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Author Lounge:
Banarasidas |
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Banarasidas was a merchant, poet and Jain spiritual thinker. He wrote his story when he was fifty-five, in the year 1641, an age at which he believed himself to be at the midpoint of his life, for, according to Jain belief, a man’s allotted lifespan is 110 years. He therefore called his story his ‘aradh kathan’ or ‘half a story’. Banarasidas died two years after completing this work; consequently, his ‘half a story’ is, in effect, his full tale.
Banarasidas played an important role in the reformist Jain 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-realisation. He is known mainly for his writings on Jainism. Many of his works have been lost, but many remain. The most popular and best-known of his works is the Samaysar Natak, a Jain Adhyatmi text which he completed in AD 1636, a few years before he wrote the Ardhakathanak. Many of his shorter works can be found in the Banarasivilas, a collection of his works put together by his friend and associate Pandit Jagjivan, in AD 1644, a year or so after his death.
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