OF THE GREAT MOGOL                    115

pregnancy, was sacrificed according to his brutal mandate.
Sultan Banque and his brothers were decapitated with
gruesome-looking axes,! quite blunt, and the female
members of this ill-fated family were closely confined in
their apartments, and left to die of hunger.

In this manner terminated the war which the lust of
domination had kindled among these four brothers. It
lasted between five and six years; that is to say, from
about the year 1655 to the year I66O or I66I ; and it left
Aureng-Zebe the undisputed master of this mighty Empire.

' 'Avec de malheureuses baches toutes emoussees'in the original,
probably intended to denote the well-known dao or hill-knife, which
has a blade about eighteen inches long, narrow at the haft, square and
broad at the top, pointless and sharpened on one side only, set in a
handle of wood, a bamboo root being considered the best; a common
weapon at the present day among the Arakan hill tribes, and others
on the north-east frontier of India.