Fall of the Mughal Empire (Set of 4 Volumes)

In this book of four volumes together comprise a detailed study of the causes and the result of the events between 1739-1803, that is between the death of Aurangzib and the conquest of Delhi. The successors of Aurangzib were weak and were not able to hold the administration effectively. Most of them were puppets in the hands of powerful nobles. The war of succession that plagued Delhi from c 1707-1719 CE gradually weekend the empire.

Sir Jadunath Sarkar CIE FRAS (1870 -1958) was a prominent Indian historian and a specialist on the Mughal dynasty. He graduated in English from Presidency College, Calcutta. In 1892, he topped the Master of Arts examination, in English at Calcutta University and in 1897, he received the Premchand- Roychand Scholarship Sarkar's works faded out of public memory, with the increasing advent of Marxist and postcolonial schools of historiography. Academically, Jos J L. Gommans compares Sarkar's work with those of the Aligarh historians, noting that while the historians from the Aligarh worked mainly on the mansabdari system and gunpowder technology in the Mughal Empire, Judunath Sarkar was best remembered for his historical works, including: A History of Jaipur, Military History of India, A History of Aurangzib (in 5 volumes), Studies in Mughal India, and Mughal Administration.

The birth of the New India in which we live was praceded by the death of a political and social order under which the millions of this country had been nurtured for two centuries and a half and which had done great things for them. The Mughal Empire, established in 1556, had united much of the Indian continent under one sceptre, given it a uniform civilisation whose conquering light had penetrated beyond the bounds of that empire, and on the whole promoted the general happiness of the people in a degree unapproached except in the 'mythical past. It broke the isolation of the provinces and the barrier between India and the outer world, and thus took the first step necessary for the modernisation of India and the growth of an Indian nationality in some distant future. The achievements of that empire under four great sovereigns have been the worthy themes of the historians of Akbar and Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzib. But the exhaustion of this civilising force with the consequent ruin of this country has hitherto repelled historians, probably because of the dismal nature of the subject which presents no spectacle calculated to elevate the human mind or warm the human bosom.

And yet our immediate historic past, while it resembles a tragedy in its course, is no less potent than a true tragedy to purge the soul by exciting pity and horror.. Nor is it wanting in the deepest instruction for the present. The headlong decay of the age-old Muslim rule in India and the utter failure of the last Hindu attempt at empirebuilding by the new-sprung Marathas, are intimately linked together, and must be studied with accuracy of detail as to facts and penetrating analysis as to causes if we wish to find out the true solutions of the problems of modern India and avoid the pitfalls of the past.

The light of our fathers' experience is indispensably necessary for guiding aright the steps of those who would rule the destinies of our people in the present. Happily, such light is available in unthought of profusion. The dissolution of the old order in India did not form a dark age, during which the activity of the human mind ceased. or the human brain and the human hand left no memorial of their working. On the contrary, the Eighteenth Century in India is illumined for its historian by a host of witnesses of the most diverse races, creeds and tongues and recording events as looked at from all different points of view. We, no doubt, lack detailed official annals like those written for Akbar and his four immediate successors; but the Indian actors in the scenes and detached foreign observers alike have left a multitude of private memoirs and journals which are in some respects of even greater value than the former class of works though lacking in their minuteness of dates and names. For this century masses of manuscript news-letters have been preserved, giving us the current news in the freshest form. The records of the Maratha Government have at last been made available to students in their entirety.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages