Banarasidas

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Banarasidas (b. Jaunpur 1586-1643) was a Jain businessman and poet of Mughal India. He is known for his poetic autobiography - ardha-kathAnaka, (The Half Story), ^[1]composed in Braj Bhasa, an early dialect of Hindi linked with the region around Mathura. It is the first autobiography written in an Indian language. At the time he was living in Agra and was 55 years old - the "half" story refers to the Jain tradition, where a "full" lifespan is 110 years. It describes his transition from an unruly youth, to a religious realization by the time the ardha-kathAnaka was composed.

Banarasidas was born a Shrimal Shvetambara Jain. He also wrote on the Jain philosophy, largely based on Kundakunda's Samayasar (a Digambara text). He is one of the founders of the Terapanth sect of the Digambar Jains.

Banarasidas appears to have been a better poet than a businessman; at one stage he relates how after incurring several business losses (which he lied about), his wife gave him twenty coins from her dowry. At times a friend of the nawab of Jaunpur Chini Kilechkhan, at other times persecuted, he had to flee to other cities.

The ardha-kathAnaka is also notable for many details of life in Mughal times - Banarasidas lived during the reign of Akbar, Jahangir and Shahjahan. He appears to have been an occasional chess partner of Emperor Shahjahan. The following stanzas describe the effect of Akbar's sudden death in 1605 - the uncertainty of succession induced widespread fear among the wealthier classes:

ghar-ghar dar-dar kiye kapaaT,

haTavaanii nahi.n baithe haaT.

bhale vastra aru bhuushaNa bhale,

te sab gaaDhe dharatii tale.

ghar-ghar sabani visaahe shashhtra,

logan pahine moTe vastra.

u.nch niich kouu nahi.n pahichaan,

dhanii daridrii bhaye samaan.

[At all the houses, doors were kept closed,

merchants stopped sitting at the shops.

Nice clothes and ornaments were

all buried under the ground.

People started keeping their swords ready,

they started wearing coarse clothes.

You could not recognize the status of a person,

the rich and poor looked alike.]

At this time, Banarasidass slipped and fell and cut his head on the pavement; his mother treated the wound with burnt cloth. After a week, Jahangir ascended the throne, fighting off the challenge of his own son, Prince Khusro (whose eyes were taken out). People relaxed. The rich started to again dress in fine clothes and jewelry.

Despite the long life expectancy inherent in the title of his book, Banarasidas died two years after writing it, in 1643.