The Man Who Built the Taj Mahal

An incredible story
from the oral tradition of India
about the man who designed
the
Taj Mahal
The Man Who Created
the
Taj Mahal
By: Peter Malakoff

The Man Who Created
the
Taj Mahal
by: Peter Malakoff

The Mogul Emperor, Shah Jehan, ordered the
building of what is known as the Taj Mahal, as a
mausoleum for the memory of his favorite wife-
Mumtaz Mahal.
Constructed over a period of 22 years, from
1632-1654 with the daily labor of over 20,000
workers, to many people, this building erected on the
shores of the Yamuna River in India is the most
perfect and beautiful architectural structure in the
world.
Credit for the final plan is usually given to Ustad
Isha, who is either Turkish or Persian, but there is
some uncertainty about who really drew the plans.
Here is the story of the man who designed the Taj
Mahal . . .
Ehvam
Thus I have heard

For my mother
who told me my first story
and my father
who told me what it meant

Introduction
The story told here is a true lie . . .
In India folk tales gather round extraordinary events, places and
people like insects attracted to light in the dark; especially if much
time has passed, which it has in the oldest civilization in the world.
There are so many narratives about everything, it is impossible to
know if what we hear is made up or really true.
Still, the light of a story can be beautiful all by itself and it was the
radiance of this particular account, its truthfulness, not its verity, that
attracted my attention and inspired me to write it down.
In 2004 I spent the winter in Benaras, the oldest still-living city
in the world. One evening as I walked along the stone ghats that
run for miles along the Ganges, I fell into conversation with an
aged sadhu who told me a story about the man who designed the
Taj Mahal. He described the incredible drama of how the
building was created and what lay at the root of its subtle and
harmonious beauty.
As far as I know, this legend exists only in the oral tradition of
India and has never been written down before. It went something
like this:

The Man Who Created the Taj Mahal
When Shah Jehan was at his height of his power and
happiness, it was brought to his attention one day that
there existed in his kingdom a great architect, who was also
an especially gifted artist and sculptor. A man who could
create the exact likeness of a person merely from seeing
their hands. It was said that from a moments study of a
person’s hands this man could create their exact likeness of
that person in stone.
When Shah Jehan heard this, he immediately ordered
the man to be brought before him. “Is this true? Can you
really see and create the image of a person from the sight
of their hands only?” the Shah asked.
And the man who was very proud of his ability, replied,
“This is indeed true O’ Shah. And then he spoke to Shah
Jehan, “Let all the unmarried woman of your court be
brought forth in front of me, all together. From their midst, I
will select the most beautiful and carve her likeness in
stone.
“If I succeed in your eyes and in the eyes of the court
in creating the perfect image of this woman with all her
subtlety and manner, then that woman shall be given to me
as wife for reward. If I fail to create the perfect image,
then let me be killed.”

Shah Jehan was amazed at the boldness of the
sculptor and filled with excitement for his proposal. He
immediately ordered it to be done.
In the time of less than an hour, all the unmarried
women of the court were assembled before the artisan,
each one heavily veiled as was the custom of the day
and all in anticipation. They held out their hands for the
artisan to inspect as he walked slowly by.
Now the Royal Princess, the daughter of Shah Jehan,
had heard of the brave and incredible challenge of the
artisan and being greatly excited had inserted herself into
the line of the assembled women. And, as fate would have
it, it was in front of this most beautiful young girl that the
artisan stopped and said, “This is the woman I will
sculpt in stone!” He had seen her perfectly in her hands
and had fallen in love.

Immediately Shah Jehan was told that the woman the
artisan had chosen was his daughter! The Shah was
highly concerned, but decided to do nothing
immediately and instead sent spies to watch and note
the progress of the artisan.
The spies reported back to the Shah that indeed the
artisan was sculpting an exact likeness of Shah Jehan’s
daughter. Again, spies were sent and again the news
returned that the image in stone was without a doubt the
princess in all her beauty and glory.
Finally, the image was completed and in front of the
whole assembled court, unveiled, with gasps of admiration
and wonder at this man who could sculpt the every detail
of a woman from looking only at her hand.

But Shah Jehan was deeply troubled. This daughter of
his had been secretly promised to the general of his army.
He could not give her to this poor artisan! Shah Jehan
spoke: “I am most deeply impressed with your skill, your
artistry and intuition. You have, indeed, created an exact
and most beautiful image of this woman who happens to
be my daughter. But you must take another woman!”
Shah Jehan exclaimed. “It cannot be with the Princess. She
has been promised to another man.”
The whole assembly stood without breathing. All were
deeply troubled. Their ruler could not honor his promise.
Many among them felt deeply embarrassed.
But the artisan replied, “Great Shah, I have picked the
most beautiful candle from the tapers of your court. It is
her flame that lights the lamp of my heart. It is her face
that delights my eyes. It is in her delight that I revel. It is
her and her alone. If you will not honor your promise,
then I have nothing to do but leave and wait upon the will
of Allah.”
Upon saying that, the artisan bowed and proudly
walked from the assembled gathering.

Now many years passed and Shah Jehan grew older.
It was then that the tragedy of the death of his favorite
wife, Mumtaz, eclipsed the bright sun of his life. His
heart was broken.
The horse of his love-desire grew wild with the
remembrance of his wife and the yearning to eternalize
her presence in the most beautiful and perfect
mausoleum came to fill his life. He became inflamed
with that desire: to build a tomb for his wife to rest in, a
grand celebration of Love in which he, himself, would be
laid one day by her side.
But who would design this building? Who could create
in stone the feeling of his heart? And Shah Jehan’s thoughts
went again to the artisan he had summoned many years
before. That artisan had gone on as an architect to
design many of the most beautiful mosques and
buildings in the land and everywhere he was spoken of
with admiration and praise. Surely, this was the man to
take on this extraordinarily special and emotionally
laden project.

Again, the Shah had the architect brought before him
and spoke to him as follows: “Noble man,” he began,
“In the name of Allah, please accept my pleas for
your help in designing a mausoleum for my now
deceased wife, Mumtaz Mahal, on whom there may
be peace. You were dishonored by me at our last
meeting together. I now wish to set that matter
aright.”
“My daughter, the very same one whose image you
carved so exactly in stone, is still unmarried. My general,
the man she had been promised to, was slain in battle. As
a token of my sincere wish to have your services, accept
my daughter in marriage. She is yours upon the
fulfillment of my proposal: Design the mausoleum for
my now deceased wife, Mumtaz, on whom there may be
peace, and for myself.”

The architect was astounded, greatly pleased and highly
honored all at the same time. Indeed, no one had ever seen the
Shah so emotionally in need before anyone. He exclaimed to
the Shah, "Noble Ruler, Glory of Islam, I am honored to
accept your gift and will immediately begin the design of the
mausoleum. By the grace of Allah it shall be done!"
The architect was given a suite of rooms in the palace
and in a state of great excitement, immediately began
drawing up plans for the mausoleum. Within a few days, the
first plans were ready and brought before Shah Jehan.
But he was not at all pleased. The feeling of the building
was not right. Undaunted, the architect drafted yet more
plans, this time of several buildings. His energy was great
and shining, touched by the future promise of the princess
as his bride.

And again, the plans were brought before the Shah and
again they were rejected. Several times more this process
repeated itself and the architect began to fall into a mood of
despair. He would never be able to have the princess as his
bride unless the Shah accepted his plans and it seemed as if
that would never happen.
Now, one of the wisest aides to the Shah, approached him
and offered a suggestion: “Oh noble Shah, please give your
attention to my humble suggestion. By the grace of Allah, I
have seen a way to attain your desires.”

“Presently, your architect is unable to produce a suitable
plan because of his inability to feel what you feel and to
taste what you now are now tasting. There is a vastly
different state of mind and emotion between you and your
architect. You, my Lord, are in a state of grieving for your
wife Mumtaz, on whom there may be peace. The
architect is in a state of joyful anticipation, of seeing his
future wife, your daughter, and of entering into the happy
state of marriage.
“I propose that this disparate state of emotions is at the
root of the lack of a suitable building plan for the
Mausoleum.”

Nawab Allami Sa'adullah Khan, Vizier e Azam of Shah

“And this is what I suggest be done: Let it be known to
the architect that the princess is sick, indeed, let it be
known that the princess is sick unto death. Bring this
news to the ears of your architect. Let his heart be filled
with grief and sorrow.
“This will bring balance to his now expectant heart.
This will allow the emotional state of the architect to
taste in accord with your own.”

Shah Jehan was well pleased with the proposal and gave his
Vizier full authority to do as had been suggested. And
immediately, the Vizier, himself, went to the rooms of the architect
and spoke as he had proposed.
The architect was heart-rent by the news, he was saddened,
shocked and humbled by the tragic sense of his life and life
itself. So much beauty, so much sorrow, so much hope, so much
despair. His heart broke open and tears ran freely from his
eyes. He did not know whether he was crying in sadness or in
ecstasy.
All his life he had remembered the young woman whose
hands he had seen, whose image he had re-created, whose
heart he cherished. He must see her before she died.
.

He threw himself into the plans with a broken heart.
He worked in a frenzy of love. Tears fell upon the pages
of the drawings and his heart coursed with feelings and
his hands gave form to his feeling heart, and in this way
the Taj Mahal was created.
In the end, Shah Jehan received the plans for the most
beautiful mausoleum in the world; the architect was
joined in marriage to his beloved; and all of them, now
dead, live on in story and the building of the Taj Mahal.
Ehvam
‘Thus I have heard’

Shah Jehan wrote the following description
of the Taj Mahal:
“Should the guilty seek asylum here
Like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin
Should a sinner make his way to this exquisite building
All his past sins will be washed away
The sight of this palace creates sorrowing sighs
And here, the sun and the moon shed tears from their
eyes
In this world this edifice has been made
To display God's Glory”

As he grew older Shah Jehan chose his oldest son, Dara Shikoh,
to succeed him as the Mughal emperor of India.
His younger sons, also children of Mumtaz Mahal, the woman
for whom the Shah had built the Taj, disputed the choice of
their father and went to war to seize the throne. Although Dara
was supported by his father, the second eldest son, Aurangzeb,
defeated and killed his other brothers and imprisoned their
father at Agra Fort.
There, Shah Jehan spent the rest of his life as a prisoner,
attended by his oldest daughter, Jehanarra. From his room at the
fort, off in the distance he could see the Taj Mahal, the resting
place of his beloved wife, Mumtaz, and it is said that he died
gazing at this monument of love, life. loss and God.
After the death of Shah Jehan, Aurangzeb had his father buried
in the Taj Mahal alongside his beloved wife. Their bodies lay

A Summary of the Story
My Teacher, Adi Da Samraj, spoke about the Taj Mahal:
“The message of the Taj Mahal is a message about
Enlightenment, about the Enlightenment of the whole body.
The Taj Mahal is a burial place, but its message is Life. The
secret of Enlightenment is resurrection, the incarnation of love,
and freedom from death.
"The spiritual problem of Shah Jahan, the Mogul Emperor of
India who built the Taj Mahal as a tomb for his favorite wife, is
the mortality of the loved one. All the conditions for our ultimate
Realization are present in the form of our relations, but they are
confounded by mortality. Having discovered that the loved one is
mortal, you must commit yourself heroically to the service of his
or her immortality. You can love what is dying, but you can only
be in love with what is already Transcendental. The process of
your loving is confounded until you overcome death, not
philosophically, but bodily, through bodily and Transcendental
Enlightenment.
"The Enlightened man reveals his Enlightenment through
bodily signs. Like the Taj Mahal, the body of the Enlightened
man is a perfect balance between the descending and ascending
forces of manifest existence.

“Photographs of the Taj Mahal generally do not convey this
perfect balance, because they confine the image within a
frame. But when the Taj Mahal is viewed in the undefined
space of which it is the center, it is one of the most perfectly
balanced visual perceptions in the world. The two forces,
descending and ascending, are perfectly equal.
"The Taj Mahal is a description of the whole body. The body
in its Enlightenment, the body when it is beautiful in Truth, is
a perfect balance between what descends and what ascends.
When there is too much attention to what is descended and
only physical, or too much attention to what is ascended and
only psychic, such imbalance yields mortality and delusion.
Only the harmony is immortal, and conducive to
Illumination. In our Enlightenment we represent that
Illumined harmony in our physical form, like the Taj Mahal.”
This description of the Taj Mahal is mirrored in the story you have
just read. When the artisan displayed his powers at the court of Shah
Jehan, he demonstrated an insight into the subtle relationship
between all things. The artisan ‘read’ the hands of a maiden in the
Shah’s court and to the amazement of all, duplicated in stone the face
and body of the person he has seen from seeing only her hands.
According to the agreement the artisan made with the Shah, he
would be given the hand of any maiden he had chosen from the

court even though he had chosen the woman when they were all
veiled. But, even though the artisan accomplished what he had
promised, the Shah was unable to fulfill his end of the bargain for the
artisan had chosen the Shah’s daughter who had secretly inserted
herself into to assembly of veiled maidens . . . the Shah had already
promised his daughter in marriage to another man; the general of his
army.
The artisan is unwilling to accept any substitute for he had fallen in
love with the maiden whose hands he had seen and and whose body
and mind had become clear to him. The first part of the story closes
as he leaves the court of the Shah, to ‘wait upon the will of Allah.’
Several years pass and the beloved wife of the Shah, Mumtaz
Mahal, passed away. In mourning for his beloved partner, Shah
Jehan conceived an idea to build the most magnificent mausoleum
in the world for Mumtaz. He wanted to create in stone a perfect
symbol of their love. Inquiries were sent throughout the kingdom
for an architect who had the subtlety and sensitivity to create such
a monument and the name of a particular person came up again
and again; it was the very same artisan who had come to his court
many years ago and had carved the likeness of Jehanara Begum,
the Shah’s own daughter, in stone.
After he left the Shah that fateful day, this artisan had gone on to
demonstrate his wonderful abilities in the creation of architectural
masterpieces all over Mughal India.

With his subtle abilities and gifted senses, he had been able to feel
deeply into what was needed for this or that building and translate
that feeling into plans that guided the creation of many
extraordinary buildings. So, once again, Shah Jehan sent for him
to come before the court.
The Shah had rudely disappointed the artisan before, but he
thought he could find a way that might work in the present; the
Shah knew that the artisan was unmarried and by the will of
Allah, the Shah’s daughter had remained unmarried as well; her
husband-to-be, the general, had been slain in battle.
When the artisan appeared in court, the Shah offered his sincere
apologies for what had occurred several years before when he did
not fulfill his promise and proposed to set the matter aright . . . the
artisan was offered his daughter in marriage if he would
satisfactorily complete the plans for the mausoleum. Thrilled with
this offer appearing out of the mists of his life like a dream, the
artisan enthusiastically accepted.
The story tells us he was given a suite of rooms at the palace and
set to work with great anticipation of the woman who was to be
his life partner. But at first, the plans he created did not please the
Shah at all.
The artistan was not accustomed to his plans being rejected. When
he asked why his first submissions were not pleasing to the Shah, he
was told they were too grand and glorious or sad or cheerless and
reminiscent of death.

In essence, the buildings were not balanced, and this is the ’balance’
that Adi Da speaks of in his description of the Taj Mahal.
"The Taj Mahal is a description of the whole body. The
body in its Enlightenment, the body when it is beautiful in
Truth, is a perfect balance between what descends and
what ascends. When there is too much attention to what is
descended and only physical, or too much attention to
what is ascended and only
psychic, such imbalance yields mortality and delusion.
Only the harmony is immortal, and conducive to
Illumination.”
The artisan designed plans and they were rejected by the Shah for
quite a while. Finally, the wise Vizier of Shah Jehan offered an
analysis of what was going on and what to do about it.
The Vizier said that the artisan’s attention was much too colored by
hope, loveliness and romance. The Shah had certainly experienced
these qualities, but he had also tasted the dead ends of his power,
hope and aspiration; he had experienced aging, sickness, the strife
between his sons and the inability to prevent the death of his
beloved wife, Mumtaz. Because of these experiences, the Shah felt
deeper into life and the vision he desired in the Mausoleum was a
combination of joy and sorrow, the height of love and aspiration
and the depths of sorrow and despair.

Adi Da writes:
“The Taj Mahal is a burial place, but its message is Life. The
secret of Enlightenment is resurrection, the incarnation of love,
and freedom from death.”
The Vizier suggested to the Shah that to bring balance to the
emotional state of the artisan, he would inform him that his
daughter, the woman he is yearning for, is sick and might die.
This will cause the artisans emotional, feeling-heart to resonate
with the Shah’s.
Recognizing what his Vizier says might be true and that this plan
could yield the architectural vision he longs for, the Shah gives his
permission for the Vizier to carry out his plan.
Although the artisan could read in hands the image of the body and
then sculpt it in stone, he did not read what the Shah truly desired
because he was caught up in his (the artisan’s) own emotions of
union with his chosen beloved; and this is the principle of limitation
in every individual . . . we are all so centered in our own ego that we
fail to sense the Reality of Life or the feelings of others. In this
particular story, blindness is contrasted with an extraordinary
knowledge of the subtleties of life, shown in the the ability of the
artisan to create the likeness of a woman through seeing only her
hands. Although this subtle realm offers great gifts and wondrous
abilities, it also has limitations that are not necessarily complete or
balanced.

The Vizier delivered his message to the artisan and it produced a
dramatic effect. The artisan was deeply affected, his heart broke
open in acceptance of the inescapable opposites of love and death
and he attained that rare balance of ‘Divine Harmony.’ In this state
of mind and heart he created the plans for the Taj Mahal.
This story is a picture of the understanding that needs to occur
for such a balance to open the heart, be drawn in plans and
incarnated in stone.
This is the story of the man who created the Taj Mahal.
Ehvam
‘Thus I have heard’

Peter in Benaras on the ghats

•
About the Author
I am a religious studies scholar, poet, storyteller, Ayurvedic
consultant, ghee maker, teacher and woodworker, living in the
foothills of the Himalayas.
In 2011 I left the United States and came to live in India –
whose ancient culture I had studied in school.
All my life, I loved the stories of India, which offer up the
“Truths” of life in such profound, memorable and delightful
ways.
These ancient tales carry the wisdom of the oldest still-living
culture on earth. Impossible to fully understand and endless in
their wisdom, they are the vehicles that have brought the
teachings of this land to its generations for eons.
I have been in India only a few years and already I am
drowning in the abundance of songs one can hear of the great
Beings who lived here and the stories they have told.
This, is but one of them. . .
Peter Malakoff

Other Books, my Blog and Contact:
My personal Website: Peter Malakoff
I have written stories, poems, articles, recorded audio tales
and movies for nearly forty years. You can find them here:
website: www.petermalakoff.com
My Blog: India my Walden Pond
Essays and stories on miscellaneous topics, composed since I
came to India:
India my Walden Pond
Contact me:
I would be happy to hear from you:
email: petermalakoff@gmail.com

FINI