FACT has started the commissioning of the next project after "Shivaji" Dara Shikoh
Fact exhibition:
Darashikoh translating vedas elder brother of
aurangazeb.
FACT EXHIBITION: Prince DARA
SHIKOH parded as prisoner his guilt trying to
translate vedas into Pesian This image is from
the online gallery of the British Library One
might ask Why Dara now ? The answer lies in his
tolerence and rather more than that the respect
for other religions a sufi himself, there was
and is no doubt the History of India would have
been completely richer and wonderful if he was
the Emperor. The world needs more him and the
world shall know much more after this exhibition....
about the Sufi student and saint.
Dara Shikoh
(1615–1659) was the eldest son of the Mughal Emperor
Shah Jahan and his wife Mumtaz Mahal. His name
is from Persian ???????? meaning "The possessor
of Glory". He was favoured as a successor by his
father and his sister Jahanara Begum, but was
defeated by his younger brother Aurangzeb in a
bitter struggle for the Mughal throne.
Dara Shikoh
was a gentle and pious Sufi intellectual, one
of the greatest representatives of that uniquely
Indian synthesis sometimes referred to as the
"composite culture". He was an erudite champion
of mystical religious speculation (which made
him a heretic in the eyes of his more orthodox
brother and the coterie around him) and a poetic
diviner of syncretic cultural interaction among
people of all faiths. Historians have speculated
how different India would have been had he prevailed
over his less enlightened brother Aurangzeb. Dara
was a follower of Lahore's famous Qadiri Sufi
saint Mian Mir, whom he was introduced to by Mullah
Shah Badakhshi (Mian Mir's spiritual disciple
and successor). He devoted much effort towards
finding a common mystical language between Islam
and Hinduism. Towards this goal he translated
the Upanishads from its original Sanskrit into
Persian so it could be read by Muslim scholars.
His translation is often called "Sirre Akbar"
or The Greatest Mystery, where he states boldly,
in the Introduction, his speculative hypothesis
that the work referred to in the Qur'an as the
"Kitab al-maknun" or the hidden book is none other
than the Upanishads. His most famous work, Majma
ul-Bahrain ("The Mingling of the Two Oceans")
was also devoted to finding the commonalities
between Sufism and Hindu Monotheism.
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