matters came to a crisis, and Dara was sent by Shah Jehan to oppose Aurungzeb by force.
Dara
was overthrown and returned humiliated to his father's palace.
Recollecting that his own path to the throne lay through the blood of
his nearest relatives, Shah Jehan, no longer able to defend his eldest
son against the undutiful Aurungzeb, gave him two elephant-loads of
gold and jewels, and bade him escape. The Great Mogul diamond was
apparently among the jewels thus despairingly bestowed upon his son by
the enfeebled old king. At all events Dara escaped and fled from friend
to friend for the space of one year, and it was during this time that
he was seen by Bernier, the famous French surgeon, who was afterwards
attached to the service of Aurungzeb.
Meantime
that successful traitor dethroned and then imprisoned his father, whose
grandiloquent title of Shah Jehan ( Lord of the World ) became a
bitter mockery when designating the prisoner of Agra, and then he
awaited the treach-
