The Emperor Who Never Was

by Supriya Gandhi

  It is hardly a coincidence, then, that the period of Dara Shukoh’s deepest involvement with what he viewed as ancient Indic thought coincided with his growing overtures to Rajput rulers. This is not to say that he was guided by a crude political expediency, believing that his studies would make him more popular amongst these prominent Hindus. Rather, he was engaged in a process of self-fashioning that, consciously or unconsciously, was also informed by the political context of his times. At this point, in Shahjahanabad, the prince was molding himself into the kind of ruler who mastered a grammar of universal kingship in which elite Rajputs like Jaswant Singh also partook.

  We must note, though, that Dara’s explorations did not just stop at Indic learning and texts. Bernier reports that the prince sought out a Flemish Jesuit, Father Henri Busée, also known as Henricus Busaeus, for dialogue about religious matters. Here too, Bernier suggests that the prince’s true aim was to ingratiate himself with the European artillerymen serving the Mughal army.38 Bernier seems to have had a narrow, somewhat cynical view of Dara’s own spiritual proclivities, as well as of the long history, since Akbar, of the Mughal court’s hospitality to Jesuit visitors.

  In his later writings, the prince does speak of having studied the Jewish and Christian scriptures, particularly the Torah and the Gospel. Apart from Father Busée, he had another interlocutor in these matters—Muhammad Said Sarmad Kashani, a Jewish convert to Islam, who had been a merchant in Baghdad before traveling across the Persian-speaking world to India.

  Similarly, we learn, that the Dabistan’s anonymous author made the acquaintance of Sarmad at Hyderabad, in the southern state of Golconda some time earlier, in 1647. Sarmad, who was descended from learned rabbis, perused the rabbinical creed and the Torah, but then became a Muslim. He studied with renowned philosophers of the day in Iran, such as Mulla Sadra and Mir Findiriski, who himself had visited India and written a commentary on an Indic non-dualistic religious text. Then Sarmad journeyed eastward to Sindh on business, but stayed for love. In Thatta he met a Hindu boy named Abhay Chand, and was immediately besotted. According to the Dabistan, just like a sanyasi (a world-renouncing Hindu ascetic), Sarmad shed his clothes, and remained naked as the day his mother bore him. He waited patiently at his beloved’s door. When Abhay Chand’s father finally realized the purity of Sarmad’s love, he let him in. Abhay Chand reciprocated Sarmad’s ardor and the two became inseparable. Sarmad used to say that the Bani Israel did not consider it necessary to clothe the private parts, and that indeed the prophet Isaiah too roamed naked in his final years.39

  The two made their way across India, where it seems that Sarmad ultimately received patronage from Shaikh Muhammad Khan, a noble attached to the Qutbshahi ruler of Golconda. Sarmad wrote poetry in the khan’s praise. Then in 1649 the khan died en route to pilgrimage in Mecca, just as Sarmad had foretold. At some point thereafter, Sarmad and Abhay Chand then went to Shahjahanabad, where they must have gained admission to Dara Shukoh’s circle of associates.

  Very little evidence survives, though, of Dara Shukoh’s personal relationship with Sarmad. Bernier mentions that Sarmad was a famous faqir who flaunted his nudity in the streets of Shahjahanabad.40 But he does not speak of any connection between the ascetic and the prince. It would not be surprising, however, if Sarmad’s Persian poetry found a resonance with Dara Shukoh, drawn as he was to shocking, seemingly blasphemous mystical utterances like this couplet equating the sacred Kaaba with a polytheist’s idol: “In the Kaaba and the idol-temple, the stone is he, the wood is he / In one place, the black stone, in another, the Hindu idol.”41

  This is the kind of ecstatic speech that Dara would have recorded in his Hasanat-ul-arifin had he known Sarmad while working on it. Sarmad’s absence from this collection suggests that their acquaintance began at some point after early 1654. Such imagery, of course, was not unusual in Persian mystical poetry. Just like Mulla Shah, whose ecstatic poetry had landed him in trouble at the beginning of Shah Jahan’s reign, Sarmad also composed quatrains praising the prophet Muhammad.

  The correspondence between the prince and the ascetic continued to circulate after their time. A copy of one exchange ended up in a bayaz, an album of miscellaneous poetry and pieces of writing, belonging to a nineteenth-century collection. The letter attributed to Dara Shukoh begins:

  My pir and spiritual teacher. Every day I have the intent to serve you, but it is unattained. If I am I, why would my desire be in vain? And if I am not I, what fault is it of mine? … When the chosen Prophet would go to battle against the unbelievers, and the army of Islam suffered losses, the literalist ulama would say, “This is a lesson in fortitude.” But what need does the Final One have of lessons?

  In this account, Sarmad replied to the prince with the following couplet: “Whatever I’ve read, I’ve forgotten / Except the Friend’s words, which I keep repeating.”42

  Abhay Chand, under Sarmad’s instructions had translated sections of the Torah into Persian. The Dabistan preserves an excerpt from Abhay Chand’s rendition of the Book of Genesis.43 Dara Shukoh may well have accessed this text through the version prepared by the two.

  But Dara Shukoh’s enthusiasm for learning about Hindu religious thought would eventually eclipse his curiosity about the scriptures of Jews and Christians. He continued his studies, likely drawing on Kavindracharya Saraswati, as well as other unnamed pandits, for assistance. They would have introduced him to texts associated with the growing canon of non-dualistic Vedanta—works that espoused a unity of atman, the individual self, and brahman, the ultimate reality of the universe. Such ideas would understandably appeal to Dara, given his spiritual inclinations. It was also the case that at the time in many parts of North India, including Benares, the philosophical school of Advaita Vedanta held sway amongst the Brahmin scholarly classes.44 In any case, the prince’s initial intellectual forays during this period in Shahjahanabad were broad and eclectic, and he did not limit himself to Advaita Vedanta.

  In late 1654, Dara Shukoh may have also crossed paths with a fellow seeker of Indic learning. Father Heinrich Roth (d. 1668), who was associated with the same mission as Father Busée, had recently made his way to the Jesuit college in Agra after alighting in Goa in 1652. Following his Mewar excursion, before the imperial party returned to Shahjahanabad, Dara Shukoh stopped by Agra with his father.45 From the outset, Roth had devoted himself to studying Indian languages—Persian, of course, and Hindi, as well as even Sanskrit. He was aware that the Mughals ruled over a large non-Muslim majority, and thought that studying Indic philosophy and religious traditions, which he saw through a Brahminical lens, would help him secure conversions.46 Just like Dara Shukoh, Roth too sought the assistance of pandits in his studies. Not only would their Sanskrit circles have overlapped, it is also highly likely that they were reading some of the same things.

  In addition to a Sanskrit grammar that Roth composed, two Sanskrit manuscripts hand-copied by the Jesuit have survived the years. One, by Venidatta, is the Panca-tattva-prakasa (Light on the Five Elements), which was originally composed in 1644. It is a beginner’s text, a primer on concepts key to the Vaisheshika school of Indian philosophy, a branch of thought that had been undergoing a renaissance of sorts in Sanskrit intellectual circles.47 Vaisheshika philosophers examined the stuff of existence, which they classified into several categories, including the elements and atoms, which they believed to be the tiniest indivisible units. The other manuscript that Roth copied is Sadananda’s Vedantasara (Quintessence of Vedanta), a late fifteenth-century work that discusses some important ideas in Advaita Vedanta.48 These include: ignorance about the true nature of the self, the metaphysical basis of being, and the attainment of liberation through understanding the identity of the self with brahman, the ultimate reality. The Vedantasara is part of a genre that compressed and synthesized the complexity of Advaitic philosophical ideas and debates into concise digests.49 Roth’s detailed marginal notes in Latin show how closely he read these texts.

  The princ
e’s intellectual pursuits, intensive and wide-ranging though they were, did not diminish his more public role as ruler. Early in 1655, Shah Jahan formalized Dara’s status as preferred son and future heir. The occasion was the emperor’s sixty-fifth lunar birthday, an auspicious time for the bestowing of largesse. Before a public audience of assembled nobles, he presented his eldest son with the most extraordinarily lavish gifts, the details of which his chroniclers duly recorded. They included a satin robe with a golden yoke tastefully sequined with valuable diamonds, while the collar, sleeves, and hem were decorated with pearls. This ceremonial garment was worth two and a half lakh rupees. In addition to other priceless jewels, the prince received the sum of thirty lakh rupees. But this was not all. Henceforth, Dara Shukoh would be known as “Shah Buland Iqbal,” meaning “Emperor of Exalted Fortune,” just as Jahangir had once granted Prince Khurram the title of “Shah Jahan.” Dara was also conferred the privilege of sitting on a golden chair next to the emperor’s throne.50 According to Bernier, this made it seem that “there were almost two kings [ruling] together,” though Shah Jahan was merely repeating the favor that his own father Jahangir had granted him when he was a prince.51

  * * *

  IN 1655, THE YEAR THAT DARA SHUKOH turned forty-two, he finished writing yet another book.52 This was his most ambitious work yet, not in length—it was merely a short treatise—but in scope. The work was a direct result of his immersion in Indic learning, but also built on the steps that he had already taken with his Risala-i Haqqnuma and Hasanat-ul-arifin. The Haqqnuma assimilated yogic practices for liberation into an Islamic spiritual genealogy. The Hasanat made reference to the prince’s wide-ranging dialogues with Baba Lal in its collection of ecstatic sayings by Sufis. Dara Shukoh titled his new book Majma-ul-bahrain, meaning the “meeting place of the two seas.” Many modern readers assume that these seas stand for the two faiths of Islam and Hinduism, though what this phrase connoted in Dara’s own context was infinitely more subtle and complex.53

  “Majma” is an Arabic noun of place meaning confluence, and its root, j-m-ʿ, is associated with collecting, bringing together, and ordering. This quite aptly reflects the work that the book does to compile and arrange terms and ideas from Sanskrit, refracted through Hindavi and Persian. But Dara Shukoh’s title would have had another immediate resonance for his readers familiar with the symbolic language of Islamic mysticism. It calls to mind the Quranic verse (18:60) in which the phrase majma-ul-bahrain occurs: “And when Moses said unto his servant: I will not rest until I reach the place where the two seas meet (majma-ul-bahrain), even if I journey for ages.” This section of the Quran is famous in Sufi circles; it narrates the story of the meeting between the prophet Moses and an unnamed teacher, identified by many of the Quran’s commentators as Khizr, a mysterious saint who gained the power of immortality. In this scene, Moses catches a fish only to see it slip away. He then sets out to find it at the meeting of the two waters. Sufi commentaries often interpret this passage as a reference to the waters of immortality, as here the fish appears to miraculously come back to life. During his explorations, Moses comes across a guide, usually identified with the ever-living Khizr, who in three instances acts in strange ways that flout social norms: He sinks a ship, kills a young boy, and repairs a wall in a village where the inhabitants had denied them hospitality.54 Afterward, Khizr explains to Moses the inner significance of his actions, instructing him in the inscrutability of God’s justice. For Sufi exegetes, this episode came to represent the distinction between esoteric and exoteric knowledge, suggesting that the legalistic approach of Moses depicted here could never adequately comprehend God’s mysteries.55

  It is precisely this arena of knowledge with which Dara Shukoh is concerned—the esoteric, inner learning of both Hindus and Muslims. The prince refers to two religious traditions, but these are not the crystallized, rigidly-bounded Islam and Hinduism that we know in modern times. His project does not seek to synthesize two separate streams of Islam and Hindu religion. Instead, he aims to uncover and document a common font of truth shared by Muslim and non-Muslim, Indian “monotheists.”

  This distinction proves essential to understanding the broader significance of Dara’s work. The beginning lines of the Majma-ul-bahrain compare unbelief (kufr) and its antithesis, Islam, to two locks of hair that frame, rather than obscure, the divine countenance:

  The fullest praise to that unique One, who has made manifest the two tresses of unbelief and Islam, which are adversaries to one another, upon his beautiful countenance, without likeness, without an equal, and has not made either of them a veil for his handsome face.

  Unbelief and Islam race down his path,

  Crying, “He is one, he has no partner.”56

  Dara Shukoh borrows this verse from the twelfth-century mystical poet Sanai’s Hadiqat-ul-haqaiq (Garden of Verities). In most versions, the verse contrasts unbelief (kufr) with religion (din) and not islam, the form that Dara uses, though this variant was widely known in the Mughal context.57 Here unbelief also signifies the Indic knowledge that the Majma-ul-bahrain presents and is contrasted with Islam in religious terms. By this the prince implies that religious traditions outside Islam also offer a path to the divine.

  Dara’s comments on the “divine countenance” implicitly reference a saying attributed to Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law, which is popular in Sufi texts. Ali reportedly said, “Were the veil to be removed, I would not increase in certitude,” meaning that he already had a clear vision of the divine.58 In the brief introduction to the Majma, Dara also cites conversations and relationships with “monotheists” of India as the source of his knowledge:

  The faqir without a care, Muhammad Dara Shukoh, relates that he, after discerning the truth of all truths, ascertaining the mysteries of the subtleties of the Sufi school of truth, and attaining this magnificent divine gift, has approached this purpose, [namely] to comprehend the nature of the school of thought of the monotheists of India (muwahhidan-i hind) and the attainers of truth (muhaqqiqan) among this ancient people. With some among them, who have attained perfection, who have reached the extremities of ascetic practice, comprehension and understanding, and the utmost levels of mystical experience, God-seeking and gravity, he [i.e., Dara Shukoh] has had repeated encounters and carried out dialogues.59

  We recall that in some of his recent writings and in his correspondence with Shaikh Muhibbullah, Dara expressed his dissatisfaction with book learning, especially books that he thought to be overly abstruse and complex. Here, he credits his personal meetings with Hindu teachers instead of authoritative texts as the basis for his study.

  The prince then identifies the basis for his comparative endeavor, “Apart from linguistic differences in discerning and knowing, I saw no divergence. From this perspective I brought together the words of both parties and collected some terms that are essential and valuable for the seeker of truth to know [and] arranged [them in] a treatise. Because it was a meeting place (majma) of the truths and mystical knowledge of two truth-knowing communities, it was named The Meeting Place of the Two Seas, in accordance with the saying of the eminent ones: ‘Mysticism is justice (insaf) and mysticism is the abandonment of gratuitous ceremony (takalluf).’ ”60

  There is an underlying mystical truth, the prince suggests, that Sufis and Indic ascetics of a monotheistic persuasion share beneath their linguistic differences. Through his choice of title, as well as his references to “justice” and the dislike of takalluf, gratuitous ceremony or insincerity, Dara Shukoh declares a preference for esoteric interpretations over external forms of religion alone. He then identifies his intended audience: “Thus, he who possesses justice and is from among the people of comprehension, discerns what profundity has been reached in the ascertainment of these stages. Surely the people of understanding, who possess comprehension, will obtain abundant fortune from this treatise, and no portion of its rewards will remain for the dimwits of the two parties. I have written this investigation in accordance with
my own mystical unveiling (kashf) and experience (zauq), for the people of my household, and I have no dealings with the common folk of either community.”61

  Dara Shukoh’s book was for an elite group of intimates, close enough to be counted as members of his household. It was certainly not meant for commoners, be they Muslim or not, but then how many works produced at the court were? Moreover, it was fairly standard for mystically-inclined authors writing in Persian to claim that only special readers, the “people of the heart,” (ahl-i dil) could fathom their works. A prince’s writings demanded attention, though. With whom would he share his latest discoveries? Half a decade had elapsed since Dara had last set foot in Kashmir, so physical distance, at least, stood between him and his teacher Mulla Shah. Certainly, he had an eclectic circle of companions in Shahjahanabad, some of whom—Father Busée, Sarmad, Kavindracharya, perhaps his sister Jahanara—we might identify. But Dara also took another step that reveals more about the readers he wanted to reach.