Banarasidas was a Shrimal Jain businessman and poet of Mughal India.
13 Facts About Banarasidas
1.
2.
Banarasidas was born in a Shrimal Jain family in 1587.
3.
Banarasidas's father Kharagsen was a jeweller in Jaunpur.
4.
Banarasidas received basic education in letters and numbers from a local Brahmin in Jaunpur for one year and then from another Brahmin named Pandit Devdatt at the age of 14.
5.
Banarasidas further completed his higher studies in astrology and Khandasphuta, a work on mathematics.
6.
Banarasidas studied lexicographical texts like Namamala and Anekarthakosha.
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Banarasidas started his poetic and singing career with poems like Qutban's Mirigavati and Manjhan's Madhumalati, which were composed by Sufi poets in Hindavi verses.
8.
Banarasidas was influenced by the sermons of Gommatasara in 1635 by Rupchand Pande, spiritual teacher of Hemraj Pande.
9.
Banarasidas was one of the leading proponents of the Adhyatma movement, which eventually led to the Terapanth sect of the Digambar Jains.
10.
Banarasidas appears to have been a better poet than a businessman; at one stage he relates how after incurring several business losses, his wife gave him twenty rupees that she had saved up.
11.
The work is notable for many details of life in Mughal times - Banarasidas lived during the reign of Akbar, Jahangir and Shahjahan.
12.
Banarasidas appears to have been an occasional chess partner of Emperor Shahjahan.
13.
Rohini Chowdhury's Hindi translation of Banarasidas' Ardhakathanaka has been published by Penguin Books India, 2007.