A Princely Affair: Young Aurangzeb in Love (17th century India)

Mir Khalil, an officer in the Mughal bureaucracy was sent to the Deccan in the year 1649-50 as the Chief of the Artillery. In his harem, he held a ravishing beauty, Zainabadi by name, who was known to mesmerize the senses through her skills in music and the art of blandishment.

One day Prince Aurangzeb, who was then serving as the governor of Deccan, went to the Ahu-Khana (deer park) of Burhanpur with an entourage of his concubines for a stroll. Zainabadi was there too; she had come along with Mir Khalil’s wife (who also happened to be the prince’s maternal aunt). Brimming with mirth and amorous charm, she leapt up and plucked a fruit, unaware that the prince was present there and watching her. In the usual course, failing to display proper respect for a member of the royal family would invite swift punishment and chastisement. But in this instance, it was the prince who was robbed of his equanimity and self-control. From that day he could not stop thinking of the heavenly beauty he had seen at the deer park. All his continence and temperance, and training in pure theology failed to curb this infatuation. Like a shameless paramour, the royal prince began to appear at his maternal aunt’s residence, requesting her to see Zainabadi.

The aunt, when she heard about the whole affair, almost lost consciousness, and her ability to speak. What a scandal! That a prince should desire his maternal uncle’s concubine. She said to Aurangzeb one day, ‘Why not sacrifice me instead prince? You know your uncle is a bloodthirsty man. When he hears of this, first he will murder me and then he would murder Hira Bai (Zainabadi). The prince returned without replying. But from that day he lost his appetite and barely stepped out of his house. His closest confidant and friend, Murshid Quli Khan, who was also the Diwan of Deccan, could no longer watch his prince like this and decided to take matters into his own hands. He said to Aurangzeb, ‘Let me dispatch him (murder him). The blame for it would fall on me, but at least my friend would be united with his love.’ The prince commended Murshid Quli Khan for his loyalty but murdering a close family member over a woman was out of the question.

The news of this scandal had already reached Shah Jahan. His elder brother Dara Shukoh, who was a rival contender to the throne, would never let go of an opportunity like this. He took full advantage of this scandal, putting on an act of being utterly shocked in the darbar and saying to the emperor, ‘See the piety and abstinence of this hypocritical knave! He has gone to the dogs for the sake of a wench of his aunt’s household.’

Nevertheless, Aurangzeb’s friend Murshid Quli Khan went to see Mir Khalil and told him everything. He replied, ‘Convey my salaam to the prince; I shall give the answer to this to his maternal aunt’. The very next moment he went to his wife and said, ‘What harm is there in it? Let him send his own concubine Chattar Bai to me, in exchange for Hira Bai’. Listening to this his wife almost fainted once again. Asking for the prince’s concubine in exchange! She begged him not to say such things, but he insisted and said, ‘Go quickly, if you love your life.’ She had no choice but to go to Aurangzeb and state Mir Khalil's condition. But contrary to her expectation the prince was highly pleased. He cried out, ‘What of one? Ask him to take all of them!’ The aunt sent a report of this conversation to her husband through a eunuch. Mir Khalil, when he listened to what the prince had said, replied to the eunuch, ‘Now there is no curtain to hide behind. The prince has lost his sense of honour altogether’. Hira Bai was immediately sent to Aurangzeb without any further word.

As chance would have it, the divine beauty passed away in the spring of her life and left prince Aurangzeb seared with the pain of bereavement.

For a while after her death, the prince would go out for hunts to forget his grief. But his agitated heart would not let him focus on anything. Mir Askari, who was in attendance secured a private audience and remonstrated, ‘What wisdom is there in resolving to hunt in this disturbed state?’

The prince replied in verse,

“Lamenting inside the house does not relieve the heart,

In solitude alone can one cry to one’s heart’s content.”

Aquil Khan recited the following couplet (of his own composition) as apt for the occasion:

“Love seems easy, but alas how hard it is

Separation was hard, but what a repose for the beloved it is”

Listening to these lines the prince could not hold back his tears; he committed the verse to his memory.

Bibliography

History of Aurangzeb, Vol. 1, Sir Jadunath Sarkar, S C Sarkar and Sons Ltd, Calcutta, 1925

Anecdotes of Aurangzeb, Sir Jadunath Sarkar, M C Sarkar and Sons, Calcutta, 1917