Aurangzeb: Chronicle of a downfall foretold

Blitz Bureau

NEW DELHI: ‘GOD knows!’ exclaimed Jahangir. He was in Ramgarh when a comet shaped like a harba (spear) appeared in the sky on 20 October 1618. His astrologers said it indicated weakness for kings and success for enemies.

Jahangir saw the comet three gharis before sunrise, a luminous vapour in the form of a pillar: When it assumed its full form, it took the shape of a spear, thin at two ends and thick in the middle. It was curved like a sickle, and had its back to the south, and its face to the north… Astronomers took its shape and size by the astrolabe, and ascertained that with differences of appearance it extended over 24 degrees. It moved in high heaven, but it had a movement of its own, differing from that of high heaven, for it was first in Scorpio and afterwards in Libra. Its declination was mainly southerly.

Sixteen nights after this phenomenon, a star showed itself in the same quarter. Its head was luminous, and its tail was two or three yards long, but the tail was not luminous. It has now appeared for eight nights; when it disappears, the fact will be noticed, as well as the results of it.

Shortly after, news arrived of the birth of a grandson: On the eve of Sunday the 12th of the Ilahi month of Aban, in the thirteenth year of my accession, corresponding with the 15th Zi-lQada of the Hijri year 1027, in the 19th degree of Libra, the Giver of blessing gave my prosperous son Shahjahan a precious son by the daughter of Asaf Khan [Mumtaz Mahal]. I hope that his advent may be auspicious and blessed to this everlasting State.

This grandson was Aurangzeb. Shahjahan arranged for a birthday ‘entertainment’ at Ujjain. The ‘day was passed in enjoyment at his quarters’, writes the emperor.

His private servants who had ‘entrée into this kind of parties and assemblies were delighted with brimming cups’. Shahjahan brought that ‘auspicious child’, along with offerings of a tray of jewels, ornaments and fifty elephants, thirty male and twenty female, and asked the grandfather to name the baby. ‘Please God, it will be given him in a favourable hour,’ said Jahangir. The favourable hour would be determined by astrologers. Seven of the elephants were sent to his private stud; the rest were distributed among officers. The value of the offerings accepted was 2,00,000 rupees.

The skies had not been silent when Dara Shukoh was born three years earlier. In March 1615, Jahangir was celebrating the tenth year of his accession with a feast and ceremonials in the ‘usual manner’.

On Sunday, 29 March, ‘when twelve gharis of the day had passed, it began from the west, and four out of five parts of the sun were eclipsed in the knot of the dragon. From the commencement of the seizure until it became light eight gharis elapsed’. Alms of all kinds, in the shape of metals, animals and vegetables, were given to fakirs and the impoverished to thwart the ill effects, for an eclipse was a premonition of misfortune.

On the night of 30 March 1615, Dara Shukoh was born ‘in the ascension of Sagittarius’. Jahangir named the boy Dara Shukoh with the ‘hope that his coming will be propitious to this State conjoined with eternity, and to his fortunate father’.

Both astral events were considered ominous by Jahangir. In retrospect, they might serve as metaphors. Dara Shukoh was eclipsed, but the Aurangzeb meteor burnt out the empire.

Aurangzeb believed in his horoscope, written at his birth, with total conviction. This horoscope had not only predicted every event that occurred in his life but also the disaster that would overwhelm the Mughal Empire after he was gone. In 1695, twelve years before his death, he told his heir, Mirza Muhammad Muazzam (1643-1712), who succeeded him as Bahadur Shah, ‘Az mast hamah fasad-i-baqi!’ That is, ‘After me: chaos!’

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