The Emperor Who Never Was

by Supriya Gandhi

  It is also eminently likely that both Banwalidas and Habibullah were part of a larger team of translators who shaped the abridged Yogavasishtha into its new Persian form. The translations for Akbar and Jahangir had tended to follow this pattern. We can imagine that the prince was also an involved collaborator. By now, Dara Shukoh must have become familiar with many of the Laghu Yogavasishtha’s philosophical terms, which his Jog Basisht often preserves alongside their Persian equivalents.

  Dara Shukoh’s decision to commission this translation was very much part of an imperial project. But it also spoke to cultural currents outside the court in Shahjahanabad and even on its fringes. The prince tapped into an ongoing dialogue between Indic and Persian philosophical and literary realms. His own patronage also energized this conversation. At the same time that Dara worked on the Majma-ul-bahrain and oversaw the Jog Basisht translation, other writers in the subcontinent were undertaking their own acts of boundary crossing, whether through imaginative translations, by drawing on unconventional themes, or by trying on a different language and genre.

  One such author was Mir Askari, a poet and writer in the Deccan, born in India of Iranian extraction. He had joined Aurangzeb’s service and gained his trust. But he also was a prolific poet and disciple of the Sufi Burhan-ud-Din Razi Ilahi, in whose honor he adopted the pen name “Razi.” In 1655, he rendered into Persian narrative verse the Avadhi Sufi romance Madhumalati (The Night-Flowering Jasmine), by Shaikh Manjhan (fl. 1545). Like Manjhan, Razi belonged to the Shattari order.11 Razi’s version of the Hindavi poem changed the names of the lover protagonists Manohar and Madhumalati to mihr (sun) and mah (moon). He entitled it Mihr o Mah: “Let me write a book on Manohar’s love / Let me address him by the name ‘Mihr’ // Let me sing a song of Madhumalati’s beauty / Let me show a heart in her moon’s veil.”12 For readers of Persian literature in India, Razi’s narrative poem also calls to mind a mystical masnawi with the same title that the sixteenth-century Sufi poet Jamali Dihlawi composed, though Jamali’s poem is set outside India and involves adventures from Badakhshan to Tripoli.13

  The following year, 1656, the Sanskrit poet Nilakantha Shukla composed a narrative poem that he called Chimani Charita (Life of Chimani), whose heroine was the daughter-in-law of Allahwardi Khan, one of the generals who accompanied Dara to Qandahar.14 Chimani, whose name literally means sparrow, falls in love with her handsome Brahmin tutor Dayadeva, though she is married to Allahwardi Khan’s son Jafar. Soon, aided by an older woman, Anisa (who is meant to be her chaperone), Chimani and Dayadeva start having trysts. Chimani asks him if he really is a Hindu (she uses this very term). Dayadeva replies, showing her his sacred thread, that he was a Brahmin (vipra), and it was not suitable for her to go down that path of love. Chimani remonstrates with him. But eventually a romance brews between them.15 The poem is reminiscent of Jagannatha Pandit’s story in using the provocative motif of the love between a Muslim woman and a Hindu man. Its theme might well have been inspired by the Mughal connections with pandits in Benares that Dara Shukoh cultivated.

  Soon after, in 1657, a North Indian poet named Surdas composed a narrative poem in Avadhi on the love story of the royal couple Nala and Damayanti. Though Surdas was a Hindu, the genre he adopted, the Sufi romance, was one used earlier by Muslim Sufis like Shaikh Manjhan. Surdas wrote in the eastern vernacular (purab bhasha), he says, so that people could comprehend it: “There the vernacular is everyone’s intimate family (mahram) / He who reads it, can understand its meaning / That is the reason this love story / Is brought forth in the eastern vernacular.”16 Surdas dedicated this poem to Shah Jahan. We do not know whether the emperor ever received or read it, but it is significant that this Hindavi poet saw the emperor and his own literary creation as part of the same interconnected world.

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  DARA SHUKOH’S SPONSORSHIP OF THE JOG BASISHT translation marked a directional shift in his explorations of Indic thought. He had already dipped into a variety of texts on a range of subjects to compose the Majma. Now, his inquiry became more focused. He sought those ancient Indic books that most aptly conveyed the idea of divine unity he wanted to plumb. With the Jog Basisht translation in 1656, the prince now directed his energies to supervising translations of Indic texts.

  The following year, in 1657, Kavindracharya, too, finished a translation of the Yogavasishthasara in Hindavi, the very text that Shaikh Sufi had rendered into Persian.17 Presumably this was prepared for Dara Shukoh’s benefit. Kavindra titled his version Jnanasara (Epitome of Knowledge). Though some scholars have speculated that this formed the basis for the Yogavasishtha translation that the prince commissioned, it is a wholly different work.18 Mughal readers, though, do not seem to have distinguished between the various abridgments of the Yogavasishtha. When the prince developed an interest in the Jog Basisht, he might well have commissioned multiple people—for instance, Banwalidas and Kavindracharya—to work on producing accessible versions for his perusal.

  We do not know what the prince thought of Kavindracharya’s efforts, but he certainly would have been sympathetic to the text’s general theme. The translation advances that there is no duality between the individual self (atman) and the supreme being (brahman), and that true liberation in this world is achieved through this realization. Kavindracharya’s skill as a poet in Hindavi shines in this rendition of the Yogavasishthasara’s Sanskrit couplets into euphonious Hindavi verse. Whatever its reception at the court, the Jnanasara was part of a trend inching across the North Indian literary landscape, of writing Vedantic works beyond Sanskrit, in Hindavi and Persian.

  Another slim Advaitic text, the Ashtavakra Gita, also appears to have caught Dara Shukoh’s attention. Like the Yogavasishtha, it too is framed as a dialogue between a king and a spiritual teacher—in this case King Janak and the sage Ashtavakra. Manuscript copies of this are scarce, but at least one identifies the translator as a certain “Jadun Das Dara Shukohi.” The last part of the translator’s name signals that he was the prince’s servant.19 It is possible that “Jadun Das” is a misspelling of Jadav Das, the secretary who had transcribed the initial conversations between Dara Shukoh and Baba Lal in Lahore.

  Other translations attributed to Dara Shukoh’s sponsorship include a Persian rendition of the Bhagavad Gita.20 Unlike all the other works that he composed or commissioned, this one has no preface or introductory remarks referring to the prince, so we cannot be certain that it was indeed connected with him. It is not unheard of for later copies of manuscripts to misattribute their authorship. For instance, works by Dara Shukoh have been credited to Abu-l-Faiz Faizi (d. 1595), the emperor Akbar’s poet laureate, while other writings likely composed in a later era circulated under Dara Shukoh’s name. Another Persian translation of the Gita is also attributed to Faizi.21 At the same time, it is quite conceivable that Dara wished to read the Gita in a Persian translation specially produced for him. Though, in the mid-seventeenth century, the Gita did not have the status that it later enjoyed in colonial India as the representative sacred text of the Hindus, it did attract the interest of Abd-ur-Rahman Chishti, who composed his own eloquent Persian rendition of it.22 Similarly, Dara Shukoh’s reputation as a sponsor of Indic learning in Persian may well have contributed to the wide attribution of numerous writings to the prince.

  At his court in Shahjahanabad, Dara Shukoh also extended his regard for Indian holy men to his patronage of art. During this period in the mid-1650s, artists in the Mughal workshops labored to create a complex miniature painting, which was also much larger than usual.23 Given the theme, it must have been made for Dara Shukoh’s eyes. The painting features the Ajmer hills in the background, but unlike the Padshah-nama’s illustration, it does not reference the recent imperial excursion to the city. In the upper third of the page, a long line of Sufi saints assembles on the plinth of a building, against a backdrop of European-looking marble colonnades. Two European observers at the left look on in wonder. Some of the saints are clearly recognizable—the Chishti Qutb-ud-
Din Bakhtiyar Kaki, Muin-ud-Din Chishti, founder of the Chishti order in the subcontinent, and Dara Shukoh’s own spiritual teacher Mulla Shah. Before them, other Sufis dance and swoon in ecstasy, aided by young disciples who beat drums, strum music, and catch them as they fall. But the painting’s most distinctive feature is at the very bottom of the composition: a frieze of twelve Indian saints seated in quiet repose. They represent a broad cross-section of monistic thought and popular theistic expression, from yogis on the right to sants, holy exemplars of truth, on the left. Labels identify all of them. On the left sit the Vaishnava poet saints Ravidas, Pipa, Sena, and Namdev, all considered to be followers of Ramanand, as is Kabir, seated here next to his son Kamal. An Aughar Shaiva ascetic sits on the edge of this group, while on the other side are Matsyendranath and Gorakhnath, spiritual masters of the Nath yogis, Jadrup, recognizable from the paintings of his conversations with Jahangir and Akbar, and Baba Lal, while the last figure is likely Baba Lal’s teacher, Chetan Swami. In later times, artists working in the Mughal style would often model portraits of these holy men after their representations here.

  Gathering of Holy Men.

  Whether intentionally or not, this painting captures the subjects of Dara’s spiritual exploration in its various stages: The famous Sufi authorities whom he wrote about in his first two books, the Sakinat-ul-auliya and the Safinat-ul-auliya. The ecstatic mystics whose sayings Dara recorded in the Hasanat-ul-arifin. And finally the Hindu ascetics, including Baba Lal—the “monotheists,” whose ideas the Majma-ul-bahrain gathers into a bricolage of mystical verities. At a visual level, though, the sants and yogis seated below the arched face of the plinth, are part of, yet somewhat marginal to, the main composition.

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  HAD DARA SHUKOH FOR ALL PRACTICAL purposes lost interest in rulership? In many retrospective perspectives on the prince, his rich cultural and spiritual pursuits in the mid-1650s seem to overpower all his other activities. On the face of it, his recent ventures stand in stark contrast with those of his brothers. While Dara focused intently on his learning and patronage, Aurangzeb in the Deccan was plotting to expand the empire by invading Golconda, seat of the Qutbshahi rulers. Shuja had been managing his own court and territories in Bengal for a decade and a half, out of his father’s shadow. Murad Bakhsh, who in Malwa had earlier shown an aptitude for administration, was settling into his new role as governor of Gujarat.

  But on closer examination, the gulf between Dara and his brothers was not as wide as it might seem. Shuja and Murad, especially, were active connoisseurs of literature and the arts. Shuja’s patronage extended to the Hindavi poet, Varan Kavi. It also embraced the Persian poet Abd-ul-Baqi Sahbai, who took “Sai,” the “striver,” as his poetic nom de plume. From Sahbai’s pen came a Persian rendition of the famed epic poem, Padmavat, which chronicles the desire of the Delhi Sultan Ala-ud-Din Khalji (d. 1316) for Padmavati, the Queen of Chittor. The romance was originally composed by Malik Muhammad Jayasi (fl. 1540) as a Sufi allegory written in Avadhi, a Hindavi vernacular of the northeastern plains.24 Another prominent scholar in Shuja’s orbit was the Indian-born Iranian Muhammad Sadiq Isfahani (d. 1651). Sadiq authored many works including a multivolume encyclopedia, which he dedicated to Shuja. Amongst other topics, the collection contains a section on Indian religions, biographies of prominent poets and scholars of Bengal, and a detailed geography and an atlas that closely follows the climatic model laid out by Ptolemy.25 Moreover, Shuja was close to certain Sufi shaikhs. We have already heard of his relationship, through the exchange of letters and the movement of household servants, with Mulla Shah. Shuja also had his own special relationship with the Qadiri Sufi Sayyid Nimatullah of Bengal.26

  Murad too fostered a vibrant literary culture in his court. He also forged connections with Brahmin scholars and musicians, evinced by the poem that Kavindracharya Saraswati wrote for him in his Kavindrakalpalata dedicated to the imperial family. Kavindra extols Murad’s generosity: “Ask for a blanket; he’ll grant you a splendid coverlet / Ask for a horse, he’ll give you an elephant, he’ll laughingly give you a diamond.” The poet lauds Murad’s other stellar qualities, including his knowledge of dharama marama (religious secrets).27 In 1652, Shah Jahan’s former chronicler Tabatabai translated into Persian for Murad Bakhsh an Arabic text, which itself was a translation of a Pahlavi work distilling the wise counsel of Anushirwan, the storied ruler of ancient Iran, legendary for his justice and sagacity. It consists of Anushirwan’s answers to questions about governance that his courtiers put to him.28 The poet Said Quraishi showered Murad and Shuja with praise-poems.29 Muzaffar Husain Islahi, the prince’s mir-i adl (chief of judiciary), became a distinguished poet.30 The renowned Mulla Tughra of Mashhad was Murad’s secretary; he infused his Persian poetry with Indic words and wrote an ode to the Rajput ruler Jaswant Singh.31 Like Dara Shukoh and Shuja with their spiritual guides, Murad also cultivated a personal bond with the Sufi pir Jafar Shah of Gujarat.32

  The courts of Dara Shukoh’s brothers mirrored the eldest prince’s activities of pursuing knowledge—just on a smaller scale. The emperor’s court was Dara’s own. He was so closely aligned with Shah Jahan that the usual limitations constraining princes did not apply. It is no surprise that Dara modeled himself instead on previous emperors both mythical and historical, fashioning himself as the quintessential philosopher-ruler. He was like Alexander, discoursing with his philosophers, or Akbar presiding over debates in his Ibadat-khana. Dara himself, though, did not explicitly draw on these examples of past kings. This would have undermined his declaration, recorded almost fifteen years earlier in his Sakinat-ul-auliya—that God had transported him to a spiritual plane much loftier than those of other rulers before him. The Benares pandits continued their association with the Mughal court, as Dara Shukoh needed their help navigating the Sanskrit texts that had seized his attention. His project of spiritual self-fashioning was an ongoing one.

  Moreover, as the philosopher-prince soared to new heights of mystical knowledge, he closely monitored the affairs of state. Dara Shukoh kept an alert watch on Aurangzeb’s activities. At the end of 1655, it appeared that Aurangzeb’s plans to invade the wealthy kingdom of Golconda might bear fruit. Dara was concerned that a victory over Golconda would dangerously boost his younger brother’s standing. With Jahanara’s support, he sought to intervene.

  The ruler of Golconda, Abdullah Qutb Shah, had recently imprisoned Mir Jumla’s son along with the son’s family. It now looked as though Mir Jumla would finally be swayed to join a Mughal campaign against Golconda. It would be much easier to defeat the weak Qutb Shahi ruler if Mir Jumla were not on his side. Aurangzeb sent his sixteen-year-old son, Muhammad Sultan, to take Hyderabad, Golconda’s capital. Aurangzeb’s correspondence with the emperor gently hints that he is aware of Dara Shukoh’s opposition. It would be a quick victory for the imperial forces, yielding lucrative results, Aurangzeb says, provided there is no “interference from any quarter.”33

  The Mughal forces besieged Golconda, and sacked the city, but could not touch the ruler, who was barricaded in the impregnable fort. Abdullah Qutb Shah frantically wrote Shah Jahan, Dara Shukoh, and Jahanara, asking for a reconciliation. Dara exchanged several letters with the Golconda ruler. One of Dara’s replies, written in March 1656, assures the Deccan sultan that Shah Jahan had not been in favor of the siege, and that the matter would be resolved soon.34

  Meanwhile, Aurangzeb sent his father glowing descriptions of Golconda’s beauty and natural resources, as he marched to Hyderabad: “How could I describe the goodness of this land, its abundance of water, and cultivation, the quality of its pleasure-increasing air, the sheer number of sown fields visible during the course of my journey?” The prince also rails against the religious heresies of the Shia ruler Abdullah Qutb Shah, who, “out of an abundance of ignorance and idiocy, has made abandoning the sunnat of [the Prophet], and flaunting heretical innovation, into his own custom.” Aurangzeb accuses the ruler of causing his subjects to abandon the corr
ect Sunni path, and encouraging them to revile the Prophet’s companions, “which is pure unbelief (kufr) and heresy.”35 For Aurangzeb, the benefits of invading Golconda were self-evident. But at the end of March, Shah Jahan pressured him to lift the siege. Dara Shukoh had achieved a small victory.

  Dara remained enmeshed within the material world in other ways as well. He participated in the imperial authority his father crafted through grand architectural gestures, for instance, as well as through the consumption and production of luxury goods. Both Aurangzeb and Dara Shukoh feature in a new chapter of the imperial relationship with Shantidas, the Jain purveyor of jewels for the emperor. This time, the brothers took turns to convey their father’s irritation to the merchant, whom they suspected of withholding choice jewels. In late 1655, Dara Shukoh wrote Shantidas, rebuking him for sending quality wares to others (is this a veiled reference to Aurangzeb?), but not to him. He also included a threat. If Shantidas did not immediately dispatch a certain massive diamond weighing forty-four surkh (equivalent to thirty-eight and a half carats), the prince would complain to the emperor. In the middle of 1656, Aurangzeb took Shantidas to task for sending inlaid ware of inferior quality. Along with this scolding, he sent a robe as a gift.36 Aurangzeb’s past desecration of Shantidas’s temple clearly did not prevent the prince from maintaining a relationship with the influential merchant. It was important for him to keep the channels of communication open, as Shantidas could be a potential source of funds, should the need arise.