31.5 The indian subcontinent: a.d. 1601 to 1700

The indian subcontinent (see map, this section in next chapter)

Back to The Indian Subcontinent : A.D. 1501 to 1600

The sons of Akbar inherited his empire but not all of his qualities. Jehangir

In the far north in the Pun jab the Sikhs had sought to reconcile the Moslem and Hindu faiths in a higher revelation, and their canon of religious writings was officially closed in 1604. Soon thereafter the Sikh leaders fell afoul of the Mogul authorities and the community took to arms, battling the Moguls throughout the remainder of the century. In 1699 the Guru Gobind Singh made the Granth , scriptures from writings of Hindu, Moslem and Sikh holy men, the official symbolic guru of Sikhism. (Ref. 25 )

To regress for a moment, early in the century the Turkish Moguls extended their empire throughout southwestern India, including Sind, Rajputana and Gujerat, so that only the southeastern part of the peninsula remained independent as the Deccan Sultanate. Even this fell almost entirely to the Moguls as the century progressed. But these southern con- quests brought them into confrontation with a new Hindu power, the Marathas, who had established an independent kingdom on the Kondan coast beginning in 1627 under Sivaji (also Shivaji) the greatest Hindu warrior hero. (Ref. 8 , 37 ) Sivaji opened a guerilla campaign against the Emperor Aurangzeb (1658-1707), Jehan's son, a pious Moslem, who despite his despotism, subtle diplomacy and peculiar morals was the least cruel of the Moguls

He warred against the Hindu religion and art and although worshipped as a saint by the Moslems, his religious zeal wrecked his dynasty and his country. Famine killed 3 million in Bengal in 1669, although in other years it was the one area of India which could export rice. (Ref. 222 , 260 ) As in China and black Africa, human labor was widely used. When Aurangzeb made a journey to Kashmir, his loaded camels were relieved on the first slopes of the Himalayas by 15,000 to 20,000 porters. Royal orders were carried, as in Persia, by running men, relieved about every 6 miles, the teams covering a total of 30 to 60 miles a day. It is interesting that several hundred thousand people followed Aurangzeb to Kashmir, as Delhi was almost "shut-down" in the absence of the Great Mogul and his court. (Ref. 260 )