Banarasidas
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Banarasidas
Banarasidas (15861643) was a Shrimal Jain businessman and poet of Mughal India. He is known for his poetic autobiography - ''Ardhakathānaka'', (The Half Story), composed in Braj Bhasa, an early dialect of Hindi linked with the region around Mathura. It is the first autobiography written in an Indian language. At the time, he was living in Agra and was 55 years old - the "half" story refers to the Jain tradition, where a "full" lifespan is 110 years. Life Banarasidas was born in a Shrimal Jain family in 1587. His father Kharagsen was a jeweller in Jaunpur (now in Uttar Pradesh). He 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. He further completed his higher studies in astrology and ''Khandasphuta'', a work on mathemetics. He studied lexicographical texts like ''Namamala'' ( synonyms) and ''Anekarthakosha'' (words with multiple meanings). He also studi ...
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Digambar Terapanth
Kanji Swami (1890–1980) was a teacher of Jainism. He was deeply influenced by the ''Samayasāra'' of Kundakunda in 1932. He lectured on these teachings for 45 years to comprehensively elaborate on the philosophy described by Kundakunda and others. He was given the title of "Koh-i-Noor of Kathiawar" by the people who were influenced by his religious teachings and philosophy. Biography Early years Kanji Swami was born in Umrala, a small village in the Kathiawar region of Gujarat, in 1890 to a Sthanakvasi family. Although an able pupil in school, he always had an intuition that the worldly teachings was not something that he was looking out for. His mother died when he was thirteen and he lost his father at the age of seventeen. After this, he started looking after his father's shop. He used the frequent periods of lull in the shop in reading various books on religion and spirituality. Turning down the proposals of marriage, he confided in his brother that he wanted to remain ce ...
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Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh
Jaunpur () is a city and a municipal board in Jaunpur district in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is located 228 km southeast of state capital Lucknow. Demographically, Jaunpur resembles the rest of the Purvanchal area in which it is located. History Earlier the Jaunpur district was ruled by the Bhar, historically known as Sultan, having its historical dates from 1359, when the city was founded by the Sultan of Delhi Feroz Shah Tughlaq and named in memory of his cousin, Muhammad bin Tughluq, whose given name was Jauna Khan. In 1388, Feroz Shah Tughlaq appointed Malik Sarwar, a eunuch, who is notorious for having been the lover of Feroz Shah Tughlaq's daughter, as the governor of the region. The Sultanate was in disarray because of factional fighting for power, and in 1393 Malik Sarwar declared independence. He and his adopted son Mubarak Shah founded what came to be known as the Sharqi dynasty (dynasty of the East). During the Sharqi period the Jaunpur Sultanat ...
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Shrimal Jain
Shrimal (Srimal) Jain is an ancient Jain and Hindu community originally from Rajasthan, Shrimal or Bhinmal town in southern Rajasthan. They were traditionally wealthy merchants and money lenders and were prominent at the court of Rajput kings as treasurers and ministers, holding the titles of Dewan or Durbari. This caste is claimed to descend from the Goddess Lakshmi and their descendants are well known for business acumen and are in possession of Havelis and mansions given to them as gifts from kings for their service as royal treasurers, ministers, courtiers and advisors.Vane Russell, Robert (1916). "Tribes and castes of the central provinces of India", p.111-161. 'Forgotten books. The Shrimal (Srimal) Jain are thought to be the highest gotra in the Oswal merchant and minister caste that is found primarily in the north of India. It is believed that the Srimal formed their own caste separate from the Oswal, evidenced by the fact that the majority of Srimals are Jain, which is ...
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Digambara
''Digambara'' (; "sky-clad") is one of the two major schools of Jainism, the other being ''Śvētāmbara'' (white-clad). The Sanskrit word ''Digambara'' means "sky-clad", referring to their traditional monastic practice of neither possessing nor wearing any clothes. Digambara and Śvētāmbara traditions have had historical differences ranging from their dress code, their temples and iconography, attitude towards female monastics, their legends, and the texts they consider as important. Digambara monks cherish the virtue of non-attachment and non-possession of any material goods. Monks carry a community-owned ''picchi'', which is a broom made of fallen peacock feathers for removing and thus saving the life of insects in their path or before they sit. The Digambara literature can be traced only to the first millennium, with its oldest surviving sacred text being the mid-second century ''Ṣaṭkhaṅḍāgama'' "Scripture in Six Parts" of Dharasena (the Moodabidri manuscripts) ...
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Autobiography
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English periodical ''The Monthly Review'', when he suggested the word as a hybrid, but condemned it as "pedantic". However, its next recorded use was in its present sense, by Robert Southey in 1809. Despite only being named early in the nineteenth century, first-person autobiographical writing originates in antiquity. Roy Pascal differentiates autobiography from the periodic self-reflective mode of journal or diary writing by noting that " utobiographyis a review of a life from a particular moment in time, while the diary, however reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time". Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's life from the moment of composition. While biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents an ...
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Samayasāra
''Samayasāra'' (''The Nature of the Self'') is a famous Jain text composed by ''Acharya Kundakunda'' in 439 verses. Its ten chapters discuss the nature of '' Jīva'' (pure self/soul), its attachment to Karma and Moksha (liberation). ''Samayasāra'' expounds the Jain concepts like ''Karma'', ''Asrava'' (influx of ''karmas''), Bandha (Bondage), ''Samvara'' (stoppage), ''Nirjara'' (shedding) and Moksha (complete annihilation of ''karmas''). History ''Samayasara'' was written by Acharya Kundakunda in Prakrit. Contents The original ''Samayasara'' of Kundakunda consists of 415 verses and was written in Prakrit. The first verse (aphorism) of the ''Samayasāra'' is an invocation: According to ''Samayasāra'', the real self is only that soul which has achieved ratnatraya i.e. Samyak Darshan, Samyak Gyan and Samyak Charitra. These state when soul achieves purity is Arihant and Siddha. It can be achieved by victory over five senses. According to ''Samayasāra'': Commentaries It ha ...
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Digambar
''Digambara'' (; "sky-clad") is one of the two major schools of Jainism, the other being ''Śvētāmbara'' (white-clad). The Sanskrit word ''Digambara'' means "sky-clad", referring to their traditional monastic practice of neither possessing nor wearing any clothes. Digambara and Śvētāmbara traditions have had historical differences ranging from their dress code, their temples and iconography, attitude towards female monastics, their legends, and the texts they consider as important. Digambara monks cherish the virtue of non-attachment and non-possession of any material goods. Monks carry a community-owned ''picchi'', which is a broom made of fallen peacock feathers for removing and thus saving the life of insects in their path or before they sit. The Digambara literature can be traced only to the first millennium, with its oldest surviving sacred text being the mid-second century ''Ṣaṭkhaṅḍāgama'' "Scripture in Six Parts" of Dharasena (the Moodabidri manuscripts) ...
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Akbar
Abu'l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar (25 October 1542 – 27 October 1605), popularly known as Akbar the Great ( fa, ), and also as Akbar I (), was the third Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to 1605. Akbar succeeded his father, Humayun, under a regent, Bairam Khan, who helped the young emperor expand and consolidate Mughal domains in India. A strong personality and a successful general, Akbar gradually enlarged the Mughal Empire to include much of the Indian subcontinent. His power and influence, however, extended over the entire subcontinent because of Mughal military, political, cultural, and economic dominance. To unify the vast Mughal state, Akbar established a centralised system of administration throughout his empire and adopted a policy of conciliating conquered rulers through marriage and diplomacy. To preserve peace and order in a religiously and culturally diverse empire, he adopted policies that won him the support of his non-Muslim subjects. Eschewing t ...
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Hindi Language
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been described as a standardised and Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language, which itself is based primarily on the Khariboli dialect of Delhi and neighbouring areas of North India. Hindi, written in the Devanagari script, is one of the two official languages of the Government of India, along with English. It is an official language in nine states and three union territories and an additional official language in three other states. Hindi is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India. Hindi is the '' lingua franca'' of the Hindi Belt. It is also spoken, to a lesser extent, in other parts of India (usually in a simplified or pidginised variety such as Bazaar Hindustani or Haflong Hindi). Outside India, several ot ...
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Amritchandra
Amritchandra (f. 10th-century CE) was a Digambara Jain Acharya who wrote commentaries on Samayasāra called ''Atmakhyati'' and ''Samaysar Kalasha'', Pravachanasara and Pancastikayasara. He also wrote independent books of Puruşārthasiddhyupāya and Tattvartha Sara. He wrote in Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ... language. References Citations Sources * * 10th-century Indian writers Sanskrit scholars Jain acharyas Year of death unknown {{jainism-stub ...
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Kundakunda
Kundakunda was a Digambara Jain monk and philosopher, who likely lived in the 2nd CE century CE or later. His date of birth is māgha māsa, śukla pakṣa, pañcamī tithi, on the day of Vasant Panchami. He authored many Jain texts such as: '' Samayasara, Niyamasara, Pancastikayasara, Pravachanasara, Astapahuda'' and ''Barasanuvekkha''. He occupies the highest place in the tradition of the Digambara Jain acharyas. All Digambara Jains say his name before starting to read the scripture. He spent most of his time at Ponnur Hills, Tamil Nadu and later part of life at Kundadri, Shimoga, Karnataka, Names His proper name was ''Padmanandin'', he is popularly referred to as Kundakunda possibly because the modern village of Konakondla in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh which is his birth place. He is also presumed to be the one being alluded to by names such as ''Elacarya'', ''Vakragriva'', ''Grdhrapiccha'' or ''Mahamati''. He is also called Thiruvalluvar, the author of tamil cl ...
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