Banarasidas ARDHAKATHANAK (A Half Story) Read online

  He put the counterfeit coins into a small bag made of a fine material,

  And knotted the bag tightly.(512)

  Holding the small bag in his hand,

  He went to the kotwal.

  He showed him the counterfeit coins,

  And explained the whole matter to him.(513)

  ‘Sahibji, a band of thugs has come into the village.

  They have spread themselves throughout the village. They are so many they cannot be counted.

  They will gather together in one spot at dusk;

  At that time, please mount your horse and come on a round of the village.’(514)

  Having said his piece, the bania slunk off.

  The kotwal went to the hakim,

  And told the hakim the tale.

  The hakim sent his diwan with him.(515)

  The kotwal, with the diwan

  Appeared in the village at dusk, like ghosts.

  With them were hundreds of villagers,

  Who swamped the sarai like a flood.(516)

  The two spread a cot and sat down.

  They called the two brahmins before them.

  The Mughal officers asked, ‘Who are you?’

  The brahmins replied, ‘Our home is in Mathura.’(517)

  Next they called the Maheshwari,

  And asked, ‘Where are you going? Where are you coming from?’

  He replied, ‘I am coming from Jaunpur city.

  I am a merchant, on my way to Agra.’(518)

  Then came Banarasi’s turn. He said,

  ‘I am a jeweller dealing in precious stones.

  My firm is in Banaras.

  I am now returning to Agra(519)

  ‘Where I used to be Nema Sahu’s business partner.

  My place of residence is Jaunpur.

  We are well-known merchants.

  What evidence do you have to show that we are thugs?’(520)

  When Banarasi said these words,

  The kotwal and the diwan began talking amongst themselves in Farsi.

  Said one, ‘There is no doubt, these people are thugs.’

  Said the other, ‘They are speaking the truth, they are merchants.’(521)

  The kotwal cried,

  ‘Tie them up! What is the point of arguing further?’

  The hakim’s diwan said,

  ‘The kotwal is a fool and doesn’t understand anything.(522)

  ‘At any rate, it is difficult to see clearly at night,

  To determine whether these men are thieves or merchants.

  Do not say anything further at night,

  With dawn their true nature will become known.’(523)

  The kotwal then declared,

  ‘Find proof of your identity within

  Korara, Ghatampur and Bari,

  The three villages under my jurisdiction.(524)

  ‘I will not accept evidence from any other village.

  You worry about this. I am off.’

  The Mughals left, saying they would be back the following morning.

  They posted guards all around.(525)

  Shrimal Banarasi,

  And the Maheshwari merchant,

  Conferred with each other.

  The night seemed six months long.(526)

  When one watch of the night remained,

  The Maheshwari said,

  ‘My younger brother, Hari

  Is his name, has married into a family from Bari!(527)

  ‘I had come here with his barat!

  What a good thing I remembered this!’

  Banarasi cried, ‘You fool!

  Why did you hide this fact?’(528)

  The Maheshwari explained,

  ‘Fear had made me forget it.

  Now that I have remembered it,

  Do not worry any more.’(529)

  Banarasi felt happier.

  Some of his worry remained, though some had gone.

  Sometimes he would feel there was no longer any need to be apprehensive.

  Sometimes he would doubt the Maheshwari’s words, and wonder if they were false.(530)

  Thus, in worry and anxiety, came the dawn.

  Foot soldiers arrived—their presence seemed to be a trap.

  With them came men carrying sulis, impaling stakes, on their heads.

  The kotwal had sent nineteen.(531)

  These the men brought to the sarai.

  The soldiers declared,

  ‘You are nineteen thugs in all

  These nineteen sulis are for you.’(532)

  Another half hour went by;

  The kotwal and the diwan returned.

  With them came the people of the village,

  Eager to see the matter sorted out.(533)

  Banarasi said,

  ‘We have found people in Bari who can identify us!’

  The diwan, pleased, declared, ‘Well done!

  This is a useful thing that you have said!(534)

  ‘Come with me to Bari.

  Whatever happens there will be the truth.’

  The Maheshwari mounted a horse,

  And the diwan went with him.(535)

  Both men went to Bari,

  And met the Maheshwari’s samdhis.15 It was established that they were merchants, not thugs.

  The Maheshwari stayed behind at the home of his relatives,

  The Mughal officer returned and came to see Banarasi.(536)

  He came and said, ‘You spoke the truth, Sahu.

  Please forgive me, I am guilty. This was wrong.’

  Banarasi replied good-naturedly,

  ‘You are the master, the hakim, the umrao.(537)

  ‘Our past deeds and actions,

  Are now bearing fruit.

  In my opinion, what is to happen cannot be wiped out.

  So where is the question of guilt or fault?’(538)

  The two Mughal officers returned to their homes.

  Then Banarasi rested a little.

  The two brahmins recovered their courage

  And cried, ‘We’ve lost our money!’(539)

  When one watch of the day had passed,

  Banarasidas,

  Taking six or seven sers of fragrant, perfumed oil with him,

  Went to see the Mughal officers.(540)

  He went to the hakim’s, to the diwan’s,

  And to the kotwal’s house,

  Presented each officer with a quantity of the perfumed oil in accordance with his rank,

  And showed them friendship and respect.(541)

  Then said Banarasi,

  ‘Today the saraf16 has cheated us.

  Hold him guilty,

  And recover our money.’(542)

  One of the Mughal officers replied, ‘Without your saying so,

  I had already made an attempt to find him.

  Taking all the money with him,

  He had run away that very day.(543)

  ‘He has not been found anywhere.

  Return home

  And distribute sirni in thanksgiving that you are alive!

  The loss of this money is a small matter!’(544)

  Then Banarasi thought to himself,

  ‘Without influence, it will not be possible to recover the money.

  Here, we have no power or influence and can do nothing,

  So it is best that I go home quietly.’(545)

  So thinking, Banarasi gave thanks,

  And telling himself that whatever had to happen had happened,

  He returned to the sarai.

  He told the brahmins that it was not possible to recover their money.(546)

  Everyone sat down to a meal together.

  Evening fell;

  The Maheshwari returned from Bari.

  They spent the night in peace and well-being.(547)

  At dawn they set forth on the road to Agra again.

  They felt as though they had escaped from the jaws of death.

  On the second day, on their way to Agra,

  Banarasi heard of his friend N
arottam’s death.(548)

  Someone gave him

  A letter from Bainidas, Narottam’s grandfather.

  He read the letter and swooned and fell, losing consciousness.

  He could not help himself.(549)

  Banarasi mourned his friend long and loud,

  Weeping and lamenting on the road.

  His companions tried to comfort him, but he was inconsolable.

  Seeing his grief, many people gathered around him.(550)

  Greed is the root of all evil.

  The root of sorrow is love.

  Indigestion is the root of disease,

  And the root of death is this body.(551)

  Somehow, pulling himself together,

  Banarasi mounted his horse again and continued on his way.

  Travelling steadily, they neared Agra;

  The city now lay just across the river.(552)

  There, the two brahmins

  Blocked the way,

  Saying, ‘Without our money,

  We will die.’(553)

  After much wrangling and arguing,

  The two brahmins declared that unless they recovered their money, they would kill themselves.

  Then Banarasi thought

  That it was best to recompense them for their loss and end the quarrel.(554)

  The Maheshwari gave twelve rupees,

  Banarasi gave thirteen.

  The brahmins gave their blessings and left;

  The banias became free of sin.(555)

  Upon reaching Agra, each of the travellers went off to his own house.

  Banarasi, too, came home, and fell unconscious again.

  He wept for a long time,

  Loudly lamenting his friend.(556)

  He wept for almost two hours,

  Then, somehow, busied himself with his work.

  After his evening meal,

  He went to Sabal Singh Sahu’s house.(557)

  He paid many visits to the Sahu’s house,

  But who in that household was interested in sorting out his accounts?

  The Sahu was lost in his own grandeur, as though drunk,

  Surrounded by singers and musicians, who entertained him with their art, one after another.(558)

  The rhythmic thud of the pakhawaj, the twang of stringed instruments,

  The gathering was as grand as that of a prince.

  The Sahu distributed gifts unceasingly,

  While poets and bards sang and recited for him.(559)

  It is difficult to describe the grandeur of the Sahu’s gatherings.

  Whoever saw it remained lost in wonder.

  Banarasi said to himself,

  ‘My accounts will never be sorted here!’(560)

  Banarasi stayed in attendance upon the Sahu for almost four months.

  What way of doing business was this, he wondered. What quarrel did the Sahu have with him?

  Whenever he would bring up the subject of settling his accounts,

  The Sahu would reply, ‘In the morning!’ and put him off till the following day.(561)

  Half an hour seemed like a month, one watch of the day seemed six months long.

  How slowly a day passed, that God alone knows.

  Whether the sun rises or sets is of little interest

  To a sensualist immersed in sensual pleasures.(562)

  In this manner, many days passed.

  One day, to Sabal Singh Mothiya’s house

  Came Benidas’s17 chacha,

  Anga Sah.(563)

  Anga was a good man,

  Well-bred and respectable, and with varied interests in life.

  He was married to Sabal Singh’s sister,

  And was a friend of Banarasi’s.(564)

  To him Banarasi explained

  His problem with the accounts, saying,

  ‘I’m really fed up,

  And so is Narottam’s father.(565)

  ‘Please explain this to the Sahu,

  And help us get our accounts settled,

  So that he writes out our deeds of release,

  And tears up the earlier documents.’(566)

  Anga Sah went that very same day

  To Sabal Singh.

  He called for the relevant documents,

  And prevailed upon Sabal Singh to settle the accounts of the partnership.(567)

  Sabal Singh Mothiya wrote out two deeds of release.

  No longer could anyone make any complaints against Banarasi.

  Two copies were made of these,

  And were given to Banarasi and Narottam’s father.(568)

  Narottam’s father and Banarasi went their separate ways,

  Each returning to his own home.

  This event took place in Samvat 1673,

  In winter, during the dark half of the month of Agahan.(569)

  Banarasi took a separate house.

  Now his good deeds began to bear fruit.

  The stock of cloth that he had left with the brahmin,

  The brahmin sent to him under guard.(570)

  When the bundle of Jaunpuri cloth arrived,

  Banarasi added it to his stock.

  Every day at dawn, he would go to the marketplace,

  To sell the cloth, adding what he earned to his capital.(571)

  It was at this time that a calamity occurred—

  The First Plague broke out in Agra.

  People ran away in panic.

  The ‘disease of the knots’ spread across the city.(572)

  Knot-like lumps would appear on the body, and almost instantly the person would die.

  No one could stop or control this disease.

  Rats were dying, and so were the doctors.

  People stopped eating out of fear of infection.(573)

  Near the city was a village of brahmins,

  A peaceful place called Azizpur.

  That is where Banarasidas went to escape the plague;

  He rented a house close to that of another merchant.(574)

  He lived alone in that house.

  A secret matter that is not to be told—

  Banarasi was guilty of an indiscretion there,

  The result of his past deeds.(575)

  The plague ran its course and died out,

  People returned to their homes.

  Many days passed by;

  Then Banarasi went to Amarsar(576)

  Where Nihalchand’s wedding was to be held.

  After the wedding, he took to the road again

  And returned to Agra;

  He visited Sabal Singh often.(577)

  Banarasi’s mother, who used to be in Jaunpur,

  Came to live with her son.

  Then, to Khairabad to get married,

  Went Banarasidas.(578)

  After his wedding, he returned home;

  The desire to go on pilgrimage rose in him.

  Vardhaman Kunwarji, a broker,

  Had collected a company to go on pilgrimage; Banarasi joined the company of pilgrims.(579)

  The pilgrimage was to Ahichhatrapur and Hastinapur.

  Banarasi left one early morning,

  Taking his mother and wife with him.

  They sat in the carriage, all three, in a state of unbroken devotion for the entire journey.(580)

  In Samvat 1675, at an auspicious hour in the month of Paush,

  They offered puja at Ahichhatrapur.

  They then moved on to Hastinapur,

  Where they paid homage to the tirthankars Shantinath, Kunthunath and Arnath.(581)

  In honour of Shanti, Kunth and Arnath,

  Banarasi composed a verse

  Which he would recite

  Every day with great devotion.(582)

  The kings Vishwasen, Sursen, and Sudarshan,

  The queens Achirarani, Shreerani and Devirani—the tirthankars Banarasi is praising

  Are their sons, whose special signs are the deer, the goat and the fish known as the Nandavat.

  They are forty, thirty-five, and thirty bow-lengths
tall; their bodies are like gold.

  They are the repositories of bliss. This is how Banarasidas sings their praises. His heart fills with joy when he thinks of them.

  Hastinapur, which is also known as Gajpur and Nagpur, is where Shanti, Kunth and Ara are worshipped.(583)

  After the pilgrimage, Banarasi’s heart filled with gladness.

  The company of pilgrims then turned towards Delhi.

  On the way they came to Meerut,

  The home of Banarasi’s maternal grandfather.(584)

  The company halted beneath the city walls.

  Then Banarasi went on another pilgrimage—this time to meet his family.

  Upon leaving Meerut, the pilgrims reached the city of Kol,

  Where they offered puja, since they had taken a vow to do so.(585)

  They returned at last to Agra.

  The pilgrims dispersed, each to his own home.

  Banarasi began visiting the upashraya,

  Where he would listen to the teachings of the Jain shravaks and ascetics staying there.(586)

  Banarasi vowed to observe the twelve fasts advocated by Jainism, and even composed a poem on them;

  He accepted these fasts wholeheartedly.

  He also began to follow everyday the fourteen rules of conduct laid down in Jainism

  If he made a mistake, he would atone for it.(587)

  Everyday at dusk he would observe the Jain rite of pratikraman,

  And observe the special fasts for each day.

  His faith in Jainism grew, and he began rejecting other false beliefs.