Note 69 — The Fifteenth New Year’s Feast after the Auspicious Accession

On Sunday, the 17th, a strange affair took place. S͟hāh S͟hujāʿ was playing in the buildings of the palace. By chance there was a window with a screen in front of it looking towards the river. They had put a screen in front, but had not fastened the door, and the prince in play went towards the window to look out. As soon as he arrived there he fell headlong. By chance they had laid down a carpet below the wall, and a farrās͟h (carpet-spreader) was sitting near it. The child’s head fell on this carpet, and his feet on the back and shoulders of the farrās͟h, and so came to the ground. Though the height was 7 yards69 (daraʿ), the compassion of God, the Great and Glorious, came to his aid, and the carpet and the farrās͟h became the means of saving his life. God forbid, but if it had not been so it would have been a serious matter for him. At the time Rāy Mān, the head of the K͟hidmatiyya70 piyādas, was standing below the jharoka. He immediately ran and picked him up, and holding him in his arms, was taking him upstairs. In that condition he asked: “Whither are you carrying me?” He replied: “Into the presence of His Majesty.” Then weakness overcame him, and he could speak no more. I was lying down when this alarming news reached me, and ran out in a state of bewilderment. When I saw him in this state my senses forsook me, and for a long time holding him in my affectionate embrace I was distracted with this favour from Allah. When a child of four years of age falls headlong from a place ten ordinary (s͟harʿī) gaz in height, and no harm happens to his limbs, it is a cause for amazement. Having performed my prostrations for this fresh act of goodness, I distributed alms, and ordered that deserving people and the poor who lived in the city should be brought before me in order that I might assure them their means of livelihood. A strange thing was that three or four months before this event Jotik Rāy, the astrologer, who is one of the most skilled of the class in astrology, had represented to me, without any intermediary, that it was predicted from the Prince’s horoscope that these three or four months were unpropitious to him, and it was possible he might fall down from some high place, but that the dust of calamity would not settle on the skirt of his life. As his prognostications had repeatedly proved correct, this dread dwelt in my mind, and on these dangerous roads and difficult mountain passes I was never for a moment forgetful of that nursling of the parterre of Fortune. I continually kept him in sight, and took the greatest precautions with regard to him. When I arrived in Kashmir this unavoidable71 catastrophe occurred. His nurses (anagahā) and wet-nurses must have been very careless. God be praised that it ended well!