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Revising Buddhism in Mughal India Through the ...
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7. The author claims to have got the opportunity to personally meet some Buddhists in Jodhpur and Rawalpindi, and he wrote about them only after watching them from close quarters and having interaction with them as well. If this were true, then it gives a clear message that, contrary to general notion, Buddhism had not completely vanished from India till mid of seventeenth century, i.e. till the author wrote his book. Its followers were at least in and around Jodhpur and Rawalpindi.
However, quite surprisingly, the author does not mention about the presence of the followers of Buddhism in any other province of India. It is interesting to note here that Abul Fazl, the author of the prominent Persian literature of the Mughal India, the A’in-i Akbari, written in the end of sixteenth century, has explicitly mentioned that he personally came across several Buddhists in and around Kashmir.' If Abul Fazi's information about the presence of the Buddhists in Kashmir were true, then it is quite unlikely that they were completely wiped out from the region within half a decade. However, the Dabistan-i-Mazahib has maintained a perturbing silence about the presence of the Buddhists in Kashmir, which was one of the most favorite resorts for all the pleasure loving Mughal kings, particularly Shah Jahan during whose period the book was written. And no serious author of the period, especially writing about the socio-religious conditions of the era, would prefer to completely overlook the arca. In this backdrop, quagmire of the Dabistan-i-Mazahib about the Buddhists of Kashmir is very baffling.
The same accusing finger may be raised towards the A'in-i Akbari as well, which was written about fifty years before the Dabistan-i-Mazahib. Abul Fazl also mentions about the presence of the Buddhists in Kashmir only; and, on the other hand, the Dabistan would like to make us believe that the followers were indeed in Jodhpur and Rawalpindi in mid seventeenth century. In the backdrop of the well known fact that Abul Fazl's mentor Akbar was in direct and regular contact with the region of Marwar (modern Jodhpur), and
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