struggle she gave the alarm, and
pretended that she had fallen in by accident.[16]

By the murder of the mother of the heir-apparent she expected to
secure the throne to a creature of her own. Khusru was treated with
great kindness by his father, after he had been barbarously deprived
of sight;[17] but when his brother, Shah Jahan, was appointed to the
government of Southern India, he pretended great solicitude about the
comforts of his _poor blind brother_, which he thought would not be
attended to at court, and took him with him to his government in the
Deccan, where he got him assassinated, as the only sure mode of
securing the throne to himself.[18] Parwiz, the second son, died a
natural death;[19] so also did his only son; and so also Daniyal, the
fourth son of the Emperor.[20] Nur Jahan's daughter by Sher Afgan had
married Shahryar, a young son of the Emperor by a concubine; and,
just before his death he (the Emperor), at the instigation of Nur
Jahan, named this son as his successor in his will. He was placed
upon the throne, and put in possession of the treasury, and at the
head of a respectable army;[21] but the Empress's brother, Asaf,
designed the throne for his own son-in-law, Shah Jahan; and, as soon
as the Emperor died, he put up a puppet to amuse the people till he
could come up with his army from the Deccan--Bulaki, the eldest son
of the deceased Khusru. Shahryar's troops were defeated; he was taken
prisoner, and had his eyes put out forthwith, and the Empress was put
into close confinement. As Shah Jahan approached Lahore with his
army, Asaf put his puppet, Bulaki, and his younger brother, with the
two young sons of Daniyal, into prison, where they were strangled by
a messenger sent on for the purpose by Shah Jahan, with the sanction
of Asaf.[22] This measure left no male heir alive of the house of
Timur (Tamerlane) in Hindustan, save Shah Jahan himself and his four
sons. Dara was then thirteen years of age, Shuja twelve, Aurangzeb
ten, and Murad four;[23] and all were present to learn from their
father this sad lesson--that such of them who might be alive on his
death, save one, must, with their sons, be hunted down and destroyed
like mad dogs, lest they might get into the hands of the disaffected,
and be made the tools of faction.

Monsieur de Thevenot, who visited Agra, as I have before stated, in
1666, says, 'Some affirm that there are twenty-five thousand
Christian families in Agra; but all do no