About : tv stand wood with mount
Title : tv stand wood with mount
tv stand wood with mount
wood: there are moments in historywhen civilisations aspire to greatness. india had done so in ancient times, and at the end of the middle agesit did so again. and it was the coming of islam that inspiredthe next great phase of indian history. today the subcontinent is hometo half of all the world's muslims. the ebb and flow of its historyhas been shaped by the encounter of the twocivilisations of india and islam. and in all of history,there is no more dramatic tale.
the next chapter in the story of india. muslim tradershad settled in south india within memory of the prophet's lifetime, but the coming of islamonly began to work profound change in the historyof the subcontinent in the middle ages, with invasionsand settlements here in the north. that story begins in the city of multan,in what's now pakistan, exactly 1,000 years ago. here in multan, a series of events began
which would shift forever the balanceof history in the subcontinent, and the key figurewas sultan mahmud of ghazni. few characters in historyhave aroused more violent disagreement. to some, he was a great prince, a builder of empiresand a champion with a faith. to others, an oppressor,a fanatic and an iconoclast. the headof a great muslim empire in afghanistan, mahmud occupiedthe then hindu city of multan and used it as a basefor a series of raids into india.
so your family were connectedwith mahmud of ghazni's family? with mahmud, yes. and you've been herein this quarter of the city -for 900, nearly 1 ,000 years?-nearly 1 ,000 years old. living here all the time.when our ancestor came, you see, and when he camped here, you see,at the site where he is buried... the gardezi's ancestor camewith mahmud's son in the 1 1 th century. ...through these doorswhere he came riding on a lion... -oh, yeah. there you go.-...with a live snake as a whip
in his hand and a pairof pigeons flocking over his head. but their ancestorwasn't a warrior but a holy man. one among many who camein the middle ages into india. so this isfrom the 1 2th century, then, is it? this is his tomb.he was a sufi, an islamic mystic, and the sufi saints, who are still lovedacross pakistan and north india, will be very important in this story,for it was the sufi saints who first brought islamand the people of india together. amongst the saints of multan,i think shah yousaf, our ancestor,
is the first of the muslim saintsto arrive in multan. i would call himthe founder of muslim multan. so the age of mahmudwas a time of violence but also the beginningof a meeting of minds, for, like the hindu holy men, the sufistaught that people should strive to be with god without any attachment. and there lay the common ground betweenislam and the religions of india. ah, the old gardezi library!i remember this place. this was foundedby my great-great-great-grandfather.
and even the dreaded mahmudhimself is remembered here as a prince of high culture. i'm an old-manuscript type,musty old books. -some of them are 400, 500 years old.-fantastic. he was the patron of the famous epic,ferdowsi's book of kings. the one i'm interest in is the ferdowsi. this is the ferdowsi. ferdowsi, as you know,was commissioned by mahmud of ghazni to write the history of persia andthis part of the world in poetry form,
and mahmud promisedthat he would give him one gold coin per couplet... -for a couplet.-for a couplet. -he wrote 40,000 couplets.-40,000 couplets? so mahmud, i think,had a second thought, and he said, ''a gold coin is too much.i think i'll give you ''a silver coin per couplet.''and he refused to accept, and he went back home,and he wrote a satire against mahmud, which became so popular,in which he criticises mahmud's ancestry
and everything,especially his mother's side, even his mother's ancestry,and he says at one point... (speaking persian) ''oh, king mahmud. oh, conquerorof the countries, of nations. ''if you are not scared of anyone,at least be scared of god.'' -wow!-and that become so popular that every child in ghazni was recitingthose couplets of the satire more than that of the shahnama,of the original text. -so mahmud deeply regretted that.-so mahmud, he regretted that
and he decidedto honour his word and give a gold coin. mahmud leda dozen great expeditions into india. the most famous left multanin november, 1 025. it took them a monthto get down from multan to the sea. to survive through this kind of terrain, they took 20,000 camelsto carry the water. in these earlier attacks on india,the goal wasn't conquest but plunder. their target in 1 025,the famous hindu temple town of somnath, which was said to be incredibly richin gold and silver.
though as can still happen, the invasion was givena different public justification as a war against the infidel. there are many stories aboutwhy mahmud attacked somnath. long, long ago, in arabia,there was a goddess called manat. when islam came, the shrinesof the goddesses were destroyed, but according to one versionof the story, the stone image of manatwas taken away from arabia and brought here to india,
and somnathbecame her temple, somanatha, and it was to fulfilthe work of the prophet that mahmud ledhis expedition to the sea. (singing in gujarati) that story no doubtmade mahmud look good with the caliph in baghdadas a defender of the faith, but it was fantasy.he'd come to loot the wealth of india, and these tales becamepart of the mythology of the peoplein the border land of rajasthan.
to them, mahmud is still a bogeyman, and they still sing oftheir heroic battles in the middle ages against the afghans and the turks. (camels snorting) (camel farting) ah, nothing likethat old sound of grumpy camels clearing their throatsand farting all night, is there? well, there isn't. mahmud's attack on somnathled him 750 miles south from multan
across the great desert of thar into gujaratand down to the arabian sea. there on the seashorelay the rich pilgrim shrine of somnath inside a fortified town. the shiva temple here was destroyedand rebuilt several times before it was restoredin the 1 950s after independence. mahmud reached here in january, 1 026, sacked the city, destroyed the idoland plundered the temple's gold. in today's india, the taleis still remembered with bitterness.
(speaking hindi) mahmud's expeditionto somnath was written up by his persian and turkic court poets as an emblematic clashbetween islam and hindu idolatry. the great historian al biruni,who was no fan of mahmud, went with him to india, says that the 1 2 great plunderingexpeditions engendered a hatred among hindus for the turks,by which he means the muslims, but, as always in history,
and especially in the history of india,there's another story, and what appears to begin here as a clash of civilisationswill become over time one of the most remarkablecultural crossovers in the history of civilisation, what a great indian muslim princewill later call the meeting of two oceans. and it's al biruni,a muslim scholar who learnt sanskrit, who gives us the first signpost.
''you must bear in mind, ''he says, ''that the hindus entirely differfrom us in almost everything. ''and the barriersseparating us are many, ''language, manners,customs, rules of purity. ''and india is such a diverse land, ''from kashmir in the north,to the southern cultures, ''telugu, kannada and tamil. ''in religion,the indians totally differ from us ''as we believe in nothingin which they believe and vice versa.
''india's hard to understand,though i have a great liking for it, ''and our apparent differenceswould be perfectly transparent ''if there were more contact between us. '' but in 1 1 92 there came a new phase, military conquest by afghans and turkswho became sultans of delhi. here they built a giant minaret,which doubled as a tower of victory. 240 feet high, it's one of the wondersof the world, the qutab minar. -it's called the might of islam.-wood: the might of islam. so this is a statement of conquest?
this is foreign conquerorscoming in and creating their base here. this base was very importantfor taking the conquest into other parts of india,so you can very well imagine the qutab complex was the placewhich established muslim rule in india. this was builtaround the end of the 1 2th century. there was a time when this lal kot areawas taken over by the afghans. the first indo-islamic mosquein india is this particular mosque. -this is the place?-this is the place, the first mosque. wood: and all around us,the remains of hindu columns.
balasubramaniam: the inscription onthe eastern gate says that 2 7 temples were actually dismantled to constructthis quwwat-ul-islam mosque. it was as mucha political as a religious statement. since its first spreadin the 7th century, the islamic worldhad encountered many other religions but nowhere as big and diverse as india. the fact was,as the delhi sultans soon realised, they couldn't possibly convert india,co-existence had to follow. the different dynasties of the sultansof delhi ruled here for 300 years,
and you can still pick up their tracestoday in the back streets of old delhi. -wood: so where are we heading?-we are going to mubarakul village, where a syed king, who ruledsometime in 1 4 30, is buried, what was then just an obscure village, built this rather elaborate tombthat we're about to see, and that's it. mubarak shah's tomb? (jalil speaking hindi) we're looking for the tombof one of the delhi sultans, which over the centuries has becomea shrine for the local community.
-that thing there?-yeah. yes. i don't believe this.look at this. this is just amazing. why has it been caged in, though? because there's a very real fearhistory might reach out and bite you. (wood laughing) and in a bizarre twist,the sultan has become a local holy man. our friend here tells usthat soon after a marriage, the newlyweds would come here and pray. -is not a holy man but a sultan.-that's fantastic.
but he has become holythrough the years. don't ask me how. in an age when all hindus inthe north were forced to pay a head tax to the sultans to practise their faith, here's a clue as to howthings can change on the ground. you won't die of hungerif you live in this vicinity because he will make surethat you have livelihood. you won't die of hunger? yeah, yeah. so he still sort of protectsthe people who live around him? yes, a fantastic idea, isn't it?
but the biggest meeting of mindswas brought about by the sufi saints. and these are really, really basic, the idea beingthat the people who came to these... for through the sufis,the devotees of both faiths found their common ground. now you can see the pots in the treesreally well from here, can't you? so these are all successful wishes? these are wishesthat have come true, yes. and not just in folk beliefsbut in an idea deeply rooted
in islam's mystical traditions, the unity of all beingand of all religions. the person who lies buried hereis abu bakar sheik haidery tusi. he belonged tothe haidereya qalanderya silsala. this is a sufi orderthat came from iran or iraq? man: iran.wood: yes. iran? this is not just a conquest, is it?this is an intermingling? no, and a lot of people nowincreasingly see that, in india, at least in north india,islam didn't spread through the sword,
it was through men like the personwho's buried here, these sufis, and they sort of went onlike a continuous stream, as it were, for 300 or 400 years. and perhaps real change in historyhas to happen at the grass roots. the poet amir khusro grew uphere in the delhi sultanate. he's still a household namein old muslim families. he's typical of the age,a muslim whose parents were turkic, who spoke persian.and this is his voice. ''india is our beloved motherland,a paradise on earth.
''intelligence isthe natural gift of its people. ''there can be no better guide to lifethan the wisdom of india. '' this cult is frowned on bythe really orthodox kind of islamic... yes.wahhabi islam would find this sacrilege, almost all of it, or consider itcompletely un-islamic actually. so in the middle ages, in the north, despite war and violence,forced conversion, discrimination against hindus,the foundations were laid for the amazing eventswhich would follow in the 1 6th century.
this is one of the mostwonderful viewpoints in history. this is the end of the khyber pass, the borderbetween pakistan and afghanistan. this is the route taken by manyof the great invaders in history who came into the indian subcontinent. alexander the great,genghis khan and tamburlaine. in late 1 525, new invaders came down this corridor of historyfrom afghanistan. originally from central asia,the moghuls had made kabul their base
from which to mountan invasion of the plains of india. after four failures,this was the final throw on which their leader baburhad staked everything. it's april 1 526, the heat already clampingon the delhi plain, temperature pushing uptowards 40 degrees. the moghul army, 1 2,000 men. their leader,a grizzled veteran at 4 3 years old, inured to war since he was 1 0,
descendent of genghis khanand tamburlaine. and ahead of him, at panipat, the sultan of delhi, ibrahim,with an army of 1 00,000 men and 1 ,000 war elephants. babur's place of destiny,panipat,just north of delhi, was the scene of several great battlesin indian history, going back to the legendary warsof the ancient epic of the mahabharata, but now it was muslim ruleragainst muslim invader. both sides had taken their positionsa week before.
both sides were preparing. we know about babur's preparationmore than ibrahim's because babur has left a record behind.he was outnumbered by 1 to 5. -wow.-yes. he's commandeered,he says, about 700 carts and tied them togetherwith fibre cables. what's he trying to do there,to protect himself? he's tied cannons in these carts, yes. there are about several hundredcannons tied like this right in front.
he shoots the enemy with these cannons, which isfor the first time happening in india. it's in the battle of panipatthat it's happening in india. -the use of artillery?-the use of artillery on that scale. mukhia: behind that, his cavalry,and behind that, his infantry. -and how does he win?-well... is it the artillerythat makes the difference? partly, very largely, it does makesa difference because, you know, what do the elephantsand the horses do against artillery?
wood: so, like his contemporaries,cort�s and pizarro in the new world, in one battle, the moghul conquistadorbabur had gained the heartland of india. in thanksgiving,he built a little mosque overlooking the battlefield,the first moghul mosque in india, so this placemarks the start of a new age and of a new style that we now think ofas quintessentially indian. this is a palacebuilt by babur for his queen. he's saying it's a mosque built by baburfor his army to say their prayers. they're giving me two different stories.
in india, babur is known as a warrior,as a conqueror, a great soldier. in his home, back home in tashkand area, probably nobody even knowsthat he came to india and conquered, but they remember him asa great poet, a very, very great poet. he's a man of many, many parts andabove all, a very honest sincere man, a very charming, loveable man. he was also a very devout muslim, not a very, what shall i say,dogmatic muslim, but a devout muslim, who said his prayers very regularly,five times a day.
after saying his prayers, he wentand had a cup of wine, of course, but... -so it's a very human figure, you know.-hmm. -it's a figure of a live man.-yeah, yeah, yeah. -a regular guy, you said to me earlier.-a regular guy. and after the battle,what babur does next is another clue to what will follow. he enters delhi,but doesn't plunder the city. instead, he comes hereto the old sufi shrine of nizamuddin, still a favourite among delhitesof all communities,
hindu as well as muslim. and here he offers a humble prayer before going back to camp to havea cup of wine and write poetry. thank you very much. and that will set the toneof the next amazing phase of the story of india. devotion to the sufiswill mark all of babur's descendants. just as respect for all religions markedhis ancestors back to tamburlaine. wood: beautiful place.
under the moghuls,the story of islam and india will move on to a different place,which still has lessons for the world today. oh, that's very, very kind.thank you. thank you very much. this is the most importantshrines of the saints in delhi. yes, this great sufi saint. wood: great sufi saint. yeah, yeah. the tale of the moghulsis a family story. one of the most remarkableand gifted dynasties in history,
they ruled india for 330 yearsbefore they were deposed by the british, but immediately after babur's death,his son humayun was driven into exile, where his wife gave birthto a son who would become one of the greatestof all indian rulers, akbar. the tale of akbar,takes us first to rajasthan, where the local hindu rajas hadalways resisted the muslim conquerors. in the 1 6th century,the majority of indian people in the north were still hindus,who followed the old religions of india, of shiva, vishnu and the goddess.
they had often enduredintolerance and forced conversion under the medieval sultans. man: kushbu. kushbu, i'm michael. my name is michael. -and this is your brother?-mohit. -mohit.-mohit. thank you.this is best place in jodhpur. akbar would change the relationsbetween hindu and muslim in india. when he was born,in the house of relatives
of the royal family of jodhpur, there were omens which foretoldhis future greatness, just as there were for other giantsof history, like alexander. so, back in 1 542,when the astrologers did his horoscope, what did they seein akbar's line of life? i asked the present maharaja'sastrologer to redraw his chart. mr sharma, it's lovely to see you again.hello, abhisekh. -that's great.-it's a great pleasure. so? how did we do? what...
first of all, the date,the 25th of october, 1 542. -sunday morning.-sharma: this was sunday morning, saturday night and the sunday morning.2:00 am is the... -wood: 2:00 am?-yeah. at the time of his birth,sagittarius was in the fifth house. that's astrologically. wood: so this isthe emperor akbar's chart here? -yes.-fantastic. and this becomes computer-made chart.
he born in the leo ascendant. -in a leo ascendant?-these people are very confidentabout what they are doing, and they are very keen,and they are focused about their goals. the aspect of sun and saturn,it is the kingdom, yog as we describe in the astrology,which is the maharaj yog. see, he was bornwhen scorpio was in the fourth house, and that was the reasonthat he was bound to have lead a goodand comfortable life,
though born at a different strata, but the horoscope also indicates thathe was not to get ancestral property, and this holds goodbecause he later acquired kingdom. after the sixth day of his birth, the astrologermust have calculated his birth chart because we believe that on sixth daythe goddess of fortune comes, and he writes the fortune of a child. -they saw the future fortune...-yeah. because the sun and saturn.
the saturn is the main planetwho gives the kingdom. if the saturn is on the highest state, it must have given the kingdom. it willgive at that time they have thought. wood: and they were right!i suppose, yes. akbar became kingin 1 556, when his father died after falling downhis library steps in delhi. at that moment, much of north indiawas controlled by their enemies, and the moghulsmight just have been an unlamented blip in the story of india.
it's an unlikely place, isn't it? but there was a beautifulmoghul garden here in 1 556. akbar was proclaimed kinghere at kalanaur by generals loyal to his father. thank you. so where is takht-i-akbari? -just...-here? -this is it?-that's it. well, how about that? isn't that extraordinary?
it doesn't look as if there'sany of the garden left, does it? it's a beautiful spot.akbar came back several times in his later life.gorgeous, isn't it, this evening? so this is the placewhere he was formally proclaimed king in february, 1 556. that was the throne platform there.he would have sat on that. you have to rememberhe's only a 1 3-year-old boy. he'd been brought up in exileamong tough warriors in afghanistan. you can imagine the sort, i'm sure.
he played truant from school,preferred outdoor sports and games and remained illiterate all his life. what is your name? -manpreet.-manpreet. yeah? and how old are you? -man: twelve.-twelve? -twelve.-twelve. so you are nearly the same age as akbar.he was 1 3, and you are 1 2. it's an incredible thought, isn't it,
that he was only this agewhen he became king? maybe because the intellectuals and the scholars and the mullahshad never got their intellectual straightjacketon him, he retained a wonderful capacity to make unexpected,unconventional connections. as we would put it,to think outside the box. at this point, the moghul kingdom had shrunk to a few small pocketsaround kandahar, lahore and delhi,
but young akbar acts fast, defeatshis enemies and wins the kingdom. and then over the next 1 0 years,he expands it across to bengal and down to the deccan to becomeone of the world's great powers. and soon the illiterate, young tough guywas showing unexpected skills in rulership and an unsuspected interestin india's different philosophies. akbar is not very religious. he has attachments to sufis,superstitious attachments, let us say, to the ajmer shrine and so on.
india was what he experienced.he liked its language. he liked mixing with the people. as you know, he was a bitof a loafer in the beginning, so he loafed with people, and often went to gatheringseven when he had become a king, without courtiers, incognito. he was a different typeof sovereign altogether. (chanting prayers) in january 1 575,
akbar camewith his closest hindu advisor, here to the junction of the gangesand the jamuna rivers at the timeof the great bathing festival. what akbar saw herewas one of those great hindu melas, where millions of peoplecome down to the junction of the rivers to take a holy bath. akbar's advisor tells the storyof a strange thing happens at that time. he says, when the planet jupiterenters the constellation of aquarius, and then a small mound, island, risesin the middle of the river ganges,
and all the peoplego out to it to do worship. akbar was so touched by his experience that he namedthe hindu sacred place of prayag, ilahabad, or today,allahabad, the city of god. so, here, having already liftedthe hated tax on hindus, akbar begins to embraceall india's religions. (all singing) the sikhs were oneof the radical religious groups who'd sprung up out of the interactionof hinduism and islam
in the 1 6th century. their first guru,nanak, who died in 1 539, asserted, ''there is no hindu or muslim, '' and laid stress on the worshipof one god and works of charity. his legacy today is a world faith, singled out by the turban that all menmust wear to enter their holy shrines. and it was akbarwho gifted them land here in amritsar to built the golden temple, the most famous landmarkof sikhism today.
it would be under the later moghulsthat the sikhs became a military sect, bearing the symbolstill carried by all sikh men today, what they call the five k's. the first k is the kesh,which is unshorn hair. -you don't cut your hair?-no. hence, therefore the appearance,the beard. you don't cut your hair. and second one is kanga,which is a wooden comb. -comb?-wooden comb, yes. -and you keep that with you?-we keep that in the hair here.
and third one is bracelet,it is called kara, starts with k. fourth k is your kaccha, -which is baggy shorts.-briefs. baggy briefswhich you wear as undergarment. -right. and the fifth one, finally?-is kirpan. kirpan is actually...now if i can take you through this. this is not a sword,and it's not a knife, either... -may i look?-yes, sure. it is called kirpan.it is to defend your respect,
to stand against the tyranny of the time so that we could defend the faith. ''now it has becomeclear to me, ''said akbar, ''that it cannot be wisdom to assertthe truth of one faith over another. ''in our troubled world,so full of contradictions, ''the wise person makes justicehis guide and learns from all. ''perhaps in this way the door may beopened again whose key has been lost. '' the new age demanded a new capital. fatehpur sikri was built in the 1 570sin the plain near agra.
above the entrance is a quotationfrom the christian saviour and muslim prophet,jesus. this is the great gateof akbar's city at fatehpur sikri. the inscription reads this: ''jesus, peace be upon him, said this, '''the world is a bridge,cross it but build no house upon it '''for the world endures but a moment,and the rest is unknown.''' the new city was builtaround the tiny shrine of a sufi saint whose blessing akbar had soughtto get a son and heir,
and the lavish celebrationswhen his son was born are still rememberedby the ancient guardian of the shrine. while the new city was being built and akbar was beginninghis philosophical enquiries, he also oversaw a great reformof moghul government. habib: the administrative structure ofmoghul empire is practically complete. provinces are established in 1 580. the centralised administrationis then already established. in 1 574, he establisheshis military service.
bureaucracy and army are combined. habib: he has a new land revenue system. conquests are going on, but nowakbar is not personally involved. wood: okay. so actually this philosophy is, the philosophy of politicallyleisure hours, let us say. -partly leisure hours.-personal search. but, you see, he's seekingfor a justification of sovereignty. wood: and how to justify sovereignty,
to create an allegiance in a nation ofsuch diversity? that was the question. akbar's big idea was very simple. no one religion can claim absoluteknowledge, absolute authority. he'd already had discussionswith muslim wise men, sunni and shia, but he'd been shocked by how quicklythey'd come to blows with each other. now he summoned leadersof all the religions of the world, christians, muslims,hindus, jews, parsees, jains to findthe common ground of all religion. and in those weekly seminarshere at fatehpur,
perhaps for the first timein human history, the absolute claims of religion itselfwere put under scrutiny. habib: every religion is wrong, but all differenceshave to be tolerated. he says, in india,there are so many religions, and therefore the sovereignshould not identify with one. he's the... just as god can'tidentify himself with one religion, so the sovereign can't identify,as sovereign. wood: from moghul indiato christian europe,
it was a renaissance world, and akbar even received a letterfrom his contemporary, elizabeth i. in her letter to the emperor akbar, queen elizabeth of englandsays something very interesting. she says that the singular reportof your majesty's humanity has reached even thesemost distant shores of the world. humanity. not power, glory, riches. but it's right to talkabout akbar's humanity still. it's what makes him oneof the most engaging figures
in the history of the world. but it's not the whole story.the other side is his rationality. don't think for a moment that his dreamof one religion was some new age whim. it was conceived as rationallyas all his other great policies. his drastic overhaul of the land revenueand taxation system of his great empire, his overhaulof the moghul civil service, his effort to make his hindu subjectsmore equal under the law. these were all big ideas,the sort of big ideas that would become part of the mainstream in europein the 1 8th century enlightenment,
but in 1 6th century europe,no renaissance prince, not even the brilliant elizabeth tudor,tried so consistently as akbar to bring in the age of reason. after a reign of nearly 50 years, akbar died in 1 605,two years after elizabeth i. he would be succeededby his son,jahangir, and his grandson jahan,both men of high sensibility but with inner demonsdrawn to dissipation. akbar had laid the foundations,administrative, fiscal and moral,
for moghul india's future greatness. at his death, india hadthe largest gdp in the world. before it lay the possibilityof an indo-islamic enlightenment. so what went wrong?why did it fail after akbar's death? why did the age of reason not come? well, it wouldn't bethe first time in history, and it certainly wouldn't be the last,that an empire lost its way because ofover-consumption, extravagance, bad leadership and unwise foreign wars.
through the 1 7th centurythe moghuls pursued their futile dream of regaining their ancestral homelandin central asia. and at home, they engagedin vast building projects. the most famous was the taj mahal. now you might have thought thatthe best-known building in the world had no more secrets. the taj is told in all the touristguides as a monument to love. the tomb of shah jahan's favourite wife,mumtaz, and later of jahan himself, a teardrop on the face of time.
but new discoveries suggest the design may go backto the moghuls' beloved sufi saints, that the key to the taj may bea mystic map of a sufi's dream. it's a map of the day of judgement.the cosmos is seen as a rectangle. on one side, the fields of paradise,on the other side, the path, a serat, the way, the bridgeover which the righteous must pass and be judged on judgement day. in the middle, a pool,and the congregation grounds for the faithfulon that day of judgement.
and in the centre,the throne of god himself. when you walk through the taj,you come finally to the great platform on which the tomb chamber stands, underneath whichshah jahan and mumtaz are buried. but that's not the last pointin the journey. to see the full plan unfold,we've got to cross the river and see what's on the other side. now you begin to seewhat the architect of the taj is doing. he's including the sacred river jamuna,the hindu sacred river,
in the architectureof his own sacred space. legend saysthat jahan planned a black taj as a mirror image on the other side, but archaeologists have foundsomething more haunting still. across the river wasa walled paradise garden. in it were night scented treesand flowers, red cedars and magnolias. there were fruits and nuts,jujubes, mangoes, sugar palms, chiraunjis, whose sweet kerneltastes like pistachio. here the great moghul could sitin his pavilion in the moonlight
and look at his creation. so the taj is a productof the hindu-muslim synthesis that took place over much of indiain the 1 7th century, but the world's richest economyhad begun to decline. british visitors give graphic accountsof the shocking poverty of the rural workforcein jahangir's day, even thoughthe cities were still wealthy, agra here,three times the size of london. but more than 20% of the national incomewas spent on the court elite,
on an upper class who livedat a higher level of consumption than any european aristocracy. you can still glimpsethe incredible richness of moghul art in the jewellers workshops in jaipur. the kasliwal family were jewellersto the moghul court in the 1 7th century. jewellery was always consideredto be a symbol of power. and what stone is this? -a ruby.-ruby. and also with the moghuls whatwas quite treasured were the spinels,
-you know, which are quite rare stones.-what is a spinel? spinels. for a long time,spinels were confused to be rubies. so when we see those picturesof the moghul emperors often with what look like rubies,it's probably these. god, how amazing. these exquisite moghul artswent from the scale of the taj to the smallest turban pin. if you see, that's the base of the box,and then you open it inside. -see, there are various...-oh, yeah. gosh, now look. so you can see through it.it's so... it's just like a filigree.
kasliwal: it's all cut work.it's almost like lacework in gold, so it's perfect from each angle. it was your ancestorsthat actually made these things. kasliwal: i like this one here,like an opium box. all these are rubieswhich have been calibrated to fit into this shape. so the great moghul would have kepthis opium in something like this and, what, laced his wine with it or... did they smoke itor put it in their wine?
no, opium was... you know,we used to have opium ceremonies where you would offer opiumto your guests. the moghulshad come to india as conquerors, but bearing the tolerant viewsof their ancestors, they ruled north indiafor more than 300 years. at their best, creating an extraordinaryhindu-muslim synthesis, almost healing the wound of history. and now, with hindsight,after the british and the partition of india in 1 94 7,
their wonderful buildingsand creations have become memory rooms for the story of india and also, perhaps,symbols of what might have been. but go to great citieslike lahore in pakistan today, the most romantic of moghul cities,and you still feel the living presence of that lost world, its poignant beauty and its refinement. (traditional indian music playing) but in the mid 1 650s,
behind the extravagance of the court,discord was looming. the ailing jahan,now incompetent, was imprisoned, and his sons preparedto fight for the kingdom. very good.very, very good. thank you. beautiful. the civil war wasas much about faith as about empire. the younger son, aurangzeb,wanted to return to orthodox islam. the elder, dara,following in akbar's footsteps had translated hindu sacred texts. it's gorgeous, isn't it?when was this written?
this was written in 1 655. he explains in the introductionthat, having become a sufi, he wanted to find out aboutthe wisdom of the indian religions, and he also mentions that he's writtenthis work for his family only, not for the general public. dara even tells how the hindu god rama had met him in a dream and embraced him. dara's project was bold in his own time, but now, in the age of wars on terror,almost inconceivable.
he took his lead from the sufi ideaof the unity of being and the koran's revelation thatgod had sent messengers to earth before the prophet mohammed,and he argued for the unity of religion. islam and hinduism were twins,he said, hairs of the same head. he tells us,''i talked to the hindu holy men, ''people who had attained ''the highest levelof spiritual enlightenment ''and in our conversationsthat were free and open, ''i detected, although therewere verbal differences,
''no essential disagreementon our understanding of god, ''and so i decidedto write a book about that, ''about the religionsof the two communities, ''and i called itthe meeting place of the two oceans. '' it was a project that was heroic,quixotic even, and it would cost himhis life and his crown. the decisive battlebetween dara and aurangzeb was fought outside ajmer in 1 658. now the story unfoldswith all the momentum
and awful sense of destinyof a shakespearian tragedy. the battle was fought herein this wide valley just outside ajmer,on the railway line to rajasthan. dara and his european artillery officershad chosen a good position with their wings anchored on the hillson either side of us, but there was one weaknessto the position. a secret path led over the mountainsand round to the back of dara's army, and he was betrayed to aurangzeb. the issue nowwas what should be done with dara.
to gauge the public mood,aurangzeb decided to humiliate him, strip him of all marks of office and mount him ona clapped-out old female elephant driven by a slave in rags, parade him heredown the great market street of delhi. but the onlookerswere all horrified by dara's fall. many of them burst into tears. with that, aurangzebdecided that dara should die. the killers came that nightto his prison by humayun's tomb.
there they found dara cooking lentilswith his little boy, prince salim. his son clung desperatelyto his father's legs but was dragged away. dara was overpowered,and they cut his head off and sent it to his brother. ''ugh,'' said aurangzeb,''i wouldn't look the kaffir in the face ''while he was still alive,and i won't now.'' and he sent his head in a boxto their father, shah jahan, in his prison in the palace in agra.
jahan opened it at tablewhile he was eating, collapsed, fainting,broke his front teeth. as for dara's little boy, he was givena draft of opium and then strangled. the father and the son were buried here,in the tomb of humayun. dara's death marksthe end of that story. but for all the ebb and flowof india's history since then, the quest for hindu-muslim unityhas never been abandoned. religions still,from that time till today... religions are the same,the teachings are the same.
and it isthe misinterpretation which takes the brotherhood apart. whether it is hinduor muslim or sikh or christian, if that person followshis religion correctly, so i don't thinkthere will be any problem because you will do correct,each and every thing correct. we are talking about specially india,and in india, it is so diversifiedas far as religions are concerned, i think the most diversified countryin the world.
-i think so.-as far as religions are concerned, as far as the cultures are concerned,as far as the languages are concerned. can we judge the pastby the standards of the 2 1 st century? should we judge our time by theirs? the moghul empirebegan and ended with war. in a few decades, they created a civilisational wonderlandhere in india, a kind of indo-islamic synthesis. their rulers werenot only practical men but visionaries,
babur's imperial dreams,akbar's utopian visions, but waiting in the wingswith ominous patience were the british,who had a very different idea of what bringing inthe age of reason could mean. next in the story of india,the last invaders, the british. the first war of freedom... so your family were committed -to fighting against the british?-man: yes. ...and the horrors of the great mutiny.
-wood: and what happened here?-the british destroyed it, with a 1 6 pound gun. wood: the balance sheetof the british raj... it was the britisherswho gave us a complete map of india. ...and the coming of freedom. you know, bondage, nobody likes.everybody likes to be free.