Confessions of a 17th-Century Jain Merchant: The Ardhakathānak of Banārasīdās

Abstract

The subject of this article, the Ardhakathānak of Banārasīdās (a Jain author from Jaunpur), is an autobiographical poem in the Braj Bhāṣa dialect of Hindi dating from 1641 AD. The article examines the construction of the text, looking at the creative ways in which Banārasīdās builds subtle literary devices by exploiting features inherent in Hindi and in the metres chosen for the poem. It is suggested that a conventional critical approach to the poem, following traditional Sanskritic literary categories, can fail to perceive the strengths of this decidely vernacular composition, and that a new methodology of vernacular aesthetics is needed to do it justice. The problems of maintaining the poem’s literary qualities in English translation are explored, both by examining published prose versions and by an experiment with metrical English verse.

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