Dārā Shikōh

Shah Jahan's eldest son and intended heir — a Sufi of the Qādirī order who studied Sanskrit, gathered pandits in Benares, and had fifty Upaniṣads translated into Persian as the Sirr-i Akbar, "the Greatest Secret," in 1657. He had already written Majmaʿ al-Baḥrayn, "the Meeting of the Two Seas," arguing that Sufi and Vedāntic truth were one. Two years later his brother Aurangzeb had him tried for apostasy and executed.

The confluence, and what it cost. This bench is full of traditions that never met. Here is a man who deliberately made them meet, in writing, at the top of an empire — and was killed for it, with the translation cited at the trial.