Saquib Salim

The 45-day Mahakumbh at Prayagraj (formerly Allahabad), which is the largest congregation of humans on earth and which comes after 12 years, starts today. Apart from bathing at sangam (confluence of Ganges, Yamuna, and Saraswati), Pilgrims will also pray at Akshayavata (A sacred Banyan tree believed to be around even before Ramayana era) in Allahabad Fort.

Akshayavata is located inside a fort built by Mughal Emperor Akbar at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna. The confluence is considered sacred by Hindus and Akshayavata is believed to be an immortal tree where religious Hindus used to offer themselves to death to achieve salvation. It remained a mystery why would a ‘Muslim’ king build an imposing fort around a ‘sacred tree’. Rather than destroying it, a Muslim guarded it with a fort around it.

It must be noted that several locals believe that the present Akshayavata permitted for worship is not the original one. And, the original tree is situated in another temple beneath.

Akbar's act perplexed several later rulers and historians. Akbar abolished the pilgrim tax (Jaziya) for pilgrims in Prayagraj in 1563 and built an imposing fort in 1584.

The Hindus had an interesting explanation for this. Babu Bholanath Chandra in his book, The Travels of a Hindoo, published in 1869 wrote, “The Hindoos are not wanting to ascribe a secret which influenced Akber in all these proceedings. They held him to have been a Hindoo in a former birth - that he enclosed in his body the soul of a devout Brahmin, who had in a past age borne the name of Mucunda (Mukund), and had taken a fancy to become the emperor of India - not at all a preposterous wish for a Brahmin of old, but which would in our age have proscribed him either to a madhouse, or chains, or transportation beyond the seas.

A painting og the Hall of 40 pillars in Prayagraj

“ To attain the great object of his ambition, Mucunda had besought the intercession of the gods. The gods had declared to him, that unless he first died and was born again, it could not become practicable for him to obtain the emperorship. Nothing daunted, the ambitious Brahmin agreed to go through the penance of a trans-life migration, on the condition of remembering his antecedents in the next generation. This again was so extravagant a request as to have been beyond the power of the gods to grant.

“That emperor had not been many years upon his throne, before he went over to Allahabad, and easily discovering the spot, dug up the brass plate as well as the tongs, gourd, and deerskin of his former anchorite existence. Indeed, there were ostensible grounds for the Hindoos to claim Akber as a prince of their race when that emperor had a Hindoo wife - the princess Jodh Baie; had a Hindoo daughter-in-law — the Marwaree wife of Jehangeer; - had a Hindoo general - the Rajah Maun Sing; had a Hindoo financier - the Rajah Toder Mull; had a Hindoo favourite - the Rajah Beerbul; had a Hindoo songster - Tansen: when he had many other Hindoo officers and Hindoo pundits always about him, when much in his court savoured of the Hindoo, and when he had in a manner Hindooized himself by his ardent devotedness to the cause of Hindoo welfare.”

James Forbes in his Oriental Memoirs published in 1813 had also reproduced this legend famous among Hindus.

Kama Maclean in her book, Pilgrimage and Power: The Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, 1765-1954, mentions another legend of why Akbar had so much love for this city and built a fort there. She writes, “in a previous life Akbar was the sage Mukunda Brahmacari, a Hindu ascetic who lived at the Sangam. One day, he inadvertently swallowed a cow's hair that had found its way into his milk. He was so horrified that he had consumed even a filament of the holy animal that he promptly committed suicide. For this sin, he was reincarnated as a mleccha (non-Hindu) but an exalted one — Emperor Akbar, who in due course was attracted to the sangam to build his fort.”

Bahadur Singh in his Persian text, Yadgar‐i‐Bahaduri, completed in 1834 also reportedly mentioned, “Be it not concealed, that the emperor Akber in his former life was a Hindu Fakir of the order of the Saniasis.”

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This is interesting how the fort stands at the sangam as a symbol of India’s syncretic culture and remains so.