Night Lights

ago could still be having such an impact today. All countries like to co opt certain historical figures and push a modern narrative, but for the curious, the actual historical details can bring us closer to the truth. Oringzeb's childhood is a familiar one to cabinet listeners. Born into royalty, he had to murder or imprison his family in order to become king. The most notable detail from his childhood

has to do with his mother's death. You've heard of taj Mahal right, well, that was his mother's tomb, built by his grief stricken father. However, Oringzeb was less interested in building monuments and more interested in expanding his power. His kingdom, known as the Mughal Empire, was a Sunni Muslim empire with its origin in modern day Afghanistan. His great grandfather had expanded it to cover half of India, but Oringzeb thought that he could unite the entire Soub continent.

He believed that he could do this through Islam, bringing various regional princes under his control by forcing them to more closely obey religious law. Once he had done this, he started to tax Hindus and Shia Muslims at double the rate of Sunni Muslims. This was obviously unpopular, to say the least, but Oringzeb would put down any resistance, violently burning the temples of those who didn't comply. However,

he would spare those who did and adamantly protected their communities. Ultimately, only a small fraction of Hindu temples were ever destroyed. There are several cases of Muslims harassing Hindu temples and citizens, and in such cases Orringzeb often sided with the Hindus and had them protected and compensated. But his taxation policy did more than create violence. It inherently made Hindus into a second class citizen, and Oringzeb's protective tendencies only extended

so far. Three major challenges to his rule would test his power and lead him into violent action. First, the Sikh Guru of the time, the leader of that entire faith, had a popular following within India. He was said to perform miracles and was actively converting people to his faith, which was in direct conflict with Oringzeb's policies. On top of this, he had a large nomadic army that sometimes followed him around. Oringzeb couldn't allow this threat to his rule,

and so he had the Guru captured and executed. Second, he didn't anticipate what would become his greatest rival of all, the Marata Empire. It was a Hindu empire in southern India that had only recently risen against the previous oppressors and started to expand once Oringzeb encountered them, he found their hit and run guerrilla tactics hard to contend with. By sixteen eighty one, the Marata Empire was led by King Sambachi, whose men were known for their violent burning

of villages and the raping of women. This was in contrast to Oringzeb's treatment of women, which was traditional and tricked by any modern standard, but still afforded them protection and certain rights. Simbaji contributed to Orringzeb's third great challenge, the defection of his fourth son, Akbar. Akbar had been sent to put down rebellions in the south, but was instead tempted to join them and depose his father. When this failed, Simbaji took him in and tried to help

him muster more support. When this didn't happen, Simbaji sent Akbar to safety in Persia, while Oringzeb ultimately captured Simbaji and had him executed in sixteen eighty six. Oringzeb never did find his son Akbar, but he swore that he would outlive him if nothing else. Oringzeb would continue to fight rebellions his entire reign, but by the end of his life in seventeen oh seven, he had conquered almost

the entirety of India. Despite all of the turmoil, his kingdom was incredibly wealthy, producing more goods than any other on the planet at the time. He was more powerful than contemporaries such as Louis the fourteenth and Frank and the Qing dynasty emperors in China. His strict religious policies may have led to violence, but they did bring about a unification that India wouldn't enjoy again for decades after. Following his reign, infighting among the different groups in his

empire made India an easy target for British invasion. This also gets blamed on Oringzeb but it's hard to know if a more pluralized India would have stood a better chance. Ultimately, he was less the tyrant that modern pundits paint him as and more a stern, traditional leader, no more violent than any other leader of the time, And for those who are curious, he lived to the age of eighty eight,

outliving his hated son Akbar by just one year. A long time ago, a stagecoach was rolling through the Wealth countryside, not far from the town of Clandilo. The road ran alongside a river. As the passengers looked out over the water, they noticed a strange phenomenon, three red lights hovering over the waves. Not knowing what to make of it, the coach rolled on and the passengers put the strange sight

out of their minds. Soon after, three men found themselves traveling down that very same river in a small boat known as a coricle. They fought against the raging currents. However, their boat overturned and all three were drowned in exactly the same spot where the lights had been seen hovering over the water. These lights, of course, have a special name in Welsh folklore. They're known as a corpse candle. They're rarely depicted as literal candles with wax and a wick.

There more often just lights hovering in the dark like fireflies. Whenever a corpse candle appears, it's said to be an omen of impending death, sometimes for someone nearby and other times for the person who saw them. Their size can correlate to how old the victim will be, and the location can show where their final resting place will be. When the lights are red, the doomed individual will be a man, and when they are white, it will be

a woman. If the light is tall, it means that they'll be old and if it's short, they'll be a child. The earliest corpse candle stories are much like the one with the men on the boat, simple ambiguous tales of strange phenomena connected to the dead. Of course, if there was a connection between the lights and the deaths, it was a circumstantial one. The candles pointed to a location where death would lurk, but they did little more than shine ominously in the dark. Travelers saw them beside long

and lonely roads, pointing off into the gloom. Some of these are known as corpse roads, which usually lead to a cemetery or a churchyard, a place for rest for those who have passed on. But as the legends expanded, corpse candles were more than just a creepy signpost. If you followed them, they said, you might find where some

or forgotten soul had died or been buried. One particularly vivid story tells of a roving corpse candle that perfectly traced a future funeral procession, right down to a fifteen minute pause they had to make along the road to the churchyard. Over time, they began to serve a dual purpose, both as an omen and as a memorial. At first, glance, it's impossible to tell if the corpse candle signals a death that will happen or one that already has. If

you see one, you might even foretell your own impending doom. Later, Welsh legends tell of corpse candles burning from within the mouth of a dead man, or bringing a ghost to pronounced doom upon a household. It became the proverbial light that dying men and women would see as they passed on.

Like many folk tales, though these stories were first documented in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with their origin stretching back into oral tradition, finding the very start of such legends can be nearly impossible, even for experts in the but of course folklorists have their own theories. Some have suggested that the essential roots of the story, that is, someone seeing a mysterious light on a road, are true,

and the supernatural elements are what came in later. According to them, the story of the stagecoach near Clandilo may not have literally happened, but someone might have had a similar sighting and related it into the world of legend. But what they saw wasn't an impossible flame floating over a river. Now theories suggest that the first corpse candles were in fact glow worms or electrical phenomena in the air, natural things that the early Welsh people wouldn't have understood,

but would have been awed by all the same. Our brains, after all, love to make connections. It's easy to imagine that someone saw one of these optical effects and then heard the story of a drowning nearby, and simply connected the two. Rumors and speculations about deaths are temporary things, but once a rumor becomes a ghost story, it tends to have a much longer afterlife. I hope you enjoyed

today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created by me Aaron Manke in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim and Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the people who make it over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook, and if you're looking

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