Akbar's religious world: the two reconstructions in Mobad's Dabistān

Abstract

In the early 1650s in Mughal India ‘Mobad’ (Kaikhusrau Isfandyār) wrote a remarkable work, titled Dabistān, devoted to a description of the world's major religions. He adopted an avowedly objective approach that he strives to maintain throughout. An account of the religious tendencies under Akbar is offered in a long concluding chapter, dedicated to Islam. The account is given in two nearly totally different versions. In Version A, Akbar is credited with supernatural powers, with many anecdotes offered of their exercise. In Version B, all such anecdotes have been deleted and replaced by an extensive account of inter-religious debates held under Akbar, in which Christian (and Jewish) objections to Islamic traditions figure prominently. This version also seems to have been the major source of the belief current in later times that Akbar established a sect of his own under the designation of dīn-i ilāhī. In both versions the section on Akbar closes with the insightful observation that Akbar's policy of forming a nobility composed of diverse racial and religious elements was designed to protect the monarchy from any possibility of a unified aristocratic opposition.

By any account the work titled Dabistān, by an author styling himself ‘Mobad’, completed in India in or after 1653, represented a remarkable feat for its time. It attempted a description of the major religions of the world, including Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, in that order, not forgetting, in the case of some of these religions, their numerous sects and schools. The author expressly aspired to pursue objectivity and impartiality in representing what each faith (including its various sects) stood for.¹ It is not surprising that not only did the work become so popular in India that a large number of manuscript copies of it have survived, but also that it was printed in moveable type by Nazar Ashraf in Calcutta as early as 1809, and then translated into English by D. Shea and A. Troyer as Dabistan, or School of Manners.² There followed lithographed editions, carrying the same Persian text, issued from Bombay (Ibrahim b. Muhammad, 1875) and Kanpur/Lucknow (Nawal Kishor, 1877 and 1904). More recently, the text carried by the lithographed editions has been reprinted in Tehran, with the second volume containing notes by the editor.³

One important advance came with Malik's Teheran edition. The author was finally identified as Kaikhusrau Isfandyār, alias Mirza Zulfiqar, the (grand)son of Azar Kaiwan (d. 1618 in Patna), founder of the ‘illuminationist’ (Ishrāqī) school within Zoroastrianism, with quite an extensive amount of literature to its credit.⁴

A study of the various manuscripts of the work has resulted in a distinction being made between two versions of the work, termed ‘A’ and ‘B’.⁵ It happens that in some parts, for example, that containing the description of Islamic sects, the two versions differ widely, this certainly being the case with the accounts relating to Akbar. Here Version A contains a number of stories involving the intervention of supernatural powers that are missing in Version B.⁶ Notable among these is a story narrated to the author by Ganesh Man, a close disciple of the Vedantic seer Chitr-rūp or Chitrarupa.⁷ Chitr-rūp is said to have told Ganesh Man that when Jahangir was a prince he began to defy Akbar's authority in Akbar's later years. Akbar appeared suddenly in Jahangir's presence, warning him of severe consequences, and then vanishing. Jahangir was so shaken by this apparition of his father that he made use of the occasion of the death of Akbar's mother, Hamida Banu (Maryam Makani), to come to Agra (from Allahabad) to offer his condolences but really to submit to Akbar. According to Ganesh Man, Chitr-rūp further told him that while Akbar now forgave him, he also predicted that when king Jahangir would have to concede authority to someone else, this being a prophecy, according to Chitr-rūp, of the subsequent ascendancy of Nur Jahan Begam.⁸ There was thus apparently a widespread inclination in some circles, including apparently the reclusive confidant of Jahangir, Chitr-rūp (‘Jadrup’) himself, to credit Akbar with such spiritual attainments as to be able to command supernatural powers. This is, at least, the picture presented in Dabistān’s Version A. It is possible, however, that the author of Dabistān convinced himself subsequently that these stories involving myth and miracle were best avoided, and in his Version B, carried by all the printed Persian editions, these are dropped, except for one story about Akbar's ability to speak as a newborn infant.⁹

Indeed, it would seem that throughout the author of Dabistān lacked access to either Abu'l Fazl's Akbarnāma or Ā’īn-i Akbarī or any other history of Akbar's reign, except for Badauni's Muntakhabu’t Tawārīkh, a text highly critical of Akbar's religious views and measures.¹⁰ What he had in his possession from the ‘official’ side was a collection of Abu'l Fazl's letters, including documents drafted by him, known as Mukātabāt-i ‘Allāmī. From this he now reproduced two documents (one in part), namely, a set of regulations (dastūru’l ‘amal) issued in or after 1584 (so dateable only owing to its reference to the ilāhī era), relating, among other matters, to the pursuit of a policy of religious tolerance, and an extract from a letter of Akbar to Shah ‘Abbas of Iran, sent in 1594, containing a reference to the famous principle of ṣulḥ-i kul (‘absolute peace’).¹¹ Version A of Dabistān already uses the word Ilāhī for the creed of Akbar's spiritual followers, and ilāhīyān for his spiritual followers themselves, which perhaps helped to promote the use of the designation dīn-i ilāhī for Akbar's creed in modern writing.¹²

In one passage on the oral authority of one Mutlaq Mirak we are told that in ah 1000, being deemed a critical year for Islam, Akbar now held that ‘owing to the large amount of differences of opinion, the real faith of Muhammad cannot be established for certain, despite the effort of its interpreters’. People were now offered entry into the fold of Dīn-i ilāhī without fear of force or use of compulsion. In common language these derveshes were called ‘full-fledged Ilāhīs’.¹³

Clearly by selecting the passage on ṣulḥ-i kul out of the long text of Akbar's letter to Shah ‘Abbas, and retaining Akbar's high praise for the concept in its quotation, the author of Dabistān recorded his own recognition of the policy of religious tolerance that Akbar had followed. Nevertheless, the author also noted that to Akbar, the disagreements among Muslim theologians strongly suggested that Islam now failed to possess any single or consistent system of beliefs. In this the author goes even beyond Abu'l Fazl's statements about ‘Aḥmadī Kesh’ (Islam) in the Ā’īn-i Akbarī, the text of which was not apparently available to him.

As already mentioned, there are certain statements in the Dabistān that show that while compiling his work, its author was able to make use of the text of ‘Abdu'l Qadir Badauni's history, which had for long been kept out of public view, presumably owing to his strong criticism of Akbar's religious views. The Dabistān’s reference to Abu'l Fazl's translation of a Christian tract with its invocation replacing Bismillāh is obviously derived from Badauni, as is the fact of Birbal drawing Akbar's attention to the sun's beneficent qualities.¹⁴ Indeed, a direct reference to Badauni is made when a conversation between him and Abu'l Fazl is referred to, where the latter complained of the lack of written accounts of early prophets and the inadequate notice taken of the Prophet's descendants.¹⁵

Incidentally, Version A of the Dabistān omits any reference to controversies among votaries of various religions arguing with each other in front of Akbar, except for a debate carried on between Sunnis and Shi‘as, in which the Sunnis appear to have prevailed in most points of dispute.¹⁶ Nonetheless, it has an interesting statement attributed to Guru Hargobind of the Sikhs, namely, that his father, Guru Arjan Mal, had told him that in ah 1000 (1592 ad) scholars had presented Akbar with a proposal that he should set out to remove the differences of faith among ‘the seventy-three sects of Hindus and Muslims’.¹⁷ This would have implied, of course, an effort to create a common religion.

Version B of the Dabistān is undoubtedly the one that readers and scholars have been most familiar with, it being, as it is, carried by all the printed editions of the work and having been rendered into English by Troyer and Shea. Here, in the portion on Akbar, the author seems to have undertaken a thorough edit of Version A. For one, he now weeded out practically all the reports that involved any supernatural action or phenomena, so that the report attributed to the seer Chitr-rūp (‘Jadrup’), noted above, is also eliminated. The entire original sub-chapter is reduced to just one passage, where Akbar's foster-brother Aziz Koka is reported to have admitted, on the basis of what his mother told him, that Akbar was able to speak while an infant, ‘like Christ’!¹⁸

The next section in Version B is devoted to ‘the Discussion among Religions’. The long debate between Sunnis and Shi‘as, as set out in Version A, is reproduced here.¹⁹ The reference to Ratan Nath as a source is, however, dropped; moreover, a debate follows between Muslims and Christians, in which Jews also join.²⁰ Now, while it is likely that the arguments exchanged between Sunnis and Shi‘as were common knowledge among the literati in India with knowledge of Persian, the reproduction here of arguments that Christians or Jews could offer against Muslim critics, suggests that the author had himself learnt much from the famous Sarmad, a former rabbi, abut Judaism and from Catholic priests about Christianity. The meetings with Sarmad took place at Hyderabad in ah 1057/ad 1647, and the author met his sources for Christianity in the same year at Surat.²¹ It is practically certain that the debates between Sunnis and Shi‘as as well as between Muslims and Jews and Christians are reconstructed by the author himself on the basis of what he himself had learnt of these faiths. But, if so, the extent of the detail seems remarkable.²²

When we put before us the information on Akbar and the traditions, or even rumours current about him, as recorded in Dabistān, especially in its Version A, we must infer that Akbar had, indeed, left a deep imprint on the popular mind. The stories of supernatural influences that Version A contains, at least suggest that there was a large number of people ready to believe in such rumours. Above all, the very fact that the debates among followers of different religions, in which Islam does not come out triumphant, could really thus be set out in a widely circulated work speaks much for the extent of permissiveness in such matters prevailing in the Mughal empire.

It is noteworthy, finally, that the author of Dabistān was acute enough to see a political objective as well behind the policy of tolerance that Akbar had pursued with such determination. If there was only one religious or racial group monopolising the ranks of the nobility, the monarch himself could never be secure from a conspiracy against him by the nobility. But if there was diversity of faith and race among the nobility—‘Europeans, Jews, Iranis, Turanis’, in the author's rhetorical description—the throne would be safe.²³ We have here only to read ‘Hindu’ for ‘European’ and ‘Indian Muslim’ for ‘Jew’ in the Dabistān’s rhetorical formula to name the four major elements that constituted Akbar's nobility well before he had reached even the middle years of his reign.²⁴ Such religious diversity in the ruling class—Sunni, Shi‘a, Hindu—was also, perhaps, unique in the world at that time.