Banarasidas ARDHAKATHANAK (A Half Story) Read online

  ∗∗∗

  Banarasidas was born in 1586, into a well-to-do merchant family of Jaunpur. His family were of the Shrimal clan, Rajputs who had in years past converted to Jainism, and, giving up their warrior-like ways, taken to business and commerce. The Shrimals were a large and prosperous clan, with an established presence in most important towns and cities across the Mughal Empire. Some Shrimals even held important administrative posts under the Mughals.

  Banarasi’s ancestors came from the village of Biholi, near Rohtak in northern India. Appointing themselves guardians and protectors of the village of Biholi, they took upon themselves the gotra ‘Biholia’.

  Banarasi’s paternal grandfather, Muldas,7 was an educated man, proficient in both Hindi and Farsi, and had held the post of steward to a Mughal officer in Narwar.8

  Upon Muldas’s sudden death, his widow, Banarasi’s grandmother, took refuge with her father’s brother Madan Singh Chinaliya,9 an established jeweller in Jaunpur. Her infant son Kharagsen, later Banarasi’s father, was brought up in his great-uncle’s household, from whom he learnt the jeweller’s trade.

  In his youth, Kharagsen experimented with an alternative career: he ran away from home to join Rai Dhanna, an influential Shrimal who was diwan to Lodi Khan, a kinsman of the nawab of Bengal. The Rai took him under his wing and appointed him potdar in charge of the revenue and administration of four districts. Upon the Rai’s sudden death, he returned home to Jaunpur, and joined the family business. By the time Banarasi was born, Kharagsen had a thriving business in Jaunpur. Together with his partner, he traded in gold, silver, pearls, rubies and the dust of precious stones.10

  Banarasi had a close, intense, but stormy relationship with his father. Kharagsen was a strong, emotional and passionate man, and rarely agreed with his son on anything. Banarasi, though holding his father in great respect and affection, held decidedly different views on some aspects of life. His refusal to conform to the life of a merchant’s son and his repeated failures in business were a source of great disappointment to his father. Nevertheless, Kharagsen occupied a central position in his son’s life, and dominates the pages of the Ardhakathanak till his death in 1616.

  Banarasi’s mother was the daughter of Surdas Dhor, who was also a Shrimal and a resident of Meerut.11 Though she appears a couple of times in the Ardhakathanak, we do not know very much more about her.

  Banarasi’s early years were spent in Jaunpur. Like his father before him,12 he was sent to school at the age of eight.13 The school was a pathshala run by a brahmin pandit. Here, Banarasi learnt to read and write, to balance books, and assay gold and silver—the skills needed by a merchant’s son in the marketplace. Banarasi was a quick learner, and within a year had acquired all the learning that was considered necessary for him to join his father’s business.

  For most of Banarasi’s companions, this would have been the end of their formal education. Once basic literacy and numeracy skills had been acquired, the sons of the business community were required to sit in the marketplace and learn the methods of trade and commerce as their fathers and forefathers had done before them. But Banarasi was different. He discovered very early in life a love of learning, a love that was to stay with him throughout his life, and which added to his everyday humdrum existence—of a householder and merchant—a cerebral intellectualism.

  His love of learning earned him a reprimand from his elders on the error of his ways. Learning, they admonished him, was meant for brahmins and bards. It brought no profit to a merchant’s son, and ‘those who spend all their time in learning go hungry’.14 Banarasi paid no heed to such admonishments.

  At the age of fourteen he found another teacher, Pandit Devdutt, with whom he studied texts dealing with astrology, astronomy, the art of love, rhetoric as well as the two lexical works—Anekarath and Namamala.

  Later that same year, he met Bhanchand, a Jain monk and scholar who took up residence in Jaunpur. Banarasi began to look upon Bhanchand as his teacher and spiritual guide and spent many hours with him, studying Jain scripture, rites and rituals, as well as several texts on a variety of subjects, including verse composition and Sanskrit grammar. It was while under the tutelage of Bhanchand that Banarasi wrote Panchasandhi, a work on Sanskrit grammar that is now lost.

  Banarasi was well versed in Sanskrit and Prakrit, and conversant with several other languages.15 His education seems to have been completely within the Jain tradition, and despite his later interaction with members of the Mughal administration, quite untouched by the parallel Persian tradition of the Mughal court.

  It was at the age of fourteen, too, that Banarasi discovered another passion—he fell in love. He does not tell us who his lover was, nor does he give us any details about her. All he says is that he loved with the single-minded devotion of a Sufi fakir yearning for the Divine.16

  Banarasi remained subservient to his karma. His two passions, learning and love, came together in the composition of his first work, a thousand verses on love,17 which he later destroyed by flinging the manuscript into the Gomti River in a moment of self-reproach and disillusionment.18

  In 1610, when Banarasi was twenty-four, Kharagsen decided to hand over the running of the family business to him,19 and sent him to Agra with a consignment of precious stones, jewellery and other goods.

  Under the relative peace and stability of Mughal rule, trade and commerce thrived. Merchants such as Nema Sahu and his son Sabal Singh Mothiya—for whom Banarasi was a representative later in his life—were extremely wealthy and, through an extensive network of dealers and agents, controlled trade over large geographical areas. They dealt in cloth and precious stones, and merchandise such as oil, grain, rice and indigo. Moneylending was a lucrative addition to trade, and in the days before modern banking systems, provided a necessary source of finance. Lesser merchants, like Kharagsen, were relatively limited in the extent of their activities and the diversity of their merchandise, yet made a comfortable living through trade. The Jain community, to which Banarasi belonged, was rich, powerful and influential. It provided not only a social and religious structure within which its members lived, but also opportunities for business and trade, as well as support and a safety net in case of business reversals.

  Banarasi, however, was not cut out for business. Despite all his efforts, and support from friends, family and other members of his community, he made a huge loss. Ruefully, Banarasi concluded that he could not understand the ways of doing business in Agra.20

  Travel was very much a part of a merchant’s existence, and Banarasi travelled extensively—to and from Agra, Patna, Allahabad, Jaunpur—in the course of business. His journeys were by road, on foot, on horseback, or by bullock cart, often through unsafe territory and inclement weather. Banarasi gives vivid accounts of some of these journeys. Once, losing their way in a forest at night, he and his terrified companions were forced to spend the night in a robber settlement. Another time, he and his company of travellers were accused of being thieves; only good luck and chance saved them from being impaled.

  Success in business came to Banarasi only after several years of hardship and struggle. He spent many years in Agra, wrestling with the complexities of trade and commerce. Venture after business venture ended in disaster. He writes at length about his losses, and describes in unhesitating detail the causes and circumstances of his business failures: he blames bad luck and past karma for his failures, but acknowledges too his own ignorance and inability in the ways of doing business. But on the causes and circumstances of his success, he remains uncharacteristically silent.21

  We learn from the Ardhakathanak that Banarasidas married three times, and had nine children, none of whom survived infancy. His children’s early deaths remained a source of grief for Banarasi till the end of his own life. Of the women he married, Banarasi tells us very little, though he does write with affection and regard about his first wife, who shared with him the worst reverses of his youth.

  Banarasi had many friends, men with int
ellectual interests similar to his own, and most of whom belonged to his own Jain community of traders and merchants.

  His closest, most intimate friend was Narottamdas Khobra,22 the grandson of Bainidas and a merchant like himself. Narottam and Banarasi called each other ‘brother’ and were rarely parted, unless for reasons of business, until Narottam’s sudden and unexpected death in 1616.

  Among the other friends whom Banarasi mentions in the Ardhakathanak, one of the earliest is Bhagwatidas,23 in whose home in Fatehpur he stayed for a while sometime towards the end of 1598. Banarasi was twelve at the time. Bhagwatidas was the son of Basu Sah, an Oswal and a member of the Jain reformist movement known as Adhyatma, a movement which advocated the spiritual exploration of the inner self, rather than image worship and rituals, as the path to self-realization, and of which Banarasi became an important member later in life.

  Banarasi also talks of Dharamdas, who was his business partner in Agra for two years, from 1611 to 1613. Dharamdas’s father and uncle, Oswals from Delhi, were jewellers with a thriving business in Agra. When Banarasi met him, Dharamdas was a degenerate young man, a spendthrift, and addicted to opium. Despite Dharamdas’s dissolute ways, he and Banarasi became good friends.24

  His friendship with both Bhagwatidas and Dharamdas continued into the later years of his life, when he spent many long hours with them discussing Jain doctrine.25

  Banarasi’s quest for spiritual truth is a recurring theme in the Ardhakathanak. To understand the man completely, we need to understand too his struggle with traditional religion and the spiritual turmoil that struggle engendered within him.

  Banarasi’s involvement with religion was always intense, no matter what form his faith took. At the same time, there was nothing reactionary or fundamentalist about him—he brought to questions of faith and religion a mind that was open, a mind that questioned, and a mind that was not afraid to reject or reform that which it found objectionable, or that which was established.

  Banarasi’s family were Svetambara Jains, as were most of his friends and acquaintances. As a child and a young man, Banarasi learnt and followed the rites and rituals practised by that sect.

  At the age of sixteen, while still observing Svetambara practices, he experimented with the worship of Shiva, and performed the rites and rituals associated with it in secrecy and with great devotion. Later, he discarded the worship of Shiva, and hearing the ‘call of dharma’,26 ‘began to follow the ways of his family’.27 He assiduously practised Svetambara rituals with great faith for several years of his life,

  Yet, at each stage, he questioned his faith—did his daily prayers to Shiva help him in his hour of need as they were supposed to do? Did the rites and rituals he had observed since boyhood hold any meaning for his spirit? And, not finding satisfactory answers, he had the courage to discard the outward paraphernalia of faith, even at the cost of considerable disparagement and social censure.28

  Banarasi was introduced to Adhyatma in 1623, when he was thirty-seven. On a visit to Khairabad, he met Arathmal Dhor,29 who spoke to him most forcefully and enthusiastically about Adhyatma, and gave to him a commentary written by Pande Rajmalla on the second-century Jain Adhyatmik text, the Samaysar.30 ‘Read this,’ said Arathmal Dhor to Banarasi, ‘and you will know Truth.’31

  Banarasi read the commentary with great concentration, and pondered deeply over its meaning, but could make little sense of Adhyatma. He lost all belief in ritual, and in the outward observances of his faith. Yet he could not grasp the true nature of Adhyatma. He had discarded ritual, but unable to see the inner truth, had found nothing to replace it. Though aware of his own disillusionment with ritual and religion, he blamed karma for his subsequent profane and sacrilegious behaviour.32 He entered a spiritual wasteland, a state in which he continued for twelve long years.

  Banarasi’s spiritual turmoil ended with another momentuous meeting in his life, in 1635, with Pande Rupchand. Pande Rupchand was a learned man, well versed in Jain scripture. So, when he came to Agra and took up residence there in a local temple, he was asked by the Adhyatmis of Agra to read to them Gommatsar, an important Jain text.

  Listening to Pande Rupchand’s discourse on Gommatsar, Banarasi’s doubts vanished and he became at last a firm Jain.33 He understood Adhyatma, and, in 1636, he once again picked up the Samaysar Natak, this time with joy, and rendered it into contemporary Hindi in 727 verses.34

  Towards the end of the Ardhakathanak he calls himself a Jain, and an Adhyatmi.35 Strangely though, despite its importance in his life, nowhere in the Ardhakathanak does Banarasi explicitly discuss the Adhyatma movement, or mention his contribution to it. This, feels Dr Mukund Lath, is probably because he was addressing his autobiography to his Adhyatmi friends, who would not need any details on this aspect of his life.36

  We have to rely on contemporary sources, the writings of his friends and followers as well as of his opponents, to understand Banarasi’s role in the Adhyatma movement.

  Banarasi and the Adhyatmis rejected ritual and organized religion. They believed that introspection and self-knowledge were the only path to moksha or salvation. Men from both the Svetambara and Digambara sects joined this movement, and inevitably, both Svetambara and Digambara scholars opposed the movement.

  Meghavijaya Mahopadhayaya, a Svetambara scholar who was a contemporary of Kunwarpal, Banarasi’s friend who took over as the leader of the Adhyatmis after Banarasi’s death, was a staunch opponent of the Adhyatmis. In his text, the Yuktiprabodh,37 in which he attacks Adhyatma, Meghavijaya declares that the Adhyatmis were neither Svetambaras nor Digambaras; they were seekers of truth.

  We know from Meghavijaya and other contemporary sources, that Banarasi was one of the leaders of this movement. Meghavijaya goes so far as to call the Adhyatmis ‘Varanasiyas’, or followers of Banarasi. Before Banarasi, the Adhyatma movement existed more as an intellectual movement. With Banarasi it acquired the form and force of a religious, reformist movement.

  The Adhyatma movement lasted only a century after Banarasi’s death, though its precepts are still followed by the Terapanthis, a small sect of Digambara Jains.

  For every thinking person, the inner struggle with oneself becomes ultimately a spiritual struggle. So it was with Banarasi. He had been born a Jain, and despite his early experiments with the worship of Shiva, the influence of family, community and education caused him to lean towards Jain practice and thought more than any other. Given this, and his intrinsic questioning attitude towards all forms of prescribed religion, for him to find his spiritual destination in Adhyatma was almost inevitable, and very much in keeping with the spirit of the times. Religious reform, and rebellion against ritual and formalized religion were in the air, and Banarasi was not immune to the influence. In a different setting, he could have become a proponent of one of the contemporary Nirguna Bhakti sects, or of Sufism, both of which believed in the importance of the spirit and inner truth over that of ritual and prescribed practices.

  ∗∗∗

  Banarasi’s story is set against a backdrop of Mughal history, spanning the reign of three great kings—the Mughal emperors Akbar, Jahangir and Shahjahan. Banarasidas does not provide us with any political or social commentary of the times, but he does give us some glimpses of a merchant’s life under the great Mughals. This makes the Ardhakathanak important not only from the literary point of view, but also as a historical record of the period. Vignettes of the cloth and jewellery trade in medieval Jaunpur and Agra, the eventful and often dangerous journeys from town to town in the course of business, the pilgrimages to Jain sacred sites, instances of Mughal justice and injustices—these are just some of the pictures that stay in our mind.

  Banarasi gives us a vivid account of events following Akbar’s death. When he died, in 1605, Akbar had been emperor for fifty years. Banarasi was nineteen at the time. He, probably like many others, could not contemplate a world without Akbar at the helm. He fell into a swoon when he heard the news, and hurt his head and bled profusely
, creating confusion and consternation in his home. Outside, the city of Jaunpur was in uproar; fear and uncertainty ruled the streets; riots broke out, shopkeepers shut their shops, and the rich hid their wealth and dressed like the poor for fear of thieves. Calm was restored to the city only when news arrived that Akbar’s eldest son, Salim, had assumed the throne and had taken the title of Jahangir.

  Banarasi describes too, the preparations for a siege in Jaunpur. In the year 1600, Prince Salim went to the Kolhuban forest, near Jaunpur, ostensibly to hunt. Akbar, fearing insurrection and rebellion from Salim, ordered Nuram Khan, the governor of Jaunpur, to stop Salim at all costs. Nuram Khan prepared to obey his emperor, and readied the city for war. Fear and apprehension spread through the townspeople, who, expecting Salim to attack at any moment, fled. Jaunpur was deserted, except for the soldiers who mounted guard upon its walls. But Salim made peace and pardoned Nuram Khan, and life returned to Jaunpur.

  Twice in the Ardhakathanak, Banarasi describes vicious and arbitrary persecutions of his community by local governors. The first of these persecutions occurred during Akbar’s reign in 1597, when Banarasi was eleven.38 The second occurred in 1617, during the reign of Jahangir.39 In both cases, the persecutions were motivated by the governors’ desire for monetary gain, to acquire by force some of the immense wealth of the merchant community. These persecutions were local, not condoned or sanctioned by the emperor.

  It is interesting to note that Banarasi relates these events quite free of political commentary or personal opinion. The questioning spirit that he brings to matters of faith and religion seems to be quite absent in matters political. He does not subject these events to any scrutiny, nor does he inquire at all into the reasons or causes for their occurrence. Perhaps this is so because Banarasi was a man not interested in politics. Or possibly, he accepted them as facts of existence, or the results of karma, which he did not have the power to change or control in any way, and therefore accepted them much as we would accept an earthquake or a tsunami.