Dārā Shikoh

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Dārā Shikoh (1615–59). Muslim heir-apparent of Shāh Jahān, who sought common ground between Hinduism and Islam. He regarded the two religions as ‘the confluence of two oceans’ (Qurʾān 18. 65): his views issued in Majmaʿ al-Bahrayn (‘Mingling of the Two Oceans’, 1655). He also believed that the Upaniṣads were ‘the book that is hidden’ (56. 78). As a result he began to translate Upaniṣads into Persian, in a work issuing in Sirr-i Akbar (‘The Great Secret’, 1657)—a work which, when translated into French by Anquetil Duperron (1801–2), had a great influence on European (e.g. Schopenhauer) attitudes to the East.

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