India Taj Mahal is a Tejo Mahalaya : A Rajput Palace

Taj Mahal the True Story by P.N.Oak 

 India 
Taj Mahal is a Tejo Mahalaya : A Rajput Palace

A revolutionary work of historical research by P.N. Oak. In this book, the author tries to prove that Taj Mahal was not built by Shah Jahan but usurped by him from Jai Singh, the king of Jaipur and remodeled before burying Mumtas.

Oak gives many proofs to prove his theory that Taj is a ancient Indian palace.

It is a pity that the Taj Mahal is believed to have originated as a sombre tomb in the 17th century when it was perhaps built in the 4th century to serve as a palace.

The author says that claims that far from originating as a mediaeval tomb the Taj was built by a powerful Rajput king as his palace in pre-Muslim times.

the Encyclopedia Britannica states that the Taj Mahal building-complex comprises stables and guest and guard rooms.

the Taj Mahal must have originated as Tejo Mahalaya completed in 1155-56 A.D.

A corollary is that buildings in India and West Asia which have a resemblance to the Taj Mahal are products of the Indian architecture (Shilpashastra).

People should look Taj Mahal as a palace and not as a tomb then they will realize the beauty of palace with people just go there, see 2 toms and leave the Taj.

Laymen sometimes ask that if the Taj Mahal existed centuries before Mumtaz's death in 1630-31, could not the radioactive carbon - 14 test be applied to determine its age?

This is a question for experts to answer.

If they have an infallible method they  would certainly detect the difference in age of the material used in the cenotaphs and in most other parts of the Taj Mahal. But for any such test to be useful its margin of error must be precisely known. A five to ten years’ margin would not matter very much but if it extends to several centuries the test would be unsuitable to verify the accuracy of the conclusion drawn from historical evidence that the Taj Mahal is a Hindu building commandeered for use as a Muslim tomb.

A carbon-14 test has actually been carried out by a New York-based
laboratory, around 1974 A.D., on a piece of timber from a broken,
softened doorway plank of the rear, river-side, northeast doorway
of the Taj.

It proved that the timber doorway pre. dated Shahjahan by about 300 years.
Taj Mahal alias Tejomahalaya palace complex has existed centuries before
Shahjahan.

It needs to be realized that Islam originated in Mecca only 1370 years ago. In other lands swept by Islam it is not even that ancient. the Tajmahal complex consists of several seven-storied edifices of which only garden level floors are open to the public while the others are either sealed with brick and lime by Shahjahan or are kept intriguingly locked by the Indian Government’s Archaeological Survey of India
(ASI).

Had the ASI been honest to its job it would have dredged even the water in the seven-storied well to see whether important articles, idols or inscriptions lie jettisoned there.

The conclusion whether it was Shahjahan who started raising the Taj Mahal in 1631 A.D. as a sepulcher or it was some Hindu Maharaja who had built it centuries earlier is not to be considered as a Hindu-Muslim dispute and therefore to be severely shunned.

It is a question of scientific, academic competence and arriving at a correct judgment as being able to distinguish between brass and gold.

Our research has firmly established that the term Taj Mahal is a popular mispronunciation of the ancient Hindu name Tejomahalaya.

Yet we feel that more research needs to be done by opening up the thousands of sealed chambers of the several seven-storied buildings and other multi -storied edifices (such as the Nagar Khanas ) to probe their hidden contents since they could yield a number of idols, inscriptions, coins, documents etc.

Shahjahan's court chronicle the Badshanama acknowledges it as 'Manzil-e-Raja Mansingh' (i. e. Raja Mansingh's mansion). Thus Raja Mansingh was the last Hindu owner in the chequered and scarred history of the Taj Mahal.

The author demands that , All the locked rooms in all the multi-storied buildings in the Taj Mahal complex should be open to visi tors The ASI should be directed
to open up all the rooms in all the stories of all the buildings barred by Shahjahan with brick and lime and study the evidence that may be discovered Free entry on Fridays causing a revenue loss to the Government should be discontinued because there is no mosque in the Tejomahalaya premises.

Author says that in ancient times this palace was a Shiva temple then in a period of time it became the palace . So many concocted accounts of the mythical Shahjahan
authorship of the Taj Mahal have been afloat for the last 350 years that one wonders how they never aroused anybody's suspicion.

Thus we have scholar after scholar of Indian history from almost every part of the world rapturously recounting to us how the cost of the Taj Mahal could be anything between four to ninety million rupees, the designer could be anybody from a Turk, Persian or Italian to a Frenchman, the period of construction could be anywhere
between 10 and 22 years, and Mumtaz, the so-called Lady of the Taj Mahal, could have been buried in its basement or upper floor at any time from six months to nine years after her death. These are only a few absurdities, anomalies and inconsistencies of the Taj Mahal story. There are many more which we propose to expose in the following pages.

Before believing in the "fabulous mausoleum" theory, two questions may be asked. Firstly, where are the historical records describing Shahjahan's romantic attachment to Mumtaz - one of his 5,000 consorts, prior to her death ? Secondly, how many palaces did Shahjahan build for his sweetheart Mumtaz while she was alive before he built one over her dead body ?

Histories are silent on both these points. The answer to the first is that there are no accounts of the Shahjahan Mumtaz romance because there never was any. That so called romantic attachment was a graft to justify the mythical creation of the Taj Mahal as a wonder tomb. The answer to the second question is that Shahjahan
did not build any palace for Mumtaz alive or dead.

Every Moghul monarch had at least 5,000 consorts in his harem and many more at his command outside. He had hardly the time or the heart to idolize
only one of his several thousand consorts. The author has in his book states,takes help from following old books . P. 3 The History of India as Told by its Own Historians. Vol. VII, The Posthumous Papers of the late Sir H. M. Elliot, K.C.B. edited
by Professor John Dowson, M.R.A.S., published by Kitab Mahal (Private)
Ltd. 56-A Zero Road, Allahabad.

2.
Persian text of Mulla Abdul Hamid's Badshahnama, in two volumes, published by the Asiatic Society of Bengal in the Bibliotheca Indies series.

I obtained the photostat from the copy in the National Archives, Government of India, in December 1966. Copies of that publication are available in all important institutional libraries throughout the world, dealing with Indian mediaeval history. Following are the just few lines which I am here reproducing it . 

During the journey countless coins be distributed among the fakirs and needy, The site covered with a majestic magnificent lush garden, to the south of that great city and Amidst which (garden) the building known as the palace (Manzil) of Raja Mansingh, at present owned by Raja Jaisingh, Grandson (of Mansingh), was selected for the burial of the Queen whose abode is in heaven Although Raja Jaisingh valued it greatly as his ancestral heritage and property, yet. he would have been agreeable to part with it gratis for the Emperor Shahjahan . (Still) out of sheer scrupulousness so essential in matters of bereavement and religious sanctity (thinking it improper to take his palace gratis) . In exchange of that (aali Manzil) grand palace, he (Jaisingh) was granted a piece of government land.

Emperor Shahjahan's wife Arjumand Banu died in Burhanpur somewhere between 1629 and 1632 A.D. Her body was buried in a garden there but is said to have been exhumed after about six months and transported to Agra. Even this single detail should have been enough to alert discerning and thoughtful people that Shahjahan must have come by a handy ready-made mausoleum.

Why else would he disturb and remove a body well laid to rest and have it carried to Agra, 600 miles away! He wouldn't want it to be transferred from one open grave to another without some purpose. Even a commoner's body is not so trifled with, let alone that of a queen and believed to be a very 'beloved' one at that.

Moreover if Shahjahan had really commisioned the Taj Mahal he should have raised it at Burhanpur where Mumtaz was already buried.

Such careful checking at every stage, so essential for accurate historical research has been lacking in the field of Indian history.

On arrival in Agra, Mumtaz's body was buried underneath the dome of Mansingh's palatial mansion under royal command, says the Badshahnama. the Badshahnama clearly asserts that it was Jaisingh who was given land while Shahjahan got Mansingh's garden palace in exchange. This is one more detail proving how the entire Shahjahan legend of the Taj Mahal is wholly fictitious from beginning to end.

The Mumtaz burial story is so confusing ,gives so many different views that One doubts that and says that Taj Mahal is a ancient Indian palace. the exchange itself sounds a mere myth because the location and dimensions of the plot of land given to Jaisingh are not mentioned.

The palace had a sky-high dome underneath which, the author of the Badshanama tells us, Mumtaz's body was hidden (i.e. buried) from the eyes of the world by the officials of the realm at Shahjahan's command. Such command again was unnecessary unless Mumtaz had to be buried in somebody else's property. The use of the word ' 'command" is thus significant. We shall show that 104 years earlier
Emperor Babur also refers to this domed palace.

The Badshahnama clearly tells us that the Hindu palace taken over for Mumtaz's burial had a dome. Incidentally the edifice is also described as a "sky-high" mansion, though those adjectives have been also interlinked with Shahjahan's courage and valour.

Shahjahan's own court-chronicler admits the Taj Mahal to be a domed Hindu palace commandeered for queen Mumtaz's burial.

"Jean Baptiste Tavernier, a French jeweler, toured India for trade between 1641 and 1668 A. D. His travel account is mainly devoted to commerce. He used to sojourn at Surat and Agra. Mumtaz had died sometime between 1629 and 1632. Tavernier arrived in India nearly 11 years after Mumtaz's demise.

according to Tavernier no work was undertaken concerning Mumtaz's tomb at least for 11 years after her death. Muslim and Tavernier's versions. Some of the former say that the Taj Mahal was complete by 1643 while Tavernier tells us that the work concerning the mausoleum was not even begun by at least 1641.

Shahjahan had been deposed and incarcerated by his son Emperor Aurangzeb in 1658. Tavernier also notes that the work took 22 years to complete. That means that even if the work began in 1641 it ended only in 1663. This was impossible since Shahjahan was no longer on the throne after 1658.

From olden times Muslim kings a tradition can be found is that they took readymade palaces and converted them to tomb or converted to Islamic buildings .

We would also like to draw the reader's attention to Tavernier's words, "Shahjahan purposely made the tomb near the Tasimacan (which had six large courts) where all foreigners come, so that the whole world should see and admire it." The word Tasimacan is Taz-i-macan, i.e. royal residence, which is synonymous with Taj Mahal. That is to say, the Hindu palace was known as Tasimacan
alias Taj Mahal even before Mumtaz's burial, according to Tavernier.

Tavernier's remark that Shahjahan had to use bricks even to a support arch is of special significance. It means that the "arches" existed already. It may be noted that Koranic engravings on the
Taj Mahal are made around the arches. When the original stone slabs were removed by Shahjahan and were substituted by other slabs with the Muslim lettering, the arches so tampered with had
to be supported with bricks. So this part of Tavernier's observation also proves that the Taj Mahal with its arched entrances existed even before Mumtaz's death. 

British Scholar Keene states that Tavernier could be in India only sometime between the years 1651-1655. Tavernier's noting makes out four specific points, namely :
1. That Shahjahan purposely buried Mumtaz near a bazaar known as Tasimacan (i.e. Taj Mahal). 2. That he could not get any timber for the scaffolding. 3. That the cost of the scaffolding was more
than that of the entire work. 4. That 20,000 laborers worked incessantly for 22 years.

Of the above the first three points clearly imply that Shahjahan took over a ready Taj Mahal for Mumtaz's burial. The fourth point on which traditional historians have banked does not make any
sense when it is considered that a Tavernier staying in India only for four years (1651-1655) cannot assert that the work which began and ended in his presence lasted for 22 years.

This shows that Tanvir is not reliable . Tanvirs statements support Mr.Oak statements as well as what we read in our history books .So he is not reliable.

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