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The accounts of his latter days are somewhat divergent. According to one story he made his peace with the Mughals and accepted a military command under the successor of Aurungzeb but it is more commonly asserted that he was assassinated by a private enemy. Even more troublous were the days of his successor Banda.
From this stirring scene you have only a few steps to go to find yourself in the large mosque built by the Emperor Aurungzeb on the site of the old temple of Bisheshwar, which was thrown down to give place to it. The contrast is very striking.
The king of Nagpore has the finest one, with one hundred stairs of white sandstone reaching down to the water. "Now we come to a building worth looking at," said Sir Modava, as they passed beyond the assemblage of palaces. "This is the mosque of Aurungzeb. Those two lofty minarets are one hundred and forty-seven feet high.
The brief period of supreme magnificence came to an end with the last of the "Great" Moguls Aurungzeb, died in 1707 having only blazed in fullest glory for some century and a half, but leaving behind it some of the noblest works of man. Opposite the entrance rise the walls of the Palace of Akbar, curiously decorated with brilliant blue mosaics of animals and arabesques.
The overthrow of this dynasty was brought about by the disastrous reign of Baber's successor Aurungzeb, a cruel, crafty and treacherous despot, who following the example of his ancestor Timur, spread terror and alarm around him in the second half of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries.
His successors, Jehangir and Shah Jehan, were also tolerant of Hinduism, but Aurungzeb was a fanatical Moslim and though he extended his rule over all India except the extreme south, he alienated the affection of his Hindu subjects by reimposing the poll tax and destroying many temples.
About twenty reside at Gokul or near Muttra: there are a few in Bombay and in all the great cities of western India, but the Maharaj of Nath Dwara in Rajputâna is esteemed the chief. This place is not an ancient seat of Kṛishṇa worship, but during the persecution of Aurungzeb a peculiarly holy image was brought thither from Muttra and placed in the shrine where it still remains.
The absence of such can be easily explained by the persecutions of Aurungzeb and by the invasions and internal struggles of the eighteenth century. At the end of that century Hinduism was at its lowest but its productive power was not destroyed. The decennial census never fails to record the rise of new sects and the sudden growth of others which had been obscure and minute.
Like Fatehpur Sikri itself, which for lack of water he had been compelled to abandon within fifteen years of its construction, it was a magnificent failure, and it was perhaps bound in his time to be a failure. Aurungzeb was the first of the Moghuls to reside in the Mahomedan atmosphere of Delhi throughout his long reign.
"This mosque was built by the Emperor Aurungzeb, on the site of a Hindu temple of Siva, which he caused to be pulled down, to the scandal of the worshippers of that deity, for it marked the spot where Vishnu himself first appeared to man. A flight of one hundred stairs leads to the mosque, which the Hindus formerly ascended on their knees when they went to the worship of Vishnu.
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