So far their access to the archaeological and textual evidence is concerned, they had been given all textual evidence. So far the archaeological evidence is concerned, it is true that Prof. D.N. Jha had written to the M.H.A. to have access to the details of archaeological excavations made in connection with Ayodhyā. After I received the letter of Prof. Jha I wrote to the Director General of A.S.I., Shri M.C. Joshi to make all relevant materials available to them in this connection, because he and Prof. R.S. Sharma had been my teachers in Patna University. The following is the reply of Shri Joshi sent to me in this regard vide his D.O. letter no.- 20/37/90-EE dated 3rd May, 1991 in response to my D.O. letter no. 504/MOS (S)/91 dated 5th February, 1991:
“Dear Shri Kunal,
Kindly refer to your D.O. letter No. 504/MOS(S)/91 dated 5th February, 1991 forwarding a copy of letter addressed to Shri Subodh Kant Sahay, Minister of State for Home Affairs by Prof. D.N. Jha requesting to supply relevant documents mentioned in the letter.
2. The matter has been examined at the highest level and it has been decided that the experts may be shown photographs (enclosed) of the controversial trench AVID-4 pertaining to the Ayodhya excavations to clarify the locus of the excavator’s findings. Any scholar on the basis of photographs can assess nature of the exposed structure and understand himself the relation between the structures and stratigraphy.
3. If necessary, thereafter a meeting would be arranged between Prof. B.B. Lal and other scholars holding diverse views on the subject and he would be requested to show the relevant documents in his possession.
4. If this agreed upon, a meeting would be arranged between the excavator and scholars on a mutually agreed date.
5. Incidentally I may mention for your information that Prof. B.B. Lal is in USA at present.
With regards,
Encl: Two photographs Yours sincerely,
(M.C. Joshi)”
The content was communicated but they were not satisfied with photographs only because some of them had a condescending attitude. They wanted to examine all documents related to the excavation. However, it so happened that after sometime Chandrashekharji resigned on a trivial issue of espionage and there was a brake on the whole exercise .
The tragedy with the I.C.H.R. was that it was hijacked by four historians who claimed themselves to be ‘an independent forum of historians’ and took upon themselves the task of passing judgment on all the three branches of the evidence. It would have been better if they had assisted the I.C.H.R. in scrutinising the evidence of both sides and submitted their ‘expert’ opinion through this reputed institution.
Instead, they subsequently released their ‘Rāma-janma-bhūmi-Babri Masjid : A Historians’ Report to the Nation’ directly on 13th May, 1991 and not through the I.C.H.R. which had been assigned this job. They did not include Prof. Irfan Habib in the preparation of their report. Prof. Habib’s inclusion could have given legitimacy to the report in the official circle because all the documents had been sent to him in the capacity of Chairman of the I.C.H.R. In preparing their report, it appears that they did not check many facts before submitting it to the nation, e.g. in the penultimate paragraph of their report they have written:
“Being such a monument, the Babri Masjid became a protected monument under the Ancient Monuments Act, 1904 (re-legislated, 1958).”
But it is not a correct presentation. Baburi Masjid was never declared a protected monument under The Ancient Monuments Act, 1904 by the A.S.I. When I learnt that it was not a protected monument, I wrote to the D.G. A.S.I. and he gave me the reply which has already been quoted. Shri Madhav Godbole, a former I.A.S. officer, who was the Union Home Secretary at the time of the demolition of the disputed shrine, has written thus in his book ‘Unfinished Innings’:
“The possibility of declaring the RJB-BM structure a protected monument was considered but had to be given up as the Department of Culture and the Director General of Archaeology advised that the monument did not satisfy the criteria for declaring it as such.” (The Ayodhya Debacle, p. 375)
Similarly, since they did not see the Skanda-Purāna properly, they mistook the legendary Vidyāpati, the Prime Minister of the legendary king Indradyumana depicted in the Purāna in connection with the Purushottama Māhātmya for the great Maithili poet Vidyāpati and arbitrarily fixed the date of ‘Ayodhyā-māhātmya’ of the ‘Skanda-Purāna’.
This book is the fruition of deep research on Ayodhyā for more than two decades. It is a departure from the usually trodden path of the history of Ayodhyā. In the beginning I have written that I am trying to resuscitate the real history of Ayodhyā which is almost dead due to the poisonous misrepresentation of facts. In this connection three glaring instances of gross violation of propriety in writing correct history are cited. The first is the claim on a fictitious book ‘Sahifah-i Chihal Nasaih Bahadur Shahi’ said to have been written by the unnamed daughter of Bahadur Shah Alamgir. The book is cited by the V.H.P. as a strong positive evidence in favour of the demolition of the Janma-sthāna temple and construction of a mosque thereon. But it is totally negated by certain historical facts. Bahadur Shah, the son and successor of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, had never assumed the title Alamgir. Moreover, he had only one daughter Dahr Afroz Banu Begum who had predeceased Aurangzeb on 25th January, 1703 at the age of 40. It was claimed by Mirza Jan that he had copied verbatim a passage of 12 lines in original from the twenty-fifth sermon of the book found in the library of Hydar Shukoh, son of Sulayman Shukoh. The present writer is the first person to point out that Sulayman Shukoh had no son. Therefore, Hydar Shukoh could not be his son. However, Sulayman Shukoh had two daughters, the elder one Salima Banu was married to Prince Muhammad Akbar in June 1662 and the other daughter was married to Khwajah Bahauddin in 1668 A.D. Thus, Hydar Shukoh is a fictitious person and hence there could be no library established by him or in his name. Moreover, in this book, 12 lines of which were reportedly reproduced verbatim by Mirza Jan, it is simply written that the temple at Ayodhyā was demolished. The demolition of the temple at Ayodhyā has not been attributed to Babur. It is Mirza Jan’s own addition that Babur’s name was associated with the demolition of the Ayodhyā temple. Thus, the reliance of V.H.P. historians on this text is totally misplaced.
It is an irony that, an ex-bureaucrat Mr. B.N. Pande became a renowned ‘historian’ overnight by writing an unsubstantiated piece of article in defence of Aurangzeb’s demolition of Kāśī Viśvanātha’s temple. He undeservedly got many coveted awards and also became Governor of Odisha. He gives the following account of the demolition of Kāśī Viśvanātha temple, ironically, in an article “Distortion of Medieval Indian History”:
“The story regarding demolition of Vishwanath temple is that while Aurangzeb was passing near Varanasi on his way to Bengal, the Hindu Rajas in his retinue requested that if the halt was made for a day, their Ranis may go to Varanasi, have a dip in the Ganges and pay their homage to Lord Vishwanath. Aurangzeb readily agreed. Army pickets were posted on the five mile route to Varanasi. The Ranis made a journey on the palkis. They took their dip in the Ganges and went to the Vishwanath temple to pay their homage. After offering Puja all the Ranis returned except one, the Maharani of Kutch. A thorough search was made of the temple precincts but the Rani was to be found nowhere. When Aurangzeb came to know of it, he was very much enraged. He sent his senior officers to search for the Rani. Ultimately, they found that the statue of Ganesh which was fixed in the wall was a moveable one. When the statue was moved, they saw a flight of stairs that led to the basement. To their horror, they found the missing Rani dishonoured and crying deprived of all her ornaments. The basement was just beneath Lord Vishwanath’s seat. The Rajas expressed their vociferous protests. As the crime was heinous, the Rajas demanded exemplary action. Aurangzeb ordered that as the sacred precincts have been despoiled, Lord Vishwanath may be moved to some other place, the temple be razed to the ground and the Mahant be arrested and punished.
Dr. Pattab
hi Sitaramayya in his book, “Feathers and the Stones: My Study Window” has narrated this fact based on documentary evidence. Dr. P. L. Gupta, former Curator of Patna Museum, has also corroborated this incident.” (pp. 44-45)
Wherefrom Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya got this enlightenment is written in his aforesaid book ‘The Feathers and the Stones: My Study Window’ in the following words:
“This story of the Benares Masjid was given in a rare manuscript in Lucknow which was in the possession of a respected Mulla who had read it in the Ms. and who though he promised to look it up and give the Ms. to a friend, to whom he had narrated the story, died without fulfilling his promise. The story is little known and the prejudice, we are told, against Aurangazeb persists.”
Apropos these two stories the following comments need to be made:
(i) There is no published book or unpublished manuscript anywhere in the world which directly or indirectly corroborates these baseless stories.
(ii) No named person in the world has ever claimed to seen such ‘a rare’ manuscript.
(iii) What Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya had stated in his book was that an ‘unnamed’ Mulla had read such a story in a ‘rare manuscript’ and narrated it to his friend whom he (Mulla) had promised to give the manuscript but actually never gave and died.
(iv) It is not at all clear as to the so called friend who was not see the manuscript himself, narrated the story and how did it without seeing the manuscript, passed on the information to Dr. Sitaramayya after so many years and passage of such long time.
This evidence cannot be kept even in the category of hearsay evidence. It is just a concoction, a trash. But the article is published in the booklet ‘Islam & Indian Culture’ by one of the most prestigeous institutions of the country, ‘Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library’, Patna. It brought many national and international laurels to Mr. Pande. But the irony is that not a single ‘established’ historian, who claims to be the champion of correct history, ever raised any doubt on this trash which is contrary to historical facts. It has been further discussed in the Chapter XV of this book.
The third topic is the distortion of the Daśaratha Jātaka and insinuation against Rāma and Sītā by established historians. The historical fact is that Rāma is remembered with reverence in Buddhist texts since early days after the inception of Buddhism. How Lord Buddha as a ‘Rāma-pandita’ in a past life consoled a grieving person is described in the Daśaratha Jātaka. The capital of Daśaratha is shifted from Ayodhyā to Vārānasī in this Jātaka, as it is the centre of most of the Jatakas. In the name of the story of Daśaratha-Jātaka, the Rāma-katha has been maliciously maligned by established historians to hurt the sentiments of a vast section of the society through provocative writings and exhibitions.
However, on a close scrutiny it is found that there is nothing objectionable in the ‘Gāthā’ portion of the Daśaratha Jātaka. Now it has been proved that the ‘Gāthā’ portion of the Jātaka is the earliest one and it is narrated by Bhagavān Buddha himself. The rest was added by Ceylonese writers and translated into Pāli by the erudite scholar and versatile author Buddhaghosha in the form of the ‘Jātaka-atthakathā’.
The original Jātaka-atthakathā in Pāli was published by Nava Nalanda Mahavihara, Nalanda (Bihar). In the ‘Prastāvanā’ (introduction) the editor, Dr. Mahavir Sharma, has written that Jātaka is one of 15 texts in the Khuddaka-nikāya which itself is an integral part of the Tipitaka.
Now the question arises whether Jātaka stories are so old that they form part of the Tipitaka, the apex text of Buddhism. Dr. Sharma has explained - तिपिटक साहित्य में ‘जिस जातक ग्रन्थ’ का समावेश है, वह केवल गाथा मात्र है। i.e., the Jātaka text which is included in the Tipitaka literature is only the ‘gāthā’ portion. What is the ‘gāthā’ ? Every Jātaka is divided into five portions:
(१) पञ्चुप्पन्नवत्थु (२) अतीतवत्थु (३) गाथा (४) वेयाकरण या अत्थवण्णना and (५) समाधान.
Bharat Singh Upadhyay in ‘पालि साहित्य का इतिहास’ has written:
घगाथाएँ जातक के प्राचीनतम अंश हैं। वास्तव में गाथाएँ ही जातक हैं।च
Gāthās are the oldest portion of the Jātaka. In fact, only gāthās are the Jātaka.
D.C. Sircar, too, has supported this view in his book ‘Problems of Rāmāyana’ published by Government of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad (1979) in the following words:
“It is admitted by the most eminent authorities of History of Pãli literature in general and the Jatakas in particular that the verses (Gathas) in the Jatakas, which only are found in the Khuddak-nikaya of the Sutta-nipata, have to be assigned to an early date (say, the second or third century B.C.) while the stories in prose are mostly as late as the fifth or sixth century A.D. (p.22)
Winternitz explains the Das´aratha Jātaka in following words:
“Only the Gathas of the Jataka belong to the Tipitaka. The prose narrative is the fabrication of the compilers of the commentary (about the fifth century A.D.)”
H. Luders pointed out how the late author of the prose part of the Daśaratha Jātaka even failed to understand the meaning of the Gathas composed by earlier authors. They are referred to in the Sircar’s same book on page 23.
But gathas are narrated succinctly and hence it is difficult to understand their meaning. The Jātakattha-kathās (Jātaka-arthakathās) were written in distant Ceylon to explain the gathas by Ceylonese Bhikshus originally in the Si‚hali language and subsequently translated in Pāli by Buddhaghosha in the fifth century A.D.. Some scholars suggest that they were originally written in Pāli by Buddhaghosha, a native of Magadh settled in Ceylon. Whatever may be the sequence, the fact is that they were written in distant Ceylon.
After a minute scrutiny of the Daśaratha Jātaka one comes to the conclusion that in the Gāthā portion Gautama Buddha has shown respect to Rāma. It is in the Attha-Kathā that the story is twisted in the form of the change of capital from Ayodhyā to Banaras and Sītā is portrayed as the daughter of Daśaratha. If someone reads the Daśaratha Jātaka with this clarification in mind, he will easily understand how much reverence Rāma received from Buddha.
This story relates to an inconsolable son after his father’s death. Buddha went to his house and narrated the story of Rāma-pandita in the form of ‘gãthã’ एथ लक्खण सीता च. to console that house-holder. The first verse of the Gāthā is:
एथ लक्खण सीता च उभो ओतरथोदकं।
एवायं भरतो आह राजा दसरथो मतो।।
Rāma Pandita first asked Lakkhana and Sītā to stand in water and then he informed them that ‘Bharat has reported the death of King Daśaratha’.
Here one must remember that after hearing the death of his father from Bharata, Rāma has given a very consoling sermon to Bharata in the 105th canto of the Ayodhyā-kānda of the Vālmīki-Rāmāyana. Some verses in both texts carry similar meaning and a few verses of the Daśaratha Jātaka are almost replicative translation from the Sanskrit. One such verse is quoted below.
In the Rāmāyana, Rāma laments on hearing the news of his father’s demise:
यथा फलानां पक्वानां नान्यत्र पतनाद् भयम्।
एवं नरस्य जातस्य नान्यत्र मरणाद् भयम्।।
Ayodhyā, 105, 18)
The similarity is marked in the following verse of Daśaratha Jātaka:
फलानं इव पक्कानं निच्चं पपतना भयं।
एवं जातानं मच्चानं निच्चं मरणतो भ�
��ं।।
(Daśaratha Jātaka, Gāthā 5)
As ripe fruits are bound to fall, those who are born have compulsive fear to die.
From this ‘gāthā’ it is clear that Lord Buddha was well-acquainted with the sermons of Rāma to Bharata in the Ayodhyā-kānda of the Rāmāyana and therefore they are as old as, at least, Buddha’s time.
The last ‘Gāthā’ in the Daśaratha Jātaka is 13th and it appears to be an almost replicative translation of a verse of the Vālmīki-Rāmāyana. It reads as follows:
दस वस्स सहस्सानि सठ्ठि वस्स सतानि च।
कम्बुगीबो महाबाहु रामो रज्जं अकारथि।।13।।
(Daśaratha Jātaka, Gāthā 13)
The golden-greyed and long-armed Rāma ruled the kingdom for ten thousand and sixty hundred i.e. sixteen thousand years.
In the first canto of the Bālakanda it is written about the reign of Rāma:
दश वर्षसहस्राणि दशवर्षशतानि च।
रामो राज्यमुपासित्वा ब्रह्मलोकं प्रयास्यति।। (1.79)
Rāma will rule for ten thousand and ten hundred, i.e. eleven thousand years and thereafter he will go to Brahmaloka.
Again in the 128th canto of the Yuddhakānda it is repeated:
दशवर्षसहस्राणि दशवर्षशतानि च।
भातृभिः सहितः श्रीमान् रामो राज्यमकारयत्।। (128.106)
Rāma with his brothers ruled along for eleven thousand years.
Buddha appears to be aware of the Rāmāyana story of Vālmīki and since he had regards for him, he not only narrated the sermon of Rāma but also declared that he himself was Rāma-pandit in that life. Thus, the ‘Gāthā’ portion of the Daśaratha Jātaka, too, is highly reverential to Rāma. In addition, it conclusively clears the following doubt raised by Romila Thapar in the article “In Defence of the Variant” published in her book “Cultural Pasts.”
Ayodhya Revisited Page 4