History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v1.c17.23

v1.c17.23

Dara was just turned of forty-two years. He had taken after his great-grandfather Akbar. In his thirst for pantheistic philosophy he had studied† the Talmud and the New Testament, the writings of the Muslim Sufis, and the Hindu Vedanta. The easy government of Allahabad had assisted his natural inclination, and with the help of a band of pandits he had made a Persian version of the Upanishads. The title of *Majmua-ul-Baharain* ("the Mingling of Two Oceans") which he gave to another of his works, as well as his prefatory remarks,[*] proves that his aim was to find a meeting-point for Hinduism and Islam in those universal truths which form the common basis of all true religions and which fanatics are too apt to ignore in their zeal for the mere externals of faith. Alike from the Hindu yogi Lál-dás and the Muslim faqir Sarmad, he had imbibed his eclectic philosophy, and at the feet of both he had sat as an attentive pupil. But he was no apostate from Islam. He had compiled a biography of Muslim saints, and he had been initiated as a disciple of the Muslim saint Mian Mir, which no *kafir* could have been.* The saintly Jahanara also speaks of Dara as her spiritual preceptor. The manifesto in which Aurangzeb as the champion of Islamic orthodoxy denounces Dara for heresy, ascribes to him no idolatrous practice or denial of Muhammad's prophetic mission, but only the following faults : (i) Consorting with Brahmans, yogis and sanyasis,—considering them as perfect spiritual guides and ‘knowers of God’,—regarding the Veda as a divine book, and spending his days in translating and studying it.