(8) Travel accounts of William Finch
Travel accounts of William Finch throw a lot of light on the religious condition of Ayodhyā in c. 1610 A.D. William Finch along with Captain Hawkins landed at Surat on 28th August, 1608. He was primarily a merchant and moved from Surat to Agra and then to Lahore and finally to Baghdad. In between, he covered many places in India between 1608 and 1611. He was a very keen observer and noted all his impressions in his diary. William Foster, the Editor of “Early Travels in India 1583-1619” comments thus on his observations:
“Based upon a carefully kept journal and giving a detailed description of a large extent of the country, it is a most valuable contribution to our knowledge of the dominions of the Great Mogul in the early years of the seventeenth century.”
Before going to Lahore, he had visited Delhi, Ambala, Sultanpur and Ayodhyā. He had a tragic death in Baghdad where he died in 1612 probably due to infected water. Finch’s apparel and much of his papers were saved and forwarded to the East India Company by Haggard. Rev. Samuel Purchas, while searching the Company’s archives for material, found Finch’s journal and printed it almost completely as the 4th chapter of the fourth book of part one of the “Pilgrimes”. From that book William Foster included it in his Early Travels in India 1583-1619. It was published by Oxford University Press in 1921.
The following is the travel account of William Finch on Ayodhyā:
William Finch’s account from Foster’s book.
The above quotation does not contain any spelling mistake because that was the pattern of writing in the early seventeenth century. The following informations are culled from the scrutiny of his travel accounts:
(i) Ayodhyā was a city of ancient note.
(ii) At the time of his visit in circa 1610 A.D. it was a seat of Potan, i.e. a Pathan king. He had visited Ayodhyā during the days of Jahangir. Ayodhyā was an important suba since the days of Akbar as stated by Abul Fazl.
(iii) The castle was built four hundred years ago.
(iv) There were ruins of Rāmachandra’s castle and houses.
(v) Indians acknowledged Rāma as a great God who took incarnation to see the ‘tamasha’ of the world.
(vi) In these ruins remained Brahmins who, for centuries, had been recording names of all such Indians who used to bathe in the river.
(vii) Pilgrims used to carry blackened rice-grains from a nearby cave.
A mosque is nowhere mentioned by Finch. He only talks about the ruins of the castles of King Rāmachandra. These castles were reported to be 400 years old. In fact, they were built during the Gahadavala kings’ reign and were around 450 years old. According to one of the conditions of Jejiya there could be no repairs or renovations of existing temples. Therefore, they were in ruins but they were under the control of the Hindus because Finch mentions that in these ruins remain Brahmins but he does not mention the mosque at all. It is a conclusive proof that there was no mosque in Ram Kot till 1610 A.D.
Similarly, Joannes De Leat (1631) and Thomas Herbert(1634) have given very vivid description of Ayodhyā but nowhere they have mentioned any mosque. According to their accounts there was an ancient temple built by Rāmachandra and there was an idol which was worshipped by devotees before going to the nearby cave which consisted of blackened rice-grains.
Since the existence of the temple was seen by William Finch (1610), De Leat (1631) and Thomas Herbert (1634) in the Ram Kot, the Rāma temple existed at the Janma-sthana, at least, till 1634 A.D. But when Lal Das went to Ayodhyā and remained there from 1667 to 1675, there was no semblance of the temple. Therefore, it appears that the temple was demolished sometime between 1635 and 1666 A.D. Our conclusion that it was demolished in 1660 A.D. is in consistency with this line of factual evidence.
(9) Joseph Tieffenthaler’s description of Ayodhyā
The first mention of the demolition of Ram Kot castles and the construction of the disputed mosque at the birthplace of Rāma is made by Austrian Jesuit Father Joseph Tieffenthaler in his book Descriptio Indiae written in Latin. Bernoulli,while translating this book in French from Latin, changed the title to La Geographic de Hindoustan. The meaning of the Latin title is Description of India, whereas the meaning of the French title is Geography of Hindustan. It is a well researched work on geography and provides a detailed description of 22 Provinces of India, its cities, its fortresses and smaller towns, during 1766-72. He wrote his account of Ayodhyā and Faizabad in 1767 A.D., as the date is recorded in his account of Faizabad. It is further confirmed by the following map of Tieffenthaler which is dated January 1768.
Fig. 4.2: Sketch of the confluence of Ghaghra and Sarayu
made by Tieffenthaler.
Very few scholars know that Tieffenthaler’s Latin work was translated in German by Bernoulli and published between 1785 and 1787. A copy of the cover page of the German translation is produced below:
Fig. 4.3: Cover page of Tieffenthaler’s
book in German version.
Tieffenthaler was born on 24th July, 1710 at Bozen, in the county of Tyrol, then in Austrian empire. He entered the Society of Jesus on 9th October, 1729 at the age of 19 years. In 1740 he left Austria for Spain where he stayed for two years. In 1743 he sailed from Portugal for India on East Indian Mission. After arrival in Goa he went to Surat in 1743. According to Father Severin Noti, the author of A Forgotten Geographer of India, he was destined for Jai Singh’s observatory. However, in the wake of Jai Singh’s death in 1743, he went to Agra where he joined Jesuit High School as the Rector. In 1747 he went to Narwar where he was appointed as a priest to the Bourbon Colony at Narwar, and carried on the duties of his assignment till 1765. After the Portuguese Prime Minister Pombal’s order that all Jesuits be expelled from Portuguese-controlled areas, he went to Calcutta and approached the authorities of the East India Company for financial assistance. Thereafter, he took up a tedious task of following the entire course of Ganga down to Calcutta and worked on Gogra (Sarayū) and the regions containing the sources of the chief rivers of India. Tieffenthaler died in 1785 at Lucknow and was interred at Padri Tolla Cemetery, Agra.
Fig. 4.4: Cover page of Tieffenthaler’s
book in French version.
He was a prolific writer. Apart from his work on Geography which is referred to above, he wrote many other books. He wrote on the origin of the Hindus and their religion in Latin, expeditions of Nadir Shah to India in German, the deeds of the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam in Persian and incursions of the Afghans and the Conquest of Delhi in French. He wrote a book on contemporary history during the period1757-64. In linguistics he prepared a Sanskrit-Parsee lexicon, apart from treatises in Latin on the language of the Parsees and on the proper pronunciation of Latin. In the area of religion, he wrote ‘Brahmanism’ and works on Indian polytheism and Indian asceticism. He also composed books on the religions of the Parsees and the Muslims.
In the field of the natural sciences he wrote on astronomical observations on the sunspots and zodiacal light, studies on the Hindu astronomy, astrology and cosmology. In addition, he wrote on the descriptions and observations of the flora and fauna of India.
Tieffenthaler has written extensively on Oudh. He has devoted 58 pages on the history, geography, topography, etc. of the entire Oudh range for six years from 1766 to 1772. How his magnum opus “Descriptio Indiae” was published has a very interesting story. His book was first published partly in Latin in 1776 and 1784. Then it was translated into German and published from 1785 to 1787. It was further translated and published in French between 1786 and 1791. Both German and French editions were translated and edited through the good offices of Anquetil and Bernoulli. So far no English translation of the entire book is available.
I think Late Abhas Kumar Chatterjee, an I.A.S. officer of Bihar Cadre, was the first person who quoted Tieffenthaler’s account on Ayodhyā in the midst of the controversy of Rāma Janma-bhūmi-Baburi-Masjid dispute in an article in Indian Express in 1990. He had quoted it not fr
om his original book in Latin but from the French translation.Thereafter Tieffenthaler has been quoted by many persons including four historians who wrote ‘Report to the Nation’. Though there was not much difference in the quoted versions, some persons expressed doubts about the authenticity of the Tieffenthaler’s account. Thereafter, the Government of India got an authentic translated version and submitted it before the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court. Even then, some sceptics were doubting that some tampering might have taken place in the official translation, though every word had been examined meticulously. Meanwhile, Tieffenthaler’s account on Ayodhyā was found by the present author in the 4th volume of the book “The Modern Traveller: A Popular Description, Geographical, Historical, and Topographical, of the Globe” by Josiah Conder. Although it was published in 1828, the present writer is the first person to bring it on the record in the Ayodhyā dispute. It was duly produced before the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court during the course of argument. It ends all doubts and controversies about the authentic translation of Tieffenthaler’s account on Ayodhyā. Here an important question arises as to when Tieffenthaler’s account on Ayodhyā in English was published in an important book “Modern Traveller” in 1828 A.D., why did not a single historian quote it in any of the books written on Ayodhyā earlier. The simple answer may be that no one made an in-depth study of the Ayodhyā issue.
It is not a mere coincidence that the first text, which mentions the disputed mosque, emphatically attributes its construction to Aurangzeb, although it mentions the perception of some persons that the mosque was built by Babur. Details of Teiffenthaler’s accounts have been discussed in Chapter XI named “The existence of Rāma’s Janma-sthana and a temple thereon is not based on beliefs alone but on unimpeachable evidence also.”
(10) Francis Buchanan’s survey report
Francis Buchanan is the real defaulter who has created all confusion on Ayodhyā. He was born on 15th February, 1762 at Bardowie, Callander, Perthsire. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He also studied Botany under John Hope in Edinburgh.
“A surgeon by profession and a botanist by inclination” Buchanan joined the East India Company in 1784 as a medical officer. He came to India in 1794 and served in the Bengal Medical Service from 1794 to 1815. From 1803 to 1804 he was surgeon to the Governor General of India Lord Wellesley in Calcutta where he established a zoo that is now Calcutta Alipore Zoo. He tried to be associated with botanical museum but finding no spacious scope in that field, he became an expert on Indian society and culture.
In 1799 after the defeat of Tipu Sultan he was asked to survey South India. His book ‘A Journey from Madras through the Counties of Mysore, Canara and Malaber (1807)’ is well-known. He wrote another book ‘An Account of the Kingdom of Nepal’ in 1819.
He conducted the survey of Dinajpur and Rungpur in Bengal (1807-189), Purnia (1809-1810), Bhagalpur (1810-1811), Patna, Gaya and Shahabad (1811-13) and finally Gorakhpur (1813-1814). Why Buchanan was selected to conduct this survey is rightly speculated by William R. Pinch in his book ‘Peasants and Monks in British India’. Pinch writes,
“Buchanan soon developed a reputation as an irritant to the orientalist establishment, which was (in Vicziany’s words) “inclined towards a Brahmanical interpretation of Indian society.” By publishing an essay on Burmese Buddhism, Buchanan juxtaposed “the egalitarianism of Buddhism against the oppressive, hierarchical nature of Brahmanism. Buchanan’s hatred of the entrenched Brahmin class in India, together with his critical reading of the religious scriptures, marked him out as a man ideally equipped to act as the Company’s reporter on native affairs’.”(Appendix 1, p. 15)
Thus, Buchanan had bias against traditional Hinduism.
Buchanan made a survey of Gorakhpur and Ayodhyā in 1813-14. His original report on Gorakhpur Division which included Ayodhyā is still lying unpublished in the Oriental and India Office Collection of the British Library, and marked as manuscript no E97. Montgomary Martin published his survey reports in 1838 without acknowledging Buchanan’s name prominently. If Buchanan’s report lying in the British Library is compared with Martin’s published book, little difference is found on Ayodhyā topic. In Martin’s book the inscription(s), made available to Buchanan, their English translation and a map of Ayodhyā are missing. In his survey report Buchanan writes thus:
“...the destruction is very generally attributed by the Hindus to the furious zeal of Aurungzabe, to whom also is imputed the overthrow of the temples in Benares and Mathura.”
From the above quotation it is clear that in people’s perception it was Aurangzeb and not Babur, who was responsible for the demolition of the temple and construction of the mosque. The callous neglect of Buchanan in writing his report on the disputed shrine has changed the course of history since 1838 when M. Martin published his report wherein Buchanan has noted:
“What may have been the case in the two latter, I shall not now take upon myself to say, but with respect to Ayodhya the tradition seems very ill-founded. The bigot by whom the temples were destroyed is said to have erected mosques on the situations of the most remarkable temples; but the mosque at Ayodhya, which is by far the most entire, and which has every appearance of being the most modern, is ascertained by an inscription on its walls (of which a copy is given) (drawing N1) to have been built by Babur.”
It appears that Buchanan had seen (if he had really seen) the mosque from a distant place because he writes that it is ‘by far the most entire, and which has every appearance of being the most modern’. The mosque was not ‘by far the most entire’ because it had not any minarette and without it the mosque could not be ‘the most entire.’ Similarly, if the mosque was really ‘the most modern’, it could be a construction of Aurangzeb’s period and not that of Babur’s which was remote by 285 years. Whatever may have been the reality Buchanan’s comments became the gospel truth for subsequent writers and all started attributing its construction to Babur instead of Aurangzeb.
Thus, it was Buchanan’s haste which created all confusion on Ayodhyā. It appears that he never visited the site of the Janma-sthana Masjid, though he claims to have visited. If he really visited the mosque, he visited it from a distant place. He never saw any inscription inside the mosque. What was given to him, he got it translated. He even did not know whether the inscriptions given to him were two or one because he has mentioned just one: ‘an inscription’. He used to have dialogue with the mahanta of Janma-sthāna temple. But he has not made it clear who this mahanta was. The mahanta’s views on the dynasties of Nepal have been quoted by him in another book “An Account of the Kingdom of Nepal.” But he has not quoted a single word of this Mahanta on the demolition of the temple. He has not even referred to another Janma-sthāna temple across the road as to whether it existed during his time or not.
(11) Conclusion
Thus, we have seen that the so-called Baburi mosque does not figure in any of the texts ranging from 1528 to 1668 A.D. When it is first mentioned in Tieffenthaler’s book, the construction of the mosque is emphatically attributed to Aurangzeb, and Babur’s name is carried by a few persons. However, during Buchanan’s survey of Gorakhpur during 1813-14 he was caught in a well-knit trap of forged inscriptions which indicated that the mosque was built by Mir Baqi at the behest of Babur. This forgery has been analysed threadbare in the next chapter and it has been conclusively proved that inscriptions were forged in nature. Thus, the only link connecting Babur with the disputed shrine does not exist. Nevertheless, historical facts and Babur’s image of a liberal emperor were sacrificed. Now an attempt is made here to relieve him of the false accusation that has resulted in a sinister campaign of hatred against him for decades. It must have been very agonizing for Babur who had once proclaimed:
With fame, though I die, I am content,
Let fame be mine, though life be spent.
Chapter Five
Inscriptions on the structure were fake a
nd factitious
[(1) Introduction (2) Non-existence of any inscription during Father Joseph Tieffenthaler’s visit (c.1770 A.D.) (3) Buchanan’s Report (1813-14 A.D.) (4) The tomb of Musa Ashiqan (5) Asghar’s petition (1877 A.D.) (6) Inspection by Judges (1885-86 A.D.)
(7) Anton Fuhrer’s Report (1889 A.D.) (8) Maulvi Shuaib’s Report (1906-07) (9) Inscriptions mentioned by Beveridge in Babur-nama (1921) (10) Communal riot of 1934 (11) Inscriptions submitted in Faizabad Regular Suit no. 29 of 1945 (12) Ashraf Husain/Z.A. Desai’s reading of the inscriptions (13) Factitious Inscription of Kanak Bhawan (14) Conclusion]
(1) Introduction
The construction of the so-called Baburi mosque is attributed to the Mughal emperor Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur on the main evidence of inscriptions fixed on the disputed shrine. However, on a close scrutiny, it is found that the inscriptions, which are now non-existent, were fakes. They were fixed subsequently on the structure almost 285 years after its supposed construction in 1528 A.D. and were replaced repeatedly. An analytical study of evidences will establish this historical fact which may astonish many readers.
Baburi mosque does not find any mention in any text before 1770 A.D. when Joseph Tieffenthaler visited it. But he, too, did not see any inscription on any part of the mosque. He was well versed in Persian and therefore any inscription inside the mosque would not have escaped his notice, particularly when he has given minor details of the mosque and its surroundings. Joseph Tieffenthaler writes that Ram Kot was demolished by Aurangzeb and adds that according to some persons’ version it was done by Babur. Had an inscription really existed anywhere in any part of the mosque a Persian knowing Tieffenthaler must have clarified in Buchanan’s manner that it was Babur and not Aurangzeb, who built the mosque. But since there was no inscription, there is no mention of it in his account and Tieffenthaler’s uncertainty about its builder continued.
Ayodhya Revisited Page 24