"JAHANGIR Converses with Gosain Jadrup," from a Jahangir-nama manuscript, c. 1620."
The King and the Ascetic.
By B.N. Goswami
IN our own benighted days of strife and divisions; it is good sometimes to retreat into the past and feel its texture.
While working on an essay on Mughal painting recently, I was struck by the fact of how often, and with what sympathy, the painters of the Imperial ateliers rendered encounters between kings and ascetics, even specific encounters between their own royal masters and men of God. When one sees this from the Akbari period, it comes as no great surprise, for such was the nature of that emperor. But it is what one sees from the succeeding reign that comes as a surprise.
Jahangir is not seen by most of us in the same light as his father. His many personal failings and his political vacillations apart — and his great aestheticism notwithstanding — one does not associate with him an inwardly turned nature, a true inclination towards leading what is well described as an ‘examined life’. And yet there are extraordinary paintings from his reign in which one sees him in the company of holy men, in which one does not get the feeling that these were made only for projecting an image which found favour with the Muslim clergy.
Among the best known of the works from his reign is the allegorical painting by Bichitr which shows the emperor, seated on a magnificent hour-glass throne, while several men — powerful men — wait upon him , eager to receive his attention: the king of England, James I, stands at the side, well below the throne; so does a heavily turbaned man who is seen sometimes as the Sultan of Turkey.
But the emperor’s attention, not even his gaze, is directed towards these men of the world: he stretches his long arm, on the other hand, to hand over a book to a simple Shaikh, a holy man in the Islamic tradition, as a mark of respect and favour. The image is completed by the addition to the painting of some verses in Persian which speak of his being a true “padshah”, both in surat and ma’ani — in an outward appearance and inward feeling. It is an affecting work, sumptuous in execution but, more than that, reaching out well beyond its surface.
Jahangir was given to unpredictable conduct sometimes, even to sudden acts of bigotry. But what I find irresistible in his autobiography, the celebrated “Tuzuk,” are passages where he speaks, as if articulating his innermost thoughts, of his responses to holy men. There are two such passages which I wish to cite here, and both of them, interestingly, relate to his encounters with Hindu ascetics.
The first of these took place close to home, in the region of Pindori in Gurdaspur district where an important Vaishnava establishment is located. The followers of this gaddi of Bhagwanji, the founder, and his chief disciple, Narayanji, in fact speak repeatedly of the emperor’s visit to the place, thus establishing both its antiquity and its sanctity.
Here, according to the Vaishnavas’ version, the emperor saw Narayanji perform a miracle. The emperor’s version is somewhat different, and one should hear it in his own words. He was at that time travelling through these parts. “At this time”, he says, “it was reported to me that there was a sannyasi Moti (mauni, one under a vow of silence, is what he meant) in the neighbourhood who had entirely gained control over himself. I ordered them to bring him so what I might ascertain the real state of affairs.
They call Hindu devotees sarb basi; by usage the word has become sannyasi (renouncing everything). There are many degrees among them, (one of which) ... is the Moti (mauni) order. They put themselves in the figure of a cross and ‘surrender’ themselves.
For instance, they never speak. If for 10 days and nights they stand in one place, they do not move their feet forwards or backwards, in fact, make no movement at all, and remain like fossils. When he came into my presence I examined him, and found a wonderful state of persistence.”
Jahangir’s putting the sannyasi — evidently Narayanji — to rigorous test of his powers follows. But onemust turn to the other passage which is truly moving. He speaks in it of Jadrup Gosain, a Hindu ascetic, who used to live at Ujjain and from there moved later to Mathura.
“On Monday, the 12th”, the emperor writes in his 14th year, “my desire to see the Gosain Jadrup again increased, and hastening to his hut, without ceremony, I enjoyed his society.
Sublime words were spoken between us. God Almighty has granted him an unusual grace, a lofty understanding, an exalted nature, and sharp intellectual powers, with a God-given knowledge and a heart free from the attachments of the world, so that, putting behind his back the world and all that is in it, he sits content in the corner of solitude and without wants.
“He has chosen of worldly goods half a gaz of old cotton, like a woman’s veil, and a piece of earthenware from which to drink water, and in winter and summer and the rainy season lives naked with his head and feet bare. He has made a hole in which he can turn round with a hundred difficulties and tortures, with a passage such that a suckling would hardly be put through it.”
An exquisite painting showing the emperor visiting Gosain Jadrup is in the Musee Guimet in Paris.

A sage answers...
Jahangir’s account of Jadrup concludes with a poem in Persian:

“Luqman had a narrow hut/Like the hollow of a flute or the bosom of a harp/A rake put the question to him/’What is this house — two feet and a span?’/Hotly and with tears the sage replied:/’Ample for him who has to die’.”