IN THE SHADOW OF THE TAJ
The Silent Imperial Woman of the Mughal Empire in India
By Indu Sundaresan
在泰姬瑪哈陵背後的故事
印度蒙兀兒帝國內沉靜的皇室女子
The year was 1631. As night stalked over India and dawn beckoned in the horizon, a woman lay exhausted on a silk covered divan inside a fort palace. For thirty hours the child inside her had strained to come out.
當時是1631年，當夜晚正悄稍地離開而旭日剛從地平線升起時，在印度邊塞的堡壘中，一名女子正精疲力竭地躺在舖著絲質床罩的床上，她和肚裡即將出世的孩子已掙扎了三十個鐘頭。
Her husband Emperor Shah Jahan prayed and fretted outside the birthing chamber. Court astrologers cast charts and horoscopes furiously, looking for a good omen, a sign of promise. The child was born three hours before daybreak, and with the first wail, the baby took the mother's life. The Empress who died was only thirty-eight, and this was her fourteenth child.
她的丈夫──印度皇帝 沙．賈罕──則在房外緊張地不停禱告，宮廷占星師則試圖從所觀測到的星象中尋獲任何好兆頭。最後，嬰兒在破曉前三小時終於誕生於人世；但伴隨著他的哭聲，他的母親也隨之逝世。這位過世的皇后年僅三十八，而帶走她性命的則是她第十四個孩子。
Shah Jahan spent the next twenty years building a tomb for his beloved wife. It stood on a marble platform, with a spire on each corner, and a long rectangular reflecting pool in front. We know it as the Taj Mahal—that monument to one man's deep and abiding desire for the woman he loved.
在接下來的二十年間，沙．賈罕為了他摯愛的妻子蓋了一座墓以紀念他對其深刻且持久不變的愛。這座舉世聞名的墳墓──泰姬瑪哈陵，聳立在大理石的平臺上，四個角落各有一座尖塔，前方有著長矩形的水道，倒映在其中的則是泰姬瑪哈陵優美的造型。
Since then, for three and a half centuries the image of the Taj Mahal has been branded on our senses. The Taj at the birth of dawn, ghostly sugar-spun minarets breaching indolent mists; the Taj at high noon, shadows leached into the ground, with the blinding assault of white marble; the Taj on the night of the full moon, serene and silent, its dome gleaming pearl-like, hiding its secrets.
泰姬瑪哈陵的影像從此深深地烙印在人們的心中至今已有三百五十年了：清晨時的泰姬瑪哈陵，螺旋頂的清真寺宣禮塔鬼魅般地從朦朧的霧中透出；正午時的泰姬瑪哈陵，白色大理石地板反射著眩目的光芒；滿月時的泰姬瑪哈陵，在寂靜且安詳的氣氛中，她的穹頂閃耀著珍珠似的光采，彷彿覆蓋著當中的秘密。
But most of us would be hard pressed to remember the name of Mumtaz Mahal, the woman who lies in the carnelian, amethyst and jasper-inlaid sarcophagus beneath that dome. It is rather that wraithlike idea of her that remains: as the woman for whom the Taj was built. She has been mute all this time, perhaps secretly smiling to herself, for she now represents the vividness and omnipotence of the Mughal Empire (1526-1858) in India. Yet she was empress for only four short years, a momentary flicker in
history's eye, not long enough to shape the empire's destiny in any way.
但我們大多數的人都記不得那躺在穹頂下，躺在鑲嵌著紅玉髓、紫水晶和水蒼玉的石棺中的可人兒──慕塔芝．瑪哈。在這座為她而建的陵墓之前，她的存在卻有如幽靈般的虛無縹緲。從歷史的角度來看，只當了四年皇后的她不過是一個短暫的過客，不論從那一個角度來想，都不夠久遠到足以影響帝國的存亡：她總是沉默無聲的，但或許她會自己在暗中微笑，因為現在她在世人面前生動地展現出當時蒙兀兒帝國(從西元1526至1858年)在印度無遠弗屆的影響力。
In her times, her aunt Empress Nur Jahan ruled longer and reigned supreme over the vast lands of the empire. But there is no magnificent tomb to etch her name into eternity and she has dissolved into oblivion—a silent and voiceless imperial woman of the empire.
當慕塔芝．瑪哈在世時，她的姑姑──奴兒．佳罕皇后──長時間地以至上的權力統御著這片廣大的土地及其上的帝國，卻未有任何陵墓建來以成就其名聲的不朽；事實上，奴兒．佳罕只是一個名字消逝在風中、未能在歷史上發聲的皇家女子。
A little known fact is that these two women, aunt and niece, were not even originally from India; they traced their ancestry to Persia. Though once in India, they held firm sway over Indian history and over their men, deeply loved by the emperors. Both were rumored to have had great beauty, and were renowned for their intelligence and authority—no small feat in a time when women were never seen in public and rarely heard.
很少人注意到，這兩位女子（姑姑和姪女），雖然都對印度有著強大的影響力並分別被皇帝們深愛著，在血統上都不是印度人；事實上，她們的祖先來自於波斯。二人都被人們謠傳著才智敏捷、有絕美的容顏和安適的性情，這對當時不能在公眾面前露臉發言的女子們可說是相當的讚揚。
To get to the beginning of the legend of Nur Jahan, we have to travel back even earlier to the year 1577. A winter storm raged around a nomadic encampment on the fringes of the Mughal Empire, and in one of the black tents, a baby girl was born. Her parents, of the Persian nobility, were fleeing their homeland in search of refuge. Thirty-four years later, this child of the storm, born in times of despair, grew up to marry Emperor Jahangir and become Empress Nur Jahan.
若要談到關於奴兒．佳罕的傳說，我們得從更早的1577年開始談起：當時冬天的風暴正肆虐著一個位於蒙兀兒帝國邊陲的游牧人營地，而奴兒．佳罕則誕生在當中的一個帳篷內；她的父母原是波斯貴族，但他們逃離了故居並尋找著一個庇護所。三十四年後，這個在寒風及絕境中誕生的小孩，嫁給了賈汗季皇帝並成為奴兒．佳罕皇后。
Nur Jahan was already married once before, and had a child from that marriage. In a time when women were literally discarded after the age of thirty, when harems welcomed new and fresh faces almost every day, Nur Jahan, when she stepped into the imperial harem, already fit none of the established norms. For hers was no political marriage. She was Jahangir's twentieth wife, and breaking with the tradition of dynastic ambition, her position of power came from the love and trust the emperor had in her, not
from having given him the all-cherished male heir.
奴兒．佳罕在嫁給賈汗季之前便早已結過婚並育有一個孩子，在當時年過三十的女子即被視為無物的社會，她的加入對每天都會有新人出現的後宮而言，無疑打破了所有的規範：身為皇帝的第二十位且非政治聯姻的妻子，未生育繼承人的她因著皇帝的愛及信賴打破了當時帝國的傳統，擁有著女人不可能有的極高權力。
Over the next sixteen years of his reign, until his death in 1627, she would rule instead. She signed on royal orders, patronized artists at court, gave alms generously with her large personal income, and controlled the politics of the empire, providing at times, wise and safe counsel for Jahangir. She had coins minted in her name, a mark of sovereignty usually available only to the emperor. She oversaw the building of her father's tomb that Persian noble exiled from his homeland and it still stands
today diagonally opposite the Taj Mahal, along a curve of the Yamuna river. In this tomb is the first influence of pietra dura inlay of precious stones in marble that is copied so effectively in the Taj. Nur Jahan's immense power in a time when women were meant to be faceless and quiescent has given her the unsavory reputation of a woman who took unfair advantage of an ailing emperor to further the wealth of her own family.
在奴兒．佳罕嫁給皇帝後，直到皇帝於西元1627年去世的前十六年內，她都治理著國家，她簽署敕書、贊助宮廷藝術家、以她豐碩的收入來支付各式救濟活動並領導著帝國內的政治，且不時地指示賈汗季皇帝正確的抉擇；她鑄造刻印著自己名號的硬幣──這是皇帝才有的權力；她督導著她那身為波斯貴族的父親的陵墓建造──這陵墓至今仍聳立著，就隔著亞穆納河與泰姬瑪哈陵對望──而泰姬瑪哈陵上著名的拼花雕嵌法最早正是由這座陵墓創始，後來才被泰姬瑪哈陵延用的。但在當時女人被要求不得露面發聲的時代，擁有強大權力的她便引發了利用重病的皇帝以肥厚自己娘
家的毀謗。
But Nur Jahan's authority came, pure and simple, from the man who married her. He loved her with a deep and absorbing passion that formed the foundation for ballads and songs in India. Thomas Moore's epic poem Lalla Rookh is based on their story. But Jahangir died before she did, and so left no memorial to her name, no substantial lasting-into-eternity indication of why or how much he loved her.
事實上，奴兒．佳罕的權力單純地來自她所嫁的男子，他的深情成為當時許多印度詩歌、民謠的主題，甚至於湯瑪斯．摩爾的史詩《拉娜聒珂》也是根據他們的故事寫成的。可惜的是賈汗季比奴兒．佳罕早過世，所以無法留下任何建築以傳頌她的名聲並見證他的深情。
A year after her marriage to Emperor Jahangir, her niece Mumtaz Mahal married Jahangir's son. It was a five year long engagement, not consummated because Nur Jahan's family had fallen into disgrace at court. So it is safe to assume that had Nur Jahan not married Jahangir, this most important marriage between Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan might not have taken place. And then, that magnificent tomb, the Taj Mahal, might not have existed.
在奴兒．佳罕嫁給皇帝一年後，她的姪女──慕塔芝．瑪哈在長達五年的訂婚後，嫁給了沙賈罕的兒子。婚禮之所以延宕了這麼久才進行是因為奴兒．佳罕的家族曾一度失寵，大多數人都推測若非奴兒．佳罕嫁給了皇帝，這項婚約將永遠不會實行，而宏偉的泰姬瑪哈陵也將不會存在。
Both these women, within the confines of their relationships, were powerful because they were beloved of emperors. But the future played strange games, turning the immortality of one of them into a fleeting footnote in history. The irony is that, for all the brilliance of her life, Nur Jahan is hidden in the shadow of the Taj—cast in the impending penumbra of the world's greatest monument of love. She could not have imagined that almost four hundred years later, she would be nearly invisible, dwarfed
into nonexistence by her niece, who ruffled so little the political waters of her times.
慕塔芝．瑪哈和奴兒．佳罕雖然有著血緣關係，但她們都是因被皇帝深愛才擁有強大的權力。事世無常，僅管奴兒．佳罕有著卓越不凡的才智，她卻被這世上最偉大的愛情紀念碑──泰姬瑪哈陵的陰影籠罩著；奴兒．佳罕大概永遠也無法想像，在四百年後，她的不朽名聲會被那懦弱且從未干擾自己政治勢力的姪女掩蓋住，成為歷史上一個轉瞬即逝的小人物。
When you next see a picture of the Taj, or are fortunate enough to see the Taj itself, think of the silent woman who ruled the empire before the one lying in that tomb. And wonder that if not for Nur Jahan, perhaps there would have been no Mumtaz Mahal.
當你看到泰姬瑪哈陵的照片，或當你有幸親眼觀賞她時，請回想早在陵中人之前就統馭著帝國的另一位女子，並試想若當初沒有奴兒．佳罕，現在可能沒有人會記得慕塔芝．瑪哈。
Then perhaps—to cast its magnetic specter over posterity—there would have been no Taj Mahal.
From: http://www.indusundaresan.com/mughal.htm
抱歉又來麻煩各位啦！我實在是想不出最後一段要如何翻，
所以我把原文和我的翻譯初稿附上來，
希望有人能幫我解開最後一段之謎。
而背景故事我再補充一下，當時的蒙兀兒帝國還滿像回教國家，
男子可任意娶多位妻妾，而女子在外人面前都得蒙著面紗，且不得發言，
但奴兒．佳罕卻使皇帝愛她愛到讓她治理國家，國內的政治可說是她說了算，
連皇帝都聽從她的意見，任憑她處置底下的人，連兒子被派去打仗、被放逐也無所謂。
當時一般人的想法都是這位皇后將會成為印度史上獨一無二名留千古的皇后，
沒想到最後反而是下一任皇帝為了愛妻蓋了一座世界七大奇景，
變成下一位皇后才是真正名留千古的人。
而這篇文章的作者很替這位皇后叫屈，便寫了二本小說來紀錄她的故事，
分別是《第二十位妻子》(The Twentieth Wife)和
《玫瑰盛宴》(The Feast of Roses)
而我翻譯的這篇文章則是她在網站上做的個人評論（呃……算是吧！）
還請大家幫忙一下吧！
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