappling with the ineradicable contumacy of his southern province. The Deccan (Dakhin, Dak-han, ‘the South’) was never intended by nature to have any connexion with Hindustan. The Vindhya and Satpura mountains and the Narbada river form a triple line of natural barricades, which divide the high table-land of Central India from the plains of the Ganges and its tributaries, and should have warned the sovereigns of Delhi that it was wiser to keep to their own country. But the Deccan lands were fertile; their wealth in gold and diamonds was fabulous; and every great ruler of the northern plains has turned his eyes to the mountain barriers and longed to enter the land of promise beyond. They entered, however, at their peril. To conquer the Deccan was another phrase for risking the loss of Hindustan; for he who invaded the southern people who dwelt between the Ghats was in danger of teaching them the road to the north.

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The first Muhammadan sovereign who brought the whole of the Deccan under the sway of Delhi was Muhammad ibn Taghlak, in the fourteenth century. His sagacity and eccentricity were equally displayed in his choice of a new capital and in his singular mode of supplying it with a ready-made population. He wisely fixed upon Deogiri, on account of its central situation – for in those days, at least, before railways and telegraphs, he who would rule the Deccan must live there; – and he ruthlessly transported the whole population of Delhi backwards and forwards, between his old and his new capital, henceforth to be known as Daulatabad, or ‘Empire-city.’ His death put an end to the dominion of the north over the south, and a great Afghan dynasty, the Bahmani kings, took possession of the Deccan. About the close of the fifteenth century their broad dominions were split up into five distinct kingdoms, of which the most important were those of the Kutb Shah dynasty at Golkonda, the Adil Shahs of Bijapur (Vijayapura), and the Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar. Upon these rich States the Mughal emperors often cast longing eyes; but it was reserved for Aurangzib to be the first to set foot in their prostrate cities.

Akbar was too wise to meddle seriously in Deccan politics. All he wanted was to secure himself against invasion from the south; and with this view he annexed the rugged borderland of Khandesh, and used its capital, Burhanpur, with the rocky fastness of Asirgarh, as outposts to defend his southern frontier.

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He also subdued Berar, and took the fortress of Ahmadnagar. So long as his reign lasted, no harm came of this forward policy: the kings of Bijapur and Golkonda were impressed by his boldness, sent embassies to assure him of their admiring goodwill, and consented to pay him tribute. It may be doubted, however, whether he would not have been wiser to draw his scientific frontier at the Narbada. He set an example which led his successors on to further aggression, and for more than a century the governor of what was known as the subah of the Deccan, which included Burhanpur and the country round about, was perpetually striving to enlarge his borders at the expense of the dominions of the Nizam, Adil, or Kutb Shah of the period, with the result that tranquillity was unknown to the inhabitants of the marches. During the reign of Jahangir the struggle went on without advantage to the Mughals; Ahmadnagar was lost and regained; and when Shah-Jahan ascended the Peacock Throne, the three southern dynasties held most of their old territory, whilst the Mughal province consisted of little more than part of Khandesh and Berar with the fort of Ahmadnagar as a lonely outpost. The new Emperor, who had shown his prowess as a general in the Deccan in his younger days, renewed the contest, extinguished the Nizam Shah’s line, and compelled the kings of Golkonda and Bijapur once more to pay homage in the form of a usually unpunctual annual tribute.

Prince Aurangzib was Viceroy of the Deccan at the

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time when these important successes were completed. As has been seen, he was appointed to this, his first official post, on the 10th of May, 1636, when in his eighteenth year. The war was practically over before he arrived on the scene, and all he had to do was to receive the last representative of the Nizam dynasty, and send him to join others of his kindred in the fortress of Gwalior. The province of the Deccan at this time is described as containing sixty-four forts, fifty-three of which were in the hills, and it was divided into four provinces:– Daulatabad, including Ahmadnagar, its old capital; Telingana; Khandesh; and Berar (capital, Elichpur). The revenue of the whole was reckoned at five crores, or more than five and a half million pounds. The only addition made during Aurangzib’s first government was the reduction of the territory of Baglana, between Khandesh and the Western Ghats, to the position of a tributary State in the winter of 1637–8. In June, 1643, the Viceroy adopted the profession of a fakir, and was deprived of his office.

Twelve years passed before Aurangzib returned to the Deccan. The campaigns in Afghanistan had diverted his energies, and the interval had passed peacefully in the south. Shah-Jahan’s officers were busily employed in completing the revenue survey of the Deccan provinces, and the kings of Bijapur and Golkonda were quite content to let well alone, so long as the Mughals observed the same maxim. They paid their tribute, as a rule, and in return only asked to be

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left in peace. This was just what the new Viceroy was least disposed to grant. He had done with his dream of a hermit’s contemplative life, and his experience of war in Afghanistan had roused all his inborn passion for conquest. The fact that the Deccan kings were of the heretical sect of the Shi’a, or followers of Ali, gave his designs the sacred character of a Jihad. From this time to his dying day he never for a moment lost sight of his ambition to recover the empire which had once belonged to Muhammad ibn Taghlak. At last his ambition led him on and on, till for twenty-six years he never set foot in Hindustan, and finally found the grave of his hopes, as of his body, in the land which even his iron will could not subdue.

His first decided step towards the goal he was fated never to reach was an unprovoked attack upon Abdallah, the King of Golkonda. The pretext was an internal dispute with which the Mughals had no concern, but it served their purpose. Mir Jumla, the vizier of Golkonda, was by birth a Persian, and a diamond merchant by trade, who had risen to his high office as much by transcendent ability as by fabulous wealth. He was wont to reckon the produce of his diamond mines by the sackful, and used his riches as a serviceable grease to the wheels of success. But he was also a brilliant general, and his campaigns in the Carnatic had brought him fame as well as treasure. In pursuit of both he had shown himself a very scourge of idolatry, and plundered temples and violated idols throughout the peninsula

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bore witness to his iconoclastic zeal. With such a man Aurangzib had many grounds of sympathy; and when Mir Jumla fell out with his King, and threw himself upon the protection of the Mughal, it is not surprising that he was welcomed with effusion, and accorded the rank of a ‘Commander of 5000.’ Having secured this valuable ally, Aurangzib warmly espoused his cause and set about redressing his wrongs. He sent his eldest son, ‘that tender sapling in the garden of success,’ Prince Muhammad, to demand justice for Mir Jumla from his former sovereign (Jan., 1656), and took so much pains to disguise his intentions that the astonished King had barely time to escape from his capital, Bhagnagar, afterwards called Haidarabad, to the neighbouring fortress of Golkonda, before his enemies were in the city55.

Aurangzib then advanced in person, and laid siege to Golkonda, where he repulsed the King’s first sally with a furious charge of the Mughal horse, leading the way on his war-elephant. In vain Abdallah sent baskets of gems and gorgeously caparisoned chargers and elephants to appease the besieger: Aurangzib would listen to no terms; and when the King, as a last resource, begged to be allowed to send his mother as a mediator, the Prince refused to see her. Driven to bay, the King fought hard, but the siege was pressed harder, and when. Shayista Khan came up at the

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head of the nobles of Malwa to reinforce the Prince, Abdallah submitted to the humiliating terms of the conqueror. He consented to engrave Shah-Jahan’s name on his coins, in token of vassalage, to give his daughter in marriage to Aurangzib’s eldest son, with some fortresses to her dowry, and to pay a crore of rupees, or more than a million sterling, in annual tribute to the Emperor. These terms would never have been offered had Aurangzib had his own way. But Shah-Jahan was growing jealous of his son’s success, and dreaded the consequences of his increased power in the distant provinces of the south; while Dara, ever envious of his brother’s renown, and anxious to curb his ambitious spirit, exerted all his great influence over his aged father to excite his too-ready suspicions of his other sons. Peremptory orders arrived for Aurangzib to retire from Golkonda, the motive of which the Prince perfectly understood, though he did not feel that the moment for resistance had yet come. But for this interference, Golkonda would have been incorporated in the Mughal Empire in 1656, instead of thirty years later, and much subsequent bloodshed and disorder would have been avoided. As it was, Aurangzib came to terms with the King on the eve of victory, and withdrew to Aurangabad, which he had made the capital of his province, to nurse his grudge against Dara, and to plot further schemes of conquest with Mir Jumla.

The result of their deliberations was that Mir Jumla, who now received the title of Mu’azzam Khan, went

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to Agra, and pleaded the cause of Deccan aggrandizement with Shah-Jahan himself. He told the Great Mogul of the wealth and treasures of the south, described the decrepit kingdoms that invited annihilation; and in glowing colours painted the glory that would redound to the name of his most religious Majesty from the extirpation of the effete colony of Portuguese infidels on the Malabar coast. The Mughal, he said, should never rest till his sway was supreme from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. The crafty Persian did not trust to argument alone: he brought the Emperor a priceless diamond, from the mine of Kollur on the Kistna, no less a stone than the famous Koh-i-nur or ‘Peak of Light’; which, after adorning the ‘Great Mogul,’ was carried away to Persia by Nadir Shah, brought back to Afghanistan by Ahmad Durrani, and eventually came into the possession of Ranjit Singh, from whom it was transferred to the regalia of England on the annexation of the Punjab in 184956. Fortified by so splendid a gift, Mir Jumla’s arguments prevailed, and Shah-Jahan authorized a further reinforcement of the army of the Deccan with a view to a spirited foreign policy. Dara fought to the last against this strengthening of his brother’s hand, but all he could obtain was the stipulation that Mir Jumla, and not Aurangzib, should have the command of the new army of aggression, and that the general should leave his family at

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Agra as hostages for his loyalty. The change of command made no difference, as it happened; for Jumla at once joined his troops to Aurangzib’s, in close alliance, and the two proceeded to wrench the castle of Bidar from the possession of Adil Shah of Bijapur. Kaliani and Kulbarga were then taken, and the conquest of Bijapur itself seemed imminent, when the serious illness of Shah-Jahan summoned Aurangzib away to graver matters57.

Seven years passed before the troubles in the north, the war of succession, and the initial difficulties of settling his kingdom, left the new Emperor leisure to attend to the affairs of the Deccan. Meanwhile a new power had arisen in the south, a power which sprang from such needy and insignificant beginnings that no one could have foretold its future malignant domination. The Marathas began to make themselves felt.

This notorious Hindu people inhabited the country lying between the Indian Ocean and the river Warda; their northern boundary was the Satpura range, and on the west coast they extended as far south as Goa. Their strength lay in the inaccessible fastnesses of the Western Ghats, which climb precipitously to the great plateau that stretches right across the Deccan to the Bay of Bengal.

‘The whole of the Ghats and neighbouring mountains often terminate towards the top in a wall of smooth rock, the highest points of which, as well as detached portions on

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insulated hills, form natural fortresses, where the only labour required is to get access to the level space, which generally lies on the summit,. Various princes at different times have profited by these positions. They have cut flights of steps or winding roads up the rocks, fortified the entrance with a succession of gateways, and erected towers to command the approaches; and then studded the whole region about the Ghats and their branches with forts, which, but for frequent experience, would be deemed impregnable58.’

Between the Ghats and the sea lies the narrow strip of rugged country called the Konkan. Here deep valleys and torrent-beds lead from the rocks and forests of the mountain ridge to the fertile plains of the humid tract near the sea, where the torrents merge in sandy creeks among thickets of mangroves.

‘The broken and contorted land, writhing from the rugged and indented sea-margin, shoots aloft in steep and terrific cliffs and craggy summits, whose beauty and majesty must be seen to be understood. Magnificent forests clothe these elevations, and spread far down into the wild country below, and extend their mysterious and treacherous shade for many a mile along the table-land above. Impetuous torrents leap from the mountain sides, rive, in their headlong career sea-ward, the uneven and craggy surface of the coastland; and the hollow nullas of the dry season are, on the approach of rain, transformed in a few hours into deep, furious, and impassable cataracts. The thunderstorms of these regions are terrific: the deluges of rain, violent, copious, and frequent, beyond all comparison elsewhere in India. Roads throughout the greater part of the country

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there are none; the character of the ground and the luxuriance of the forest jungles alike preclude them59.’

The Ghats and the Konkan were the safe retreats of wild beasts and wiry Marathas.

These people had never made any mark in history before the reign of Aurangzib. They had been peaceful, frugal husbandmen, like the mass of the lower orders of Hindus, and had given no trouble to their rulers. Their chiefs, or village headmen, were Sudras, of the lowest of the four castes, like their people, though they pretended to trace their pedigree to the Rajputs, and thus connect themselves with the noble caste of Kshatriyas. In the silent times of peace, the Marathas enjoyed the happiness of the nation that has no history. War brought out their dormant capacities, and their daggers soon cut their name deep in the annals of India.

‘They are small, sturdy men,’ says Elphinstone, ‘well made, though not handsome. They are all active, laborious, hardy, and persevering. If they have none of the pride and dignity of the Rajputs, they have none of their indolence or their want of worldly wisdom. A Rajput warrior, as long as he does not dishonour his race, seems almost indifferent to the result of any contest he is engaged in. A Maratha thinks of nothing but the result, and cares little for the means, if he can attain his object. For this purpose he will strain his wits, renounce his pleasures, and hazard his person; but he has not a conception of sacrificing his life, or even his

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interest, for a point of honour. This difference of sentiment effects the outward appearance of the two nations: there is something noble in the carriage even of an ordinary Rajput, and something vulgar in that of the most distinguished Maratha.’

The vulgar Maratha, nevertheless, gave more trouble to the rulers of Hindustan, whether Mughal or English, than even the proud dynasties of the Raj puts. The King of Bijapur was responsible for the disastrous policy of educating this hardy race for their career of rapine. They formed a large proportion of his subjects, and their language, a peculiar offshoot of Sanskrit, became the official script of the revenue department of his kingdom. Gradually they came to be employed in his army, first in garrison duty, and then in the light cavalry, a branch of service for which they displayed extraordinary aptitude. Some of them rose to offices of some importance at Bijapur and Golkonda. One of the most distinguished of these officers, Shahji Bhosla, governor of Poona and Bangalore, was the father of Sivaji, the founder of the Maratha power.

Footnotes

55. So Bernier: Khafi Khan says nothing of this deceit; Catrou on the other hand, more suo, dilates upon it with his usual enthusiasm in detraction.

56. The history of this celebrated diamond, and its identity with Mir Jumla’s gift, have been conclusively traced by Dr. Ball, in his edition of Tavernier’s Travels, vol. ii. App. I.

57. See above, p. 35.

58. Elphinstone, History of India, 5th ed. (1866), p. 615.

59. Sidney Owen, India on the Eve of the British Conquest (1872), p. 22. Dr. Fryer has given a vivid account of his ascent of the Ghats in his New Account of India (1698), Letter III, ch. iv.

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