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332;
Jijasa
42. Dārā Shukoh: A Crown Prince in search of Truth and Harmony
V.S. Bhatnagar
Prince Dārā Shukoh was born at Ajmer in 1615 A.D. His father Prince Khurram (Later emperor Shāh Jahan) had prayed at the shrine of Khwājā Muin-ud-din Chishrī for a son and at last his prayers seem to have been answered.
In 1631 when Dārā's mother Mumtaz Mahal (in whose memory Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal at Agra), died, he had just turned sixteen. His other brothers-Shujä, Aurangzeb and Murād were even younger. At that time no one knew that Aurangzeb alone would reach the famous Peacock throne wading through the blood of his brothers, displacing his father and confioing him in the Agra fort, and rule India for nearly half a century (1659-1707), strictly according to the shariat, and in the process alienate teh populace, shake the very foundations of the Mughal Empire and go down as the most conspicuous failure' in Indian history.
From the meager details we have about Dārā's early life, in calligraphy when he was about eighteen, he happened to visit, accompanied by his father, the renowned Sufi saint of the Qădiri order, Mian Mir.at Lahore, and was profoundly impressed by his piety, and learnt from him during subsequent visits some of the spiritual practices and devotional mysticism of the order.
During the next twenty years or so i.e., from 1633 A.D. to 1657 A.D. Dārā Shukoh, the Crown Prince of the largest and wealthiest empire in the world at that time, wrote two scholarly and well researched biographical works on the spiritual practices of the Sufis, a work containing aphorisms of the saints in support of his views which the orthodox Mullās and Ulema had begun to denounce as heretical, compiled a unique work giving religious and philosophical terms and concepts of the Hindus and their equivalents in Islamic phraseology, arranged under his own eye the translation of two most important works of the Hindus-one on the philosophy of life and man's duty and the other being one of the earliest works on yoga. and just before the most furiously fought war of succession (1658-59). in which he was one of the principal figures, broke out, he finished the translation of fiftytwo Upanishads which he declared to be the Hidden book referred to in the Qur'ān citing the precise verses in the Holy Book. During this period, he also brought out a Diwan or Collection of his poems. containing 133 ghazals and a number of Rubaiyat, and prepared an album of paintings representative of the style of different master painters. Indian and foreign, and specimens of calligraphy of re
