Indian Antiquary Vol 52

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 227

August, 1923)
BOMBAY, A.D. 1660--1667.
211
And further :" Sh. Khák Dada, the chief fountain of contemplation, born at Pergamus, was most famous by the name of Na'lbenji (the farrier)"; and at Rumeli Hissar is the laleia of . a farrier-saint, Na'lbar Mahmad Effendi, a Naqshbandi.
In the religious teaching of the Naqshbandis there was not much that would explain all this. They taught that a life could be purchased by the sacrifice of another life ; and twice Khwaja Ahrar was saved from death by men devoting themselves (becoming feila) in order to restore him to health : JRAS., 1916, p. 75.13 This example was clearly followed by Babur, when he resolved to offer up his own life to save that of Humâyûn : Memoirs, II, p. 442.
Babur, like bis descendant Aurangzeb, was buried in a tomb open to the sky. Whether Jahangir's tomb at Lahore was also hypathral is still a moot question : Journal of the Punjab Historical Society, III, p. 144. But it is noteworthy that Jahangir rebuilt Babur's tomb'in A.D. 1607-8: Memoirs, II, p. 426. This usage was certainly not confineil to the Nqh. bandis, though Khwaja Bâqi-billah has no building over his grave at Dohli : Rose, Gloss. Punjab T. and o., III, p. 550. It appears rather to have become a Chishti practica : ., p. 530. (Qutb Shah forbade a building to be erected over his tomb at Mihraulî neer Dehli.)
But the political predilections of the Naqshbandis may well have led to their persecution at the hands of the Sultans of Turkey. As we have seen, a Nürbakhshi wrote a treatise on political ethics. Khwaja Aþrår's dependents by their influence protected many poor de. fonceless persons from oppression in Samarqand, says Babur: Memoirs, I, p. 40. In truth the Naqshbandi Khwajas seem to have sought to give new life to the old idea, that beside the secular King should stand a divinely-guided adviser, the keeper of his seal and his conscience, and the interpreter of the spirit, not merely of the letter, of the formal laws.
BOMBAY, A.D. 1660-1667. (A few remarks on Dr. Shafaat Ahmad Khan's Résumé of
Anglo-Portuguese Negotiations. 1)
BY S. M. EDWARDES, C.S.I., c.v.o. DR. SHAFAAT A. KHAN's new work, which consists of important documents preserved in the Public Record Office, the India Office, and the British Museum, linked together into a more or less connected narrative by the author's explanatory comments, throws much light upon the circumstances of Bombay in the latter half of the seventeenth century and on the tortuous negotiations between England and Portugal, which accompanied the surrender of the Island. An important feature of the materials here collected "ie their wealth of information on the commercial usages of the period. For it was not merely a question of petty dues and vexatious tolls: it was the vital problem of the security of the Company's trade and the safety of its subjects. Moreover, writes Dr. Khan, "the elaborate reports of the Council, the active support of the King, and the numerous representations to the Portuguese Govern. ment, show the intimate connection between the foreign and economio policy of England; while the keen and sustained interest manifested by Charles II in the varied colonial and Commercial activities of the times vindicate that monarch from the reckless charges hurled by his opponents."
To the student of Bombay history almost every page of this book contains something of interest. One meets, for example, with new variants of the spelling of the name of the Island, which do not seem to have been noticed by previous historians. In an account of the Anglo-Dutch attack on the Island in A.D. 1626 we find "Bumbay"; David Davis' description of the same event speaks of "Bumbaye ; "while Kerridge in his dispatch of January 4th,
13 For a much earlier instance of the practice vide R. Hartmann, al-Qushairt'Darstellung des Súfitums, Türk. Bibl., 18, p. 46.
1 Anglo-Portuguese Negotiations relating to Bombay, A.D. 1660-1077, by Shafaat Ahmad Khan, Litt. D. F.R.Hist.s., University Professor of History, Allahabad. Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press.