The Book of Akbar 12.2

12.2

Verse. Pole which salutes the two poles of heaven. Bridling by discipline the tigers of lust. Stalking as a lion in the forest of the heart. Ocean-drinker of love, the premier elephant, Ahmad-i-jam, (fol. 148) the date of his death is fixed by the chronogram Ahmad Jami quddisa sirruhu. (See Richardson 718 a.) The passage occurs at 148a. of Add. 7607, Rieu’s Cat. I. 43c. and the words are [Arabic text]. The letters give the date 536, viz. A = 1 J = 3 q = 100 r = 200 h = 8 a = 1 d = 4 h = 5 m = 40 m = 40 s = 60 — d = 4 i = 10 s = 60 536 Total. There is an account of the saint in Dara Shikoh’s Safinatu-l-auliya and there the writer—the eldest son of Shah Jahan—refers to his great-great-grandmother, Hamida Banu’s descent from Ahmad-i-jam. But the fullest account of Ahmad is in Jami’s Nafahatu-l-uns, Jami being a townsman of the saint. The life will be found in Lees’ ed. of the Nafahatu (Cal. 1859, 405-417). Ahmad-i-jam is said to have converted 300,000 persons, and to have had 42 children, of whom 17 survived him. His Diwan is in the B. M., and he wrote other works. There is an explanation of the term Zhanda-pil by M. Pictet, in the Journal Asiatique for 1843, (Series IV., Vol. II., 141). He derives it from the Sanscrit canda. According to Fraser (Journey into Khorasan, Lond. 1825, App. B., 39), it means Elephant-reviver or animator, and was given to the saint because he, at the cost of his own life, restored to life the Governor’s elephant.