4. Al Láy! Helper of Chosroes![136] Such secrets to men why recklessly impart? [it only makes them impudent] Not will say ever this the A’qil [or “the initiated one.”]
[The wise do not mention their religion; if they do, they only make the unwise impudent.]
So, after all, we have not been told the process or secret of after-life, whether ascending into air, descending into earth, renewing human life or migrating into animal, plant or stone. In fact, we are made to understand that our inquiry is folly and that its answer, whether true or not, is also folly. Yet are we allowed to conjecture the belief of “the initiated” in transmigration.
As for the Muláis “being all things to all men” in matters of religion—Sunnis with Sunnis and Shiahs with Shiahs—this is, as already stated, a mere amplification of the Shiah doctrine of Taqqîah or concealment in times of danger, to which I have specially referred in my “Dardistan.”
The leaning of the Muláis is, of course, rather to poetical Shiism, with the chivalrous martyr A’li as its demigod or “next to God” in the A’lewia sect, than to prosaic and monotonous Sunniism, so that to strangers they seem to be Shiahs, as will be seen in an extract from a native Indian Diary[137] written some 20 years ago, and which, it may be incidentally stated, still throws much light on the present conflicts in Dir, Bajaur and other petty States bordering on our frontier. No stranger is allowed to see the Kelám-i-Pir, which takes the place of the Koran with Muláis, but in the most popular poem that is recited by them, the Imám-ul Zemán or Sahib-al-Zeman = the Imam or Lord of the Age (H. H. Aga Khan) is worshipped as the Monarch of this World, the visible incarnation of the Deity, offerings or a pilgrimage to whom dispenses a Mulái from prayer, fasting or a visit to the sacred shrines of Mecca or Madina, or rather the Shiah Kerbelá, the place of the martyrdom of Hasan and Husain, which Shiahs annually celebrate by what are inappropriately called “miracle plays,” but which really are “elegies,” and commemorative funeral recitations and processions. A person who has seen “the Lord of the Age” or who possesses some of the water in which he has washed his feet is an honoured guest in Mulái countries. The poem above alluded to is a parallel to the Druse “Contract” which will be considered further on, and begins with an invocation for “Help, oh Ali.”
“Nobody will worship God, without worshipping Thee, Lord of the Age!
Jesus will descend from the fourth heaven to follow Thee, Lord of the Age!
Thy will alone will end the strife with Antichrist, Lord of the Age!