TAJ MAHAL : A Temple Converted Into A Mausoleum
Dr. R. Brahmachari

Professor, Department of Applioed Physics, University of Calcutta,


It is well known that Emperor Akbar got Akbarnama, a history of his reign, written by his court-chronicler Abul Fazl and in a similar manner, Shahjahan had the history of his reign titled Badshahnama written by his court-chronicler Abdul Hamid Lahori. The original Badshahnama was written in Persian using Arabic alphabets and the pages 402 and 403 of the edition published by the Asiatic Society of Bengal (see the fascimile of the page 402 and 403 of the edition in Figure-1) contain the true history of the building now known as Taj Mahal. An English translation of the contents from line 21 of page 402 to line 41 on page 403 of Badshahnama is given below.
“Friday, 15th Jamadiulawal, the sacred dead body of thrtraveller to the kingdom of holiness Hazrat Mumtazul Zamani, who was temporarily buried, was brought, accompanied by Prince Mohammad Shah, Suja bahadur, Wazir Khan and Satiunnesa Khanam, who knew the pemperament of the deceased intimately and was well versed in view of that Queen of the Queens used to hold, was brought to the capital Akbarabad (Agra) and an order was issued that very day coins be distributed among the beggers and fakirs. The site covered with a majestic garden, to ther south of the great city (of Agra) and amidst which the building known as the palace of Raja Man Singh, at present owned by Raja Jai asingh, grandson of Man Singh, was selected for the burial of the Queen, whose abode is in heaven. Although Raja Jai Singh valued it greatly as his ancestral heritage and property, yet he agreed to part with it gratis for Emperor Shahjahan, still out of sheer scrupulousness and religious sanctity, he (Jai Singh) was granted Sharifabad in exchange of that grand palace (Ali Manzil). After the arrival of the deadbody in that great city (of Agra), next year that illustrious body of the Queen was laid to rest and the officials of the capital, according to royal order, hid the body of that pious lady from the eyes of the world and the palace so majestic (imarat-e-alishan) and capped with a dome (wa gumbaje) was turned into a sky-high lofty mausoleum”.
`The name of the Queen in whose memory the Taj Mahal is being said to have been erected was Arjumand Banu. She was married to Shahjahan in 1612 A.D. and in 18 years of her married life she gave birth to 14 children and in fact she died in 1630 (or in 1631) while she was delivering her 14th child. According to Badshahnama she was buried temporarily at Burhanpur and in the same year her body was brought from Burehanpur to Agra and the next year her body was permanently buried at the majestic palace of Raja Man Singh. From the Badshahnama it bcomes evident the edifice, now known as Taj Mahal, was not authored by Emperor Shahjahan. So the question naturally arises-Who built that magnificent building?
A locality in, nearly 4 km away from Taj Mahal, is called Bateswar and in 1900 A.D., General Cuningham, the then Director of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), conducted an excavation at Bateswar and discovered an edict, now known as the Munj Bateswar Edict and kept at the Lucknow Museum. The epigraph contains 34 verses written in Sanskrit, out of which 25th, 26th and 34th verses are important in the present context. An English translation of the above verses reads – “He built a marble temple which is the abode of Lord Vishnu and the King bows down to touch His feet” (25). “The King has built another marble temple which has been dedicated to the Lord Who has the moon as His ornament on His forehead” (26). “Today, the 5th day of the bright half in the month of Ashwin, the Sunday, in the year 1212 of the Vikram Samvat, the edict is being laid” (34).
Mr. D. J. Kale, a well known archaeologist, has mentioned the said Munj Bateswar Edict in his celebrated work Epigraphica India. On page 124 of the said book, Mr. Kale writes, “The sais Munj Bateswar Edict was laid by King Paramardidev of the Chandratreya dynasty on Sukla Panchami in the month of Ashwin, in the year 1212 Vikram Samvat (or A.D. 1156). ... King Paramardidev built two magnificent temples with white marble , one for Lords Vishnu and the other for Lord Shiva and they were desecrated later on by the Muslim invaders. Perhaps a farsighted man took the edict to a safer place at Bateswar abd buries it beneath the ground”. Perhaps, after the said desecration, the temples were no longer used as religious places and due to this reason Abdul Hamid Lahori mentioned them as palaces, not as temples. According to the renowned historian Mr. R. C. Majumdar, the other name of the Chandratreya or Chandel King Paramardidev was Paramal and their kingdsom was known as Bundelkhand, a.k.a. Jejakabhukti (History & Culture of Indian People, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Vol-5, p-122).
Today, there are two marble palaces in Agra, one is the Mausoleum of Idmat-ud-Daula, the father of Noorjahan and the other is Taj Mahal, and it is evident from the Munj Bateswar edict that, once upon a time, one of them was the temple of Lord Vishnu and the other was a temple of Lord Shiva. Experts believe that it is the temple of Vishnu that has been made the mausoleum of Idmat-ud-Daula, and the temple of Shiva has been converted into the mausoleum of the queen Arjumand Banu. A few evidences in favour of this conclusion are given below.
The pinnacle on the top of the main dome of Taj Mahal bears the trident (trishul), which is an exclusive emblem as well as the weapon of Lord Shiva. Inside the Taj Mahal, a chain hangs from the ceiling of the main dome, which is of no use today. But before its desecration by the Muslims, a pitcher was attached to it and water used to drip, drop by drop, on the emblem of Lord Shiva. Today’s Taj Mahal is a two-storeyed mausoleum; the real grave and cenotaph on the lower storey while the fake cenotaphs of Shahjahan and Arjumand Banu on the upper storey, and it an unique feature of Taj Mahal alone. But two-storeyed Shiva temples with emblems of Lord Shiva in lower as well as in the upper storeys exist at Ujjain and some other places in this country.
No Muslim mausoleum has the facility for circumvolution, but Taj Mahal provides this facility. It indicates that in the pre-Muslim era, devotees used to avail this facility to move round the emblem of Lord Shiva. Tavernier, a French traveller of that time, wrote in his annals that a bazaar used to be held within the Taj complex and it is solely a Hindu tradition to hold bazaars and fairs within a temple complex, which is totally unusual for a Muslim mausoleum.
The interested reader may find many other infallible evidences in Taj Mahal: The True Story by Mr. P. N. Oak.
In 1973, Professor Marvin Mills of the Pratt Institute, New York, took a piece of wood, collected from the southern door of Taj Mahal, to USA and gave that sample to Dr. Evan Williams, Directyor of the Brooklyn College, to determine the age of that sample by ‘carbon-14 test’. It was found that the said sample was 610 years old, with an experimental error of 39 years plus or minus. So the test confirmed that theedifice, now known as Taj Mahal, existed three centuries before the time of Shahjahan.
From the above discussions it becomes evident that the white marble building, now known as Taj Mahal and portrayed as a Muslim mausoleum, was a Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Shiva, before the arrival of the brute and uncivilized Muslim invaders. Furthermore, the emplem of Lord Shiva enshrined was called Tejolinga and the temple was known as Tejomahalaya. The other name of the emblem was Agreswar Mahadev and it is important to note that from the word Agreswar, the name of the city of Agra has been derived.
Presently an attempt is being made to celebrate the 350th anniversary of Taj Mahal as the present distorted Indian history bestows the credit of building the edifice to Emperor Shah Jahan and claims that he completed the task of building Taj Mahal in 1654. But according to the Munj Bateswar Edict, the age of the building is 848 years and hence the said effort of celebrating 350th anniversary of the 848 year old Taj Mahal would be totally nonsensical and extremely ridiculous. At the same time, the Muslims of this country are demanding to declare the same as a Wakf Property and hand the building over to them. So, before taking any decision regarding the building, it is highly necessary for the Central Government in Delhi to undertake elaborate archaeological and scientific tests to ascertain the true antiquity of Taj Mahal.