• ISBN13: 9788171569038
• Binding: Hardcover
• Subject: History
• Publisher: Atlantic Publishers & Distributors (P) Ltd
• Publisher Imprint: N/A
• Publication Date: August 21, 2000
• Pages: 230
• Original Price: INR 395.0
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 270 grams

The abilities of his son and successor ALAMGIR, known to Europeans by his private name, AURANGZEB, rendered him the most famous member of his famous house. Intrepid and enterprising as he was in war, his political sagacity and statecraft were equally unparalleled in Eastern annals. He abolished capital punishment, understood and encouraged agriculture, founded numberless colleges and schools, systematically constructed roads and bridges, kept continuous diaries of all public events from his earliest boyhood, administered justice publicly in person, and never condoned the slightest malversation of a provincial governor, however distant his province. Such were these emperors; great, if not exactly what we should call good, to a degree rare indeed amongst hereditary rulers.
The fact of this uncommon succession of high qualities in a race born to the purple may be ascribed to two main considerations. The habit of contracting, marriages with Hindu princesses, which the policy and the latitudinarianism of the emperors established, was a constant source of fresh blood, whereby the increase of family predisposition was checked.

H.G. Keene (1826–1915), was an English historian of medieval and modern India. He was born at the East India College, Haileybury. He was educated at Rugby School and Wadham College, Oxford. He came to India as an east India Company employee in 1947. From 1847 to 1882, he served in the Bengal Civil Service. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857 he was Superintendent at Debea Dow. From 1867 he was a judge in the North-West Provinces. A fellow of Kolkata College, he was made C.I.E. in 1883.