In a dream, Tipu Sultan, the ‘Tiger of Mysore,’ sees three dates served on a silver platter. To him, it means victory. Victory over the British, the Nizam and the Mahrattas, being served on a platter. He made a note of it in his leather-bound diary.
The ‘Slim diary’
In London’s British Library, among the many Persian manuscripts, is a leather-bound book of a hundred and three pages. This little diary or ‘register,’ as it has been called, is the personal handwritten record of Tipu Sultan’s dreams.
The thirty-seven dreams he noted in his book provide an insight into the life and ambitions of the ruler of Mysore, and expose the reader to the mastery with which he methodically analysed his dreams, centuries before Freud.
In the summer of 1799, after the fall of Seringpatanam, Colonel Kirkpatrick discovered, among other things, a register in Tipu Sultan’s bed-chamber. Habibullah, Tipu Sultan’s munshi who was present during the search, warned the Colonel that the Sultan had always “manifested peculiar anxiety” to hide his journal from the view of anyone who happened to approach while he was either reading or writing in it.
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