Dara was also—unlike Akbar—a serious scholar who wrote or commissioned works of lasting interest on mysticism and on similarities among religions, including Sirr-i-Akbar (The Great Secret) and Majma-al-Bahrain (Mingling of the Oceans). Dara’s dialogue with Baba Lal, a Hindu thinker, ‘regarding bridging the gulf between race and race, creed and creed, Hinduism and Islam’, was held in Lahore in the home of a rich Hindu, Chander Bhan, who wrote down the conversation.52 Apparently the prince was a also friend of a French Jesuit priest, Father Buzee.
