By 1719 it was clear to all at court that the Mughal empire was no longer led by the vision of an emperor, as it had been from the time of Akbar to that of Aurangzeb; it was a machine, which merely required the figure of an emperor as one of its cogs in order to function. It mattered less and less who the figure was. As it happened, the last man to sit on the throne in 1719 was styled Muhammad Shah Rangeela and his main achievement was to stay on it—by not doing very much and by rarely venturing out of Delhi—for the next thirty years.

Jai Singh, like other Rajput rulers, continued to contribute to the machine. He served as governor of Malwa, in central India, under Farrukh Siyar, and he enjoyed good personal relations with Muhammad Shah. But he could plainly see a power vacuum developing . . .