[Note: A recent archeological find in Kuwait unearthed a gold-plated statue of the Hindu deity Ganesh. A Muslim resident of Kuwait requested historical research material that can help explain the connection between Hindu civilisation and Arabia.]

After reading this article, and finding this researcher's work to be well thought out and documented, I searched for more of his research and found the fully as outrageous claim below on a full scale web site maintained by P.N. Oaks

The following summaries and conversations are as they appear on "Hindunet", and I have not corrected the Indian "English" colloqualisms--

The Mogul Emperor Shah Jahan in the memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal
built the Taj Mahal. It was built in 22 years (1631 to 1653) By
20,000 artisans brought to India from all over the world. Many
people believe Ustad Isa of Iran designed it. This is what your
guide probably told you if you ever visited the Taj Mahal. No one
has ever challenged it except Professor P.N.Oak, who believes that
the whole world has been duped in his book Taj Mahal.
The True Story.

In his book Taj Mahal: The True Story, Oak says the Taj Mahal is not
Queen Mumtaz Mahal's tomb but an ancient Hindu temple palace of Lord Shiva (then known as Tejo Mahalaya).
In the course of his research, Oak discovered that Shiva temple
palace was usurped by Shah Jahan from then Maharaja of Jaipur, Jai
Singh...... Shah Jahan then remodeled the palace into his wife's
memorial. ...In his own court chronicle, Badshahnama, Shah Jahan admits
that an exceptionally beautiful grand mansion in Agra was taken from
Jai Singh for Mumtaz's burial. The ex-Maharaja of Jaipur still
retains in his secret collection two orders from Shah Jahan for
surrendering the Taj building. Using captured temples and mansions,
as a burial place for dead courtiers and royalty was a common
practice among Muslim rulers.

For example, Humayun, Akbar, Etmud-ud-Daula and Safdarjung are all
buried in such mansions..... Oak's inquiries begin with the name Taj
Mahal.... He says this term does not occur in any Moghul court papers
or chronicles, even after Shah Jahan's time.
The term "Mahal" has never been used for a building in
any of the Muslim countries, from Afghanistan to Algeria. "The
unusual explanation that the term Taj Mahal derives from Mumtaz
Mahal is illogical in at least two respects.

Firstly, her name was never Mumtaz Mahal but Mumtaz-ul-Zamani, he
writes. "Secondly, one cannot omit the first three letters 'Mum'
from a woman's name to derive the remainder as the name for the
building." Taj Mahal, he claims, is a corrupt version of
Tejo-Mahalaya, or the Shiva's Palace. ..Oak also says the love story
of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan is a fairy tale created by court
sycophants, blundering historians and sloppy archaeologists.
Not a single royal chronicle of Shah Jahan's time corroborates the
love story.

(According to another different account Mumtaz was a Hindu married
lady, whose real Hindu name I am forgetting now. ...Once Shah Jahan
happened to see her and was wonder struck by the beauty of Hindu
lady. ..He then prisoned the Hindu husband of Hindu lady for about
two years and forcing him to divorce his Hindu wife. mm Hindu husband
kept refusing of divorcing his wife.........After 2 years, Shah Jahan
killed the Hindu husband of Hindu lady and then married the
widowed Hindu lady by force... After marriage he named the Hindu lady
Mumtaz.)

Furthermore, Oak cites several documents suggesting the Taj Mahal
predates Shah Jahan's era, and was a temple palace dedicated to
Shiva worshipped by the Rajputs of Agra city. For example, Professor
Marvin Miller of New York took a few samples from the riverside
doorway of the Taj.
Carbon dating tests revealed that the door was 300 years older than
Shah Jahan... European traveler Johan Al! Bert Man delslo, who visited
Agra in 1638 (only seven years after Mumtaz's death), describes the
life of the city in his memoirs..... But he makes no reference to the
Taj Mahal being built. ....The writings of Peter Mundy, an English
visitor to Agra within a year of Mumtaz's death, also suggest the
Taj was a noteworthy building long well before Shah Jahan's time.
Oak points out a number of design and architectural inconsistencies
that support the belief of the Taj Mahal being a typical Hindu
temple rather than a mausoleum.... Many rooms in the Taj Mahal have
remained sealed since Shah Jahan's time, and are still not
accessible to the public..... Oak asserts they contain a headless statue
of Shiva and other objects commonly used for worship rituals in
Hindu temples..... Fearing political backlash, Indira Gandhi's
government tried to have Oak's book withdrawn from the bookstores,
and threatened the Indian publisher of the first edition with dire
consequences.... There is only one way to discredit or validate Oak's
research.... The current Indian government should open the sealed rooms
of the Taj Mahal under UN supervision, and let international experts
investigate...... Do Circulate this to all your friends and let them
know about this reality..... I would like to add that near the rivers
only big Shiva temples are there. ....Also...the designs are like BEL
leaves and also they say that water falls at some place ...and that
can be the place where the shivling would have been...... Also people
tell that actual grave of mumtazmahal is in Rajasthan somewhere.

WE should do something...
For those who do not think this is a true article go through these:
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A5220
> http://www.designcommunity.com/discussion/6485.html
> http://www.humnri.com/Humex/Submission/bhat/bhat69.asp
> http://www.gurgaonharyana.com/taj.htm

The initial post attracted replies, some of which I will put here. Again I have not corrected the Indian "English" colloqualisms--

The Tajmahal is Tejomahalay

>Probably there is no one who has been duped at least once in a
>lifetime. But can the whole world be duped? This may seem
>impossible. But in the matter of Indian and world history the world
>can be duped in many respects for hundreds of years and still
>continues to be duped. The world famous Tajmahal is a glaring
>instance. For all the time, money and energy that people over the
>world spend in visiting the Tajmahal, they are dished out of
>concoction. Contrary to what visitors are made to believe the Taj
>Mahal is not a Islamic mausoleum but an ancient Shiva Temple known
>as Tejo Mahalaya which the 5th generation Moghul Emperor Shahjahan
>commandeered from the then Maharaja of Jaipur.

The Tajmahal, should therefore, be viewed as a temple palace and not as a tomb.

>That makes a vast difference. You miss the details of its size,
>grandeur, majesty and beauty when you take it to be a mere tomb.
>When told that you are visiting a temple palace you wont fail to
>notice its annexes, ruined defensive walls, hillocks, moats,
>cascades, fountains, majestic garden, hundreds of rooms archived
>verandahs, terraces, multi stored towers, secret sealed chambers,
>guest rooms, stables, the trident (Trishul) pinnacle on the dome and
> the sacred, esoteric Hindu letter "OM" carved on the exterior of
>the wall of the sanctum sanctorum now occupied by the cenotaphs.
>For detailed proof of this breath-taking discovery, you may read the
>well-known historian Shri. P. N. Oak's celebrated book titled “
>Tajmahal: The True Story". But let us place before you, for the
>time being an exhaustive summary of the massive evidence ranging
>over hundred points:
>
>1.The term Tajmahal itself never occurs in any mogul court paper or
>chronicle even in Aurangzeb's time. The attempt to explain it away
>as Taj-i-mahal is therefore, ridiculous.
>2.The ending "Mahal"is never Muslim because in none of the Muslim
>countries around the world from Afghanistan to Algeria is there a
>building known as "Mahal".
>3.The unusual explanation of the term Tajmahal derives from Mumtaz
>Mahal, who is buried in it, is illogical in at least two respects
>viz., firstly her name was never Mumtaj Mahal but Mumtaz-ul-Zamani
>and secondly one cannot omit the first three letters "Mum" from a
>woman’s name to derive the remainder as the name of the building.
>4.Since the lady's name was Mumtaz (ending with 'Z') the name of the
> building derived from her should have been Taz Mahal, if at all,
>and not Taj (spelled with a 'J').
>5.Several European visitors of Shahjahan's time allude to the
>building as Taj-e-Mahal is almost the correct tradition, age old
>Sanskrit name Tej-o-Mahalaya, signifying a Shiva temple. Contrarily
> Shahjahan and Aurangzeb scrupulously avoid using the Sanskrit term
> and call it just a holy grave.
>6.The tomb should be understood to signify NOT A BUILDING but only
>the grave or cenotaph inside it. This would help people to realize
>that all dead Muslim courtiers and royalty including Humayun, Akbar,
>Mumtaz, Etmad-ud-Daula and Safdarjang have been buried in capture
>Hindu mansions and temples.
>7.Moreover, if the Taj is believed to be a burial place, how can the
> term Mahal, i.e., mansion apply to it?
>8.Since the term Taj Mahal does not occur in mogul courts it is
>absurd to search for any mogul explanation for it. Both its
>components namely, 'Taj' and' Mahal' are of Sanskrit origin.

More replies. Again I have not corrected the Indian "English" colloqualisms--

Another article on the same topic:

>http://www.telugupeople.com/discussion/article.asp?id=10761
>
>I hope the anti Oak crowd will see the truth now. if nothing else,
>why most of the rooms and the like are kept sealed, as if they are
>hiding a secret?
>But India is a majority Hindu nation, now controlled by Hindu
>nationalists whose bête noire is the Muslim invaders who built the
>Taj.... As Hindu nationalists never fail to remind, the Moguls were
>marauding conquerors who brutalized the bodies, psyches, and
>monuments of Hindu India.... But they also gave the country many of its
>most beautiful buildings and gardens, which lie almost casually
>studded throughout Delhi and Agra and nearby Fatepur Sikri, the
>fabulous abandoned city built by Akbar.
>
>Some ardent Hindu nationalists ignore this; others deny it
>altogether. ....In our office library I recently unearthed a small
>volume called the ''The Taj Mahal Is a Temple Palace,'' by one
>P.N. Oak in 1974, and billed as ''An Epoch-Making Discovery Which
>Has Proved All Histories and Historians Wrong.'' He argues that the
>Taj was ''built by a powerful Rajput king in pre-Muslim times,’’
>constructed ''of the Hindus, for the Hindus and by the Hindus.''
>Obviously, this is not a story of Tejo Mahalaya. What NYT wrote
>above is nonsense. Certainly I can't find a good reason why polemics
>should be dragged into a column of travelogue. What nationalists or
>any body else have got to do with Shah Jahan? The point we are
>looking here is about whether Taj has been a rehash of a Shiva
>temple as claimed. Nationalists or not, the fact what Shah Jahan has
>done or not done cannot be undone. And admittedly, this claim is
>made as long ago as 1974 (exactly 30 yrs ago). More over, if the
>author found the book of PN Oak and is a regular visitor to Taj
>Mahal, he should have supported or refuted the visual points made by
>Oak instead of going off (wrongly so) on the religious polemics.
>Facts are presented here for the benefit of other members. May be
>some of you, who have visited Taj, may look into these aspects:
>
>http://www.stephen-knapp.com/was_the_taj_mahal_a_vedic_temple.htm
>
>fantastic set of photos on Taj Mahal which tends to prove the claims
>of the Oak given below. The site also lists some online articles on
>the issue.
>2 http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/modern/taj_oak.html)
>
>Until the lions have their own historians, the history of hunt will
>always glorify the hunter.
> The Indians have been most unfortunate that India has been under
>foreign and minority rule since 712 A.D. until 15.8.1947 and this
>fact we must accept first then only we can think realistically.
>Unfortunately things got even worse because of daydreamer J.L. Nehru
>AND HIS POLICY OF APPEASEMENT OF MINORIRTY.
>The apartheid may have ended in South Africa but not in Bharat so
>unless there is one law for all the citizens a country cannot be
>strong so this must be our first priority in having similar common
>laws and Uniform Civil Code.
>
>It may be worth for people to read the book by PN Oak "Taj Mahal the
>Hindu temple". He had written that it was investigated by NY
>Archaeologist by carbon dating and govt. did not allow till that
>date for full-scale investigation.
>It was built by Ràjaput king as was MANDIR called TAJOMAHALA but was
>converted by Mogul king into Mausoleum.
>The original things are just skin deep; and if superficial tiles are
>removed it may so some things!
>Mumtaz died in south and could not be buried in Agra. Also the tomb
>cannot be above ground level.
>P.N.Oak also argues that Taj Mahal faces to East like Shiva Mandir.
>
>http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/819614.cms?headline=

Book~documents~'Islamic~holocaust'~in~India
>
>Sh. P.N. Oak has written a book that Taj Mahal is a Hindu Temple.
>This book has been published by Voice of India, 2- Ansari Rd.
>Delhi, Bharat (India).
>
>The Taj Mahal is Tejomahalay, A Hindu Temple, By P.N.Oak
>
>Bharat celebrated the 350th anniversary of the fraud by Shah Jahan
>and other Muslims on Hindu population of Bharat

To read P.N. Oak's claim that the Kaaba was originally a Vedic Hindu temple - Click Here!

To read a Muslim-authored refutation of P.N. Oak's claims about the Kaaba - Click Here!

To read Hindu love and worship songs and poetry to Allah [Durga, Bhavani] - Click Here!

To read Hindu worship songs to Shiva and the 108 names of Lord Shiva - Click Here!

Lord Shiva's Spring 2002 Decision - Click Here!

One Minute Shiva Meditation - Click Here!

OR: Find out how the "Fickle Finger of God" became Jesus Christ's sword!