By way of justifying this order, the emperor noted: "According to the Holy Law (shari`at) and the exalted creed, it has been established that ancient temples should not be torn down." On this point, Aurangzeb aligned himself with the theory and th e practice of Indo-Muslim ruling precedent. But then he added, "nor should new temples be built" - a view that broke decisively from Akbar's policy of permitting his Rajput officers to build their own temple complexes in Mughal territory. Although this o rder appears to have applied only to Banaras - many new temples were built elsewhere in Mughal India during Aurangzeb's reign10 - one might wonder what prompted the emperor's anxiety in this matter.
TEMPLE DESECRATION AND STATE MAINTENANCE
It seems certain that rulers were well aware of the highly charged political and religious relationship between a royal Hindu patron and his client-temple. Hence, even when former rulers or their descendants had been comfortably assimilated into an Indo- Muslim state's ruling class, there always remained the possibility, and hence the occasional suspicion, that a temple's latent political significance might be activated and serve as a power-base to further its patron's political aspirations. Such conside rations might explain why it was that when a subordinate non-Muslim officer in an Indo-Muslim state showed signs of disloyalty - and especially if he engaged in open rebellion - the state often desecrated the temple(s) most clearly identified with that o fficer. After all, if temples lying within its domain were understood as state property, and if a government officer who was also a temple's patron demonstrated disloyalty to the state, from a juridical standpoint ruling authorities felt justified in tre ating that temple as an extension of the officer, and hence liable for punishment.
Thus in 1478, when a Bahmani garrison in eastern Andhra mutinied, murdered its governor, and entrusted the fort to Bhimraj Oriyya, who until that point had been a loyal Bahmani client, the sultan personally marched to the site and, after a six-month sieg e, stormed the fort, destroyed its temple, and built a mosque on the site (no. 40; Map 2). A similar thing occurred in 1659, when Shivaji Bhonsle, the son of a loyal and distinguished officer serving the `Adil Shahi sultans of Bijapur, seized a governmen t port on the northern Konkan coast, thereby disrupting the flow of external trade to and from the capital. Responding to what it considered an act of treason, the government deputed a high-ranking officer, Afzal Khan, to punish the Maratha rebel. Before marching to confront Shivaji himself, however, the Bijapur general first proceeded to Tuljapur and desecrated a temple dedicated to the goddess Bhavani, to which Shivaji and his family had been personally devoted (no. 63; Map 3).
MAP 1
We find the same pattern with the Mughals. In 1613 while at Pushkar, near Ajmer, Jahangir ordered the desecration of an image of Varaha that had been housed in a temple belonging to an uncle of Rana Amar of Mewar, the emperor's arch enemy (See Table and Map 3: no. 56). In 1635 his son and successor, Shah Jahan, destroyed the great temple at Orchha, which had been patronised by the father of Raja Jajhar Singh, a high-ranking Mughal officer who was at that time in open rebellion against the emperor (no. 5 8). In 1669, there arose a rebellion in Banaras among landholders, some of whom were suspected of having helped Shivaji, who was Aurangzeb's bitter enemy, escape from imperial detention. It was also believed that Shivaji's escape had been initially facil itated by Jai Singh, the great grandson of Raja Man Singh, who almost certainly built Banaras' great Vishvanath temple. It was against this background that the emperor ordered the destruction of that temple in September, 1669 (no. 69).11
