Machine summary:
Aurangzaib's self-control and respect for the Law led him to set up a regular tribunal consisting of the highest authorities of canonical law, whose learning and honest independence of opinion no contemporary, so far as I know, has impeached ; and from them obtained an unanimous verdict of death against Dfira-Shukoh, for heresy and on account of his insulting propaganda against Islam as well as his disturbance of the public peace", The assembly might have been swayed in judging the case of the unfortunate prince, by the personal views and interests of his triumphant rival, but some of Dara's works on mysticism and comparative theology still exist, which will always prove him guilty before a sensitive court of orthodox Islam.
The post of court-annalist, the occupant of which had in reality played the part of an official panegyrist from the days of Abu'l-Fazal, was reduced, as, after reading the description of his first ten years of rule, the Emperor would no longer tolerate such fulsome :flattery1• A ruler of this type, coming in the wake of a series of magnificent, if extravagant, predecessors, could scarcely hope to become popular.
Hut the tissue of wonderful inventions with which Tod and others of his ilk have tried to represent the Rajput rebellion as a Holy War of the Hindus against their Malichh rulers, can be refuted by the single and undisputed fact of the rebels entering into negotiations with Prince Akbar, the third son of the Emperor and nominal commander of the Imperial army, and ple I ately disgraced by the Emperor on account of his slack• ness, was seduced by the Rajput intriguers into declaring (1) Ishwar-das, quoted by Sarkar, III 372.