Vada in Theory and Practice: Studies in Debates, Dialogues and Discussions in Indian Intellectual Discourses c6.s6.t4.1

c6.s6.t4.1

At the age of 42, five years before his untimely demise, Dara Shikoh had completed *Samudrasaṅgama* — translation of his Persian work *Mazm-ul-Baharain* into Sanskrit. *Sirr-e-Akbar*, comprises his translations of fifty-two Upaniṣads into Persian. In *Samudrasaṅgama* he envisaged the bridges across two powerful streams of ideologies and created a synthesis of Sufi traditions of Islam and Upaniṣadic philosophy. “I have called this text as *Samudrasaṅgama* because it is a confluence of two seas of knowledge” he says in the beginning (*jnānyor dvayar api matasamudrayor iha saṅgama iti ca asya nāma ca asthāpayaṁ* — *Samudrasaṅgama* I.2). There are twenty sections in *Samudrasaṅgama* covering comparative studies between Vedāntic concepts and Islamic view with regard to the five elements, sense-organs (*indriyas*), meditation, qualities of God, concept of soul and its relations with God, concept of creation, concept of light (*nūra*), realization of God, names of God and other terms related to Him, the concept of *siddhas*, concepts of time and space, earth and its localities as described in both the traditions, other worlds, the cosmos, concept of *pralaya* (dissolution) and the concept of *mokṣa*. After juxtaposing the theories on these categories in Vedic and Islamic thoughts and analysing them in contrast to each other, Dara opines that only terms and definitions differ, the fundamentals do not. He sees *ekavākyatā* (unity) and says that those who find difference between these two are devoid of wisdom (*bhedavādinastu kuṇṭhitamatayaḥ*). The sufis to Dara are Aikātmyavādins (advocates of unity between the two traditions).