"Next, he took a step further, and in the | 2th year of his reign (9th April, 1669) he issued a general order ‘“‘to demolish all the schools and temples of the infidels and to put down their religious teaching and practices.” His destroying hand now fell on the great shrines that commanded the’ veneration of the Hindus all over India,—such as the second temple of Somnath* built by the pious zeal of Bhimadeva soon after the destruction of the older and more famous one at the hands of Mahmud of Ghazni, the Vishwanath temple of Benares, and the Keshav Rai temple of Mathura, that ‘“wonder of the age’’ on which a Bundela Rajah had lavished 33 lakhs of Rupees. And the governors of the provinces had no peace till they could certify to the Emperor that the order of demolition had been carried out in their respective provinces. The holy city of Mathura has always been the special victim of Muslim bigotry. It was the birth- place of Krishna, the most popular of the ‘‘false gods’’ of India,—a deity for whom _ millions of “‘infidels’’ felt a personal love. The city stood on the king's highway between Agra and Delhi, and its lofty spires, almost visible from the Agra palace, —-seemed to taunt the Mughal emperors with lukewarmness in “‘exalting [slam and casting in- fidelity down.’" Aurangzib’s baleful eye had been directed to the Hindu Bethlehem very early. He had appointed a “‘religious man,’’ Abdun Nabi, as faujdar of Mathura to repress the Hindus. On 14th October, 1666, learning that there was a stone railing in the temple of Keshav Rai, which Dara Shukoh had presented to it, Aurangzib ordered it to be removed, as a scandalous example of a Muslim's coquetry with idolatry. And finally in January 1670, his zeal, stimulated by the pious meditations of Ramzan, led him to send forth com- mands to destroy this temple altogether and to change the name of the city to /slamabad. Ujjain suffered a similar fate at the same time. A systematic plan was followed for carrying out the policy of iconoclasm. Officers were appointed in all the sub-divisions and cities of the empire as Censors of Morals {muhtasib), to enforce the regulations of Islam, such as the suppression of the use of wine and bhang, and of gambling. The destruction of Hindu places of worship was one of their chief duties, and so large was the number of officers employed in the task that a ‘‘Director General’? (darogha) had to be placed over them to guide their activity."