must he go? To delay his departure was to accelerate his ruin.'
So he took refuge among the robbers of Kachh. His wife died of hardship and misery, and he deprived himself of his scanty escort in order to send her body to be honourably interred at Lahore. His host, the Afghán Malik Jivan of Dhandar, seized the opportunity of his guest's defenceless condition, and carried him to Aurangzíb. Thus after few welcomes and many rejections, after bitter bereavement and weary wanderings, the Crown Prince and would-be Emperor of India was betrayed into the hands of his enemy. He was paraded through the streets of Delhi dressed in the meanest clothes, on a wretched elephant, covered with filth, and the tumult which this barbarous humiliation stirred up among the people nearly amounted to a rebellion. 'Everywhere,' says Bernier, 'I observed the people weeping and lamenting the fate of Dárá in the most touching language: men, women, and children wailing as if some mighty calamity had happened to themselves.' They went near to murdering the Afghán who had betrayed his guest, and showed such alarming sympathy with Dárá, that Aurangzíb resolved upon his speedy execution. He could not feel safe while his brother lived. A council was held, in which Raushan-Árá exerted all her eloquence against her unhappy brother; he was found to be an apostate and the ally of infidels; and on the 15th of September, 1659, he was ordered to execution. When he was dead his body was carried round the city to
