The Emperor Who Never Was
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35. Qabil Khan, Adab-i Alamgiri, 1: 250–251, §116.
36. Sayyid Akbarali Ibrahimali Tirmizi, Mughal Documents, 2 vols. (New Delhi: Manohar, 1989–1995), 2: 113–114, §§295, 298, and 299.
37. Patrick Olivelle, “Introduction,” in The Early Upaniṣads: Annotated Text and Translation, ed. and trans. Patrick Olivelle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 3–27, 12.
38. Abd-ul-Qadir Badayuni, Muntakhab-ut-tawarikh, 3 vols. (Tehran: Anjuman-i Asar, 2000), 2: 146.
39. Dara Shukoh, Sirr-i akbar, eds. Tara Chand and Muhammad Reza Jalali-Naini (Tehran: Taban Printing Press, 1957), 490.
40. Quran 7: 1–2. For the argument that Dara Shukoh invokes the Timurid tradition of lettrism in the Sirr-i akbar, see Matthew Melvin-Koushki, “Timurid-Mughal Philosopher-Kings as Sultan-Scientists,” forthcoming in Maribel Fierro, Sonja Brentjes and Tilman Seidensticker, eds., Rulers as Authors in the Islamic World: Knowledge, Authority and Legitimacy (Leiden: Brill, 2020). I am grateful to the author for sharing a draft of the article.
41. For this manuscript of the Sirr-i akbar, see British Library, MS I.O. Islamic 26, fol. 2a. Described in Hermann Ethé, Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts in the Library of the India Office, 2 vols. (Oxford: Horace Hart, 1903–1937), 1: 1102.
42. Dara Shukoh, Sirr-i akbar, iv.
43. Dara Shukoh, Sirr-i akbar, v.
44. Some manuscripts also refer to the collection as the Sirr-i asrar, “The Secret of all Secrets.” For different perspectives on the Sirr-i akbar in modern scholarship, see Svevo D’Onofrio, “A Persian Commentary to the Upaniṣads: Dārā Šikōh’s Sirr-i Akbar,” in Muslim Cultures in the Indo-Iranian World During the Early-Modern and Modern Periods, eds. Fabrizio Speziale and Denis Hermann (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2010): 533–563; for a detailed study of one Upanishad from the collection, the Prashna Upanishad, see Erhard Göbel-Gross, Die persichen Upaniṣadenübersetzung des Moġulprinzen Dārā Šukoh (PhD diss., Philipps-Universität, 1962). For the argument that the Sirr-i akbar was a political project for Dara Shukoh, see Munis Faruqui, “Dara Shukoh, Vedanta and the Politics of Mughal India,” in Religious Interactions in Mughal India, 16th–20th Centuries, eds. Vasudha Dalmia and Munis D. Faruqui (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014), 65–101.
45. For an overview of how these verses are treated by the early exegetical authorities, see Abu Jafar Tabari, Jami-ul-bayan an tawil-il-Quran, ed. Abdullah Turki, 26 vols. (Cairo: Dar Hajar, 2001), 22: 362–368. On the celestial origin of scripture as depicted in the Quran, see Daniel Madigan, The Qurân’s Self-Image: Writing and Authority in Islam’s Scripture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001) 13–52.
46. Dara Shukoh, Sirr-i akbar, v–vi (Quran 56: 77–80).
47. Dara Shukoh, Sirr-i akbar, vi.
48. Adam is here identified as Brahma, though elsewhere in the Sirr-i akbar, Dara identifies Brahma with Gabriel. On the long association between Adam and India, see, for instance, Carl Ernst, “India as a Sacred Islamic Land,” in Religions of India in Practice, ed. Donald S. Lopez (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 556–564, 557.
49. Dara Shukoh, Sirr-i akbar, iv–v. Notice the parallel account on the number of four Vedas, the role of Brahma as intermediary, and the antiquity of Sanskrit, in François Bernier, Un libertin dans l’Inde moghole: les Voyages de François Bernier (1656–1669), ed. Frédéric Tinguely, Adrien Paschoud, and Charles-Antoine Chamay (Paris: Chandeigne, 2008), 332, Letter to Monsieur Chapelain, October 4, 1667. Bernier’s knowledge derives from conversations with similar circles of pandits. The identification of Sanskrit as langue pure may explain Dara’s use here of the common honorific for Adam as Safiullah, literally the pure one of God.
50. For the discovery of ancient prophetic writings as a Hermetic trope in the similarly titled work, see also pseudo-Apollonius, Sirr-ul-khaliqa, ed. Ursula Weisser (Aleppo: Mahad-ut-Turath, 1979), 5–7.
51. Mahmoud Manzalaoui, “The pseudo-Aristotelian Kitab Sirr al-asrar: Facts and Problems,” Oriens 23 / 24 (1974): 146–257.
52. Muhammad Baqir, Zakhira-i Iskandarani, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, MS Whinfield 57, 3–10. For his work on Razi’s Sirr-i maktum, see chap. 6, 161.
53. Olivelle, “Introduction,” Early Upaniṣads, 24.
54. A perusal of the New Catalogus Catalogorum, a survey of the multitudinous Sanskrit manuscripts catalogued across the world, yields remarkably few Upanishad anthologies. The extant manuscript record does not indicate that there was an active textual practice of compiling Upanishad collections during Dara Shukoh’s time. The most thorough scholarly treatment of Upanishad collections of which I am aware does not include any actual anthologies, as opposed to Upanishad lists, apart from Dara Shukoh’s. See Joachim Sprockhoff, Saṃnyāsa: Quellenstudien zur Askese im Hinduismus (Marburg: Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, 1976), 13–26, 312, table 1.
55.Early Upaniṣads, 436–437.
56. Dara Shukoh, Sirr-i akbar (translation of Mundaka 1.1.1), 324.
57. Dara Shukoh, Sirr-i akbar (translation of Mundaka 1.1.8), 325.
58.Early Upaniṣads, 38–39.
59. Dara Shukoh Sirr-i akbar (translation of Brihadaranyaka 1.3.1), 6. The Sirr-i akbar echoes Shankara’s commentary, which identifies the children of Prajapati as “the gods and the asuras, that is to say, the sensory organs, speech, and the rest of Prajapati himself.” Shankara further elaborates that the sense organs become gods “under the influence of knowledge and karma born of the scriptures,” as do the asuras “under the influence of knowledge and karma yielding visible results.” V. Panoli, Upanishads in Sankara’s Own Words, 4 vols. (Calicut: Mathrubhumi, 1993), 4: 62.
60. Olivelle, Early Upanishads, 460–461.
61. Dara Shukoh, Sirr-i akbar (translation of Prashna 1.15), 175. According to the Ratishastra 205 (“Doctrine of Conjugal Love”), “There are sixteen (days and) nights of the women’s monthly fertile period. During it, (a man) should have intercourse on the even numbered (nights in order to have a son). But (acting) just (like) a brahmacārin (i.e., a celibate boy), he must avoid the first four days, and the (five) nights of the changing moon.” Conjugal Love in India: Ratisastra and Ratiramana-Text, Translation and Notes, trans. Kenneth Zysk (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 90.
62. Dara Shukoh, Sirr-i akbar, 1–2.
63. Bernier, Voyages, 324, 338–339, Letter to Monsieur Chapelain, October 4, 1667.
64. See above, note 49.
65. These are, respectively: Kavindrachandrodaya, eds. H. D. Sharma and M. M. Patkar (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1939); and Kavindrachandrika, ed. K. Divakar (Pune: Maharashtra Rashtrabhasha Sabha, 1966). For an examination of the Kavindrachandrodaya that also touches on the Kavindrachandrika, see Audrey Truschke, “Contested History: Brahmanical Memories of Relations with the Mughals,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 58.4 (2015): 419–452.
66.Kavindrachandrodaya, 24, line 170.
67. V. G. Rahurkar, “The Bhasa-Yogavasisthasara of Kavindracarya Sarasvati,” Proceedings and Transactions of the All-India Oriental Conference (1955): 471–482, 477. Rahurkar is also of the opinion that the tax was lifted in 1657.
68. The date was Rabi-ul-Akhir 5, 1067 AH (January 21, 1657). Muhammad Waris, Badshahnamah of Muhammad Waris, trans. Ishrat Husain Ansari and Hamid Afaq Qureshi (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 2017), 308.
69. The relevant lines from the Kavindrakalpalata are discussed in Allison Busch, “Brajbhasha Poets at the Mughal Court,” Modern Asian Studies (2009): 1–40, 25.
9. Succession, 1657–1659
1. Muhammad Salih Kamboh, Amal-i Salih, ed. Ghulam Yazdani, 3 vols. (Lahore: Majlis-i Taraqqi-i Adab, 1958–1960), 3: 264. I am grateful to Dr. Michael Rigsby, Director of Internal Medicine at Yale Health, for suggesting this in a personal communication, based on Kamboh’s description of the emperor’s symptoms (June 27, 2018). I mention this while aware, of course, of the problems associated with translating premodern conceptions of illness and the body into m
odern categories.
2. Kamboh, Amal-i Salih, 3: 264.
3. “Ta sihhat ast unsur shah-i yagana ra / paidast itidal mizaj-i zamana ra,” Mir Muhammad Masum, Tarikh-i Shah Shujai, ed. Muhammad Yunus Jaffery (Delhi: Rayzani-i Farhangi-i Jumhuri-i Islami-i Iran, 2007), 63.
4. Masum, Tarikh, 64.
5. One exception is the aforementioned Amal-i Salih, which Kamboh started while Shah Jahan was emperor, and completed after the results of the succession war were known.
6. Muhammad Faiz Bakhsh, Tarikh-i Farahbakhsh, translated as Memoirs of Delhi and Faizabad, trans. William Hoey, 2 vols. (Allahabad: Government Press, Northwestern Provinces and Oudh, 1888–1889), 1: 61.
7. Kamboh, Amal-i Salih, 3: 265–266.
8. Masum, Tarikh, 65.
9. Masum, Tarikh, 66–67.
10. Sayyid Akbarali Ibrahimali Tirmizi, Mughal Documents, 2 vols. (New Delhi: Manohar, 1989–1995), 2: 122. Dispatch dated Rabi-ul-Akhir 16, 1068 AH (January 21, 1658) in K. D. Bhargava, A Descriptive List of Farmans, Manshurs and Nishans addressed by the Imperial Mughals to the Princes of Rajasthan (Bikaner: Government of Rajasthan, 1962), 35, §231.
11. Tirmizi, Mughal Documents, 2: 124.
12. Jaipur records, quoted in Kalika Ranjan Qanungo, Dara Shukoh (Calcutta: S.C. Sarkar and Sons, 1952), 172.
13. Masum, Tarikh, 78.
14. Masum, Tarikh, 82–84.
15. Tirmizi, Mughal Documents, 2: 124.
16. Kalika Ranjan Qanungo, “Prince Muhammad Dara Shikoh and Mirza Rajah Jai Singh Kachhwaha,” Indian Historical Records Commission Proceedings of Meetings 9 (1927): 86–94, 90.
17. Bihishti, Ashob-i Hindustan, ed. Syeda Khurshid Fatima Husaini (Delhi: Rayzani-i Farhangi-i Jumhuri-i Islami-i Iran, 2009), 87–102. On Bihishti’s poem as an influential model for the later eighteenth-century shahrashob genre, and for a discussion of the poem’s wide readership, see Sunil Sharma, Mughal Arcadia: Persian Literature in an Indian Court (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 167–168.
18.“Dar an anjuman az kiran ta kiran / hawa gasht chun abr-i jauhar fishan // zar o gauhar o sim dar paytakht / furu rekhti hamchu gul az dirakht // zar o sim az baskih afshanda shud / zi bar chidanash dast ha manda shud,” Bihishti, Ashob, 107.
19. Munshi Shaikh Abu-l-Fath Qabil Khan, “Correspondence with Murad,” Adab-i Alamgiri, ed. Abd-ul-Ghafur Chaudhari, 2 vols. (Lahore: Idara-i Tahqiqat-i Pakistan, 1971), 2: 791–792, §2.
20. Aqil Khan Razi, Waqiat-i Alamgiri, ed. Zafar Hasan (Delhi: Publications of the Aligarh Historical Institute, 1945), 32–33. A concise English summary of these events can be found in Zafar Hasan, The Waqiat-i-Alamgiri of Aqil Khan Razi: An Account of the War of Succession between the Sons of the Emperor Shah Jahan (Delhi: Mercantile Press, 1946).
21. Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 5 vols. (Calcutta: Sarkar and Sons, 1912–1924), 1: 333–334.
22. Qabil Khan, Adab-i Alamgiri, 1: 374. For doubt concerning the authenticity of the agreement, see Sri Ram Sharma, Studies in Medieval Indian History (Sholapur: Institute of Public Administration, 1956), 254.
23. Qabil Khan, Adab-i Alamgiri, 1: 374–375; Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 1: 336–337.
24. Aqil Khan, Waqiat, 34–35.
25. Qabil Khan, Adab-i Alamgiri, 1: 374–375.
26. See, for example, Iftikhar Ahmad Ghauri, War of Succession: Between Sons of Shahjahan, 1657–1658 (Lahore: Publishers United, 1964), esp. 63–88.
27. Aurangzeb Alamgir, Rukaat-i Alamgiri, translated as Letters of Aurungzebe with Historical and Explanatory Notes, trans. Jamshid Bilimoria (London: Luzac and Co., 1908), 81–82.
28. Cross-reference chap. 7.
29. Muhammad Sadiq, Tarikh-i Shah Jahani, British Library, Or. 1671, fol. 96b. Compare the erroneous translation of the same passage in Ghauri, War of Succession, 78.
30. For the discrepancies in the accounts of Sadiq Khan and doubts cast on his authorship of the Tarikh-i Shah Jahani, see A. J. Syed, “A Note on Sadiq Khan and Mamuri,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 37 (1976): 271–278.
31. Shyamaladas, Vir Vinod, 7 vols. (Udaipur: Rajayantralay, 1886), 1:419–420. The letter is also partially translated in M. Athar Ali, “Towards an Interpretation of the Mughal Empire,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, no. 1 (1978): 38–49, 42. My translation differs from Athar Ali’s.
32. Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 1: 368–369.
33. Aqil Khan, Waqiat , 38–42.
34.“Saf-i rajputan-i ahan qaba / shikafanda az nok-i naiza hawa // shuda hamla bar hamchu sheran-i mast / ba suy-i mughal tegh-i hindi ba dast // rukh afrokhta ba atish-i kina-ha / zi nok-i sinan dokhta sina-ha // nadanista hargiz tariq-i gurez / kih inha nadarand bim az sitez … namudand jangi dar an pahn dasht / kazan Arjun o Bim sharminda gasht … musalman o hindu dar amekhtand / ba ham haqq o batil dar amekhtand,” Masum, Tarikh, 80.
35. See, for example, letters of Murad Bakhsh in Fayyaz-ul-qawanin, British Library, Or 9617, fols. 77b–78a.
36. Aqil Khan, Waqiat, 46–47.
37. Aqil Khan, Waqiat, 48–49.
38. Aqil Khan, Waqiat, 53.
39. Masum, Tarikh, 82.
40. Sharing meals between Hindus and Muslims is often thought to be one of the last frontiers of intimacy in precolonial South Asia, though co-dining or inter-dining with Muslims would have been less incongruous for a Rajput than, say, for certain Brahmins.
41. Masum, Tarikh, 83–84.
42. For example, see Tirmizi, Mughal Documents, 2: 124, 126, 128, §§345, 359, 366.
43. Tirmizi, Mughal Documents, 2: 131, §378.
44. Qanungo, “Prince,” 90.
45. Tirmizi, Mughal Documents, 2: 133, §§386, 388, 389.
46. Masum, Tarikh, 90.
47. Masum, Tarikh, 89.
48. Aqil Khan, Waqiat, 58.
49. For an overview of the complicated textual and linguistic history of Manucci’s writings, see William Irvine, “Introduction,” in Niccolò Manucci, Storia do Mogor or Mogul India, 1653–1708, trans. William Irvine, 4 vols. (London: John Murray, 1907–1908), 1: xviii–lvi. For doubts concerning the authenticity of elements in Manucci’s work, see Piero Falchetta, “Venezia, madre lontana: Vita e opere di Nicolò Manuzzi (1638–1717),” in the partial edition of the Italian redaction, Manucci, Storia del Mogol di Nicolò Manuzzi Veneziano, ed. Piero Falchetta, 2 vols. (Milano: Franco Maria Ricci, 1986), 1: 24–27. See also Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Further Thoughts on an Enigma: The Tortuous Life of Nicolò Manucci, 1638–c. 1720,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 45.1 (2008): 35–76; and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Three Ways to be Alien: Travails and Encounters in the Early Modern World (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2011), 133–172. For a detailed study of the entirety of Manucci’s corpus, including the paintings he commissioned while in India, see Marta Becherini, Staging the Foreign: Niccolò Manucci (1638-ca. 1720) and Early Modern European Collections of Indian Paintings (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2016).
50. Niccolò Manucci, Voyage et histoire du Mogol, Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, MS Phillips 1945, part 1, fol. 95a (revised Portuguese version); Storia del Mogol, 1: 122; translation, 1: 273–274. Here as in elsewhere, I have benefited from Irvine’s translation when consulting the Portuguese version of the Berlin manuscript.
51. Aqil Khan, Waqiat, 59.
52. Aqil Khan, Waqiat, 60; summary, 10n2, 22nn2–3. For Daud Khan, see Nripendra Kumar Srivastava, “The Career of Daud Khan Quraishi and His Conquest of Palamau,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 60 (1999): 306–314, 306n7. For Rao Satarsal and Raja Rup Singh, see also Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, 2: 33, 51–52, 61–62.
53. Ghauri, War of Succession, 86.
54. M. Athar Ali, “The Religious Issue in the War of Succession, 1658–1659,” in Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society, and Culture (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 245–252.
55. See the table, “Supporters of the Contending Princes in the War of Succession (1658–59),” in Muhammad Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility
under Aurangzeb (New York: Asia Publishing House for the Department of History, 1966), 96. Ghauri provides a less comprehensive enumeration of the Mughal nobility according to their rank and ethnic origin in War of Succession, 89–95. I have based my analysis on Athar Ali’s table.
56. Amir Ahmad, “The Bundela Revolts during the Mughal Period: A Dynastic Affair,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 66 (2005 / 6): 438–445, 440–441.
57. Athar Ali, Mughal Nobility, 96.
58. Tirmizi, Mughal Documents, 2: 127–128.
59. Nawab Shahnawaz Khan, Maasir-ul-umara, ed. Maulvi Abd-ur-Rahim, 3 vols. (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1888), 1: 225.