Ratan Nath Dhar Sarshar
Ratan Nath Dhar Sarshar | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1846 or 1847 |
| Died | 21 January 1903 Hyderabad, British India |
| Pen name | Sarshar |
| Occupation | novelist, columnist, editor |
| Language | Urdu |
| Nationality | British India |
| Notable works | Fasana-e-Azad |
Ratan Nath Dhar Sarshar (Urdu: رتن ناتھ در سرشارؔ; 1846 or 1847 – 21 January 1903) was an Indian Urdu novelist, columnist and editor from British India. Born into a Kashmiri Brahmin family which settled in Lucknow, he received his education at Canning College and later took up employment as a schoolteacher. In August 1878, he was appointed editor of the Lucknow-based newspaper Avadh Akhbar, in which his most famous work Fasana-e-Azad was published serially.
Biography
[edit]Sarshar's date of birth is uncertain.[1] Most probably he was born in 1846 or 1847. He was born in a Kashmiri Brahmin (a group well known for their proficiency in Persian and Urdu) family. His father, Pandit Bej Nath Dhar, a trader who immigrated from Kashmir to Lucknow, died when Sarshar was four years old; thereafter Sarshar was brought up by his mother. Sarshar was initially schooled in the traditional way by learning Arabic and Persian at a local maktab (primary school).[2]
Sarshar joined, for his schooling, the Canning College (which later migrated into University of Lucknow), but left without taking a degree. In 1878, he joined Avadh Akhbar as its editor.[3]
In 1895, Sarshar moved to Hyderabad where he was engaged by Maharaja Sir Kishen Pershad to correct and improve upon his prose writings and poetic composition. Sarshar also edited a journal, Dabdaba-e-Asifi.[3]
He died on 21 January 1903 at Hyderabad due to heavy drinking.[1]
Works
[edit]The historian Ram Babu Saksena called Sarshar 'a most remarkable figure' in the last decade of nineteenth century.[4]
His serialized novel Fasana-e-Azad (The Tale of Azad), which appeared between 1878 and 1883 as a regular supplement in his paper,[5] was influenced by novels like The Pickwick Papers and Don Quixote, as well as the epic romances (dastan) of Persian and Urdu.[citation needed] Spanning over three thousand pages, the novel narrates the adventures of the protagonist, Azad, through the streets of Lucknow to the battlefields of the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878).[5] It was first published in 1881 by Munshi Nawal Kishore Press. Sarshar gave copyrights for Fasana-e-Azad to Munshi Nawal Kishore of Lucknow who also published Talism Hoshruba. Fasana-e-Azad was translated into Hindi as Azad Katha by Premchand, who also translated Sarshar's Sair-i-Kohsar as Parvat Yatra.[6] A Hindi TV serial Wah Janaab by satirist Sharad Joshi, based on Fasana-e-Azad, ran successfully on the state-run television channel Doordarshan in the 1980s.[7]
His other novels are Sair-i-Kohsar and Jam-i-Sarshar. His novel Gor-i-Ghariban remained unpublished due to his accidental death.[8] His novel Khuda-e-Foujdar is an Urdu translation of Don Quixote.[4]
References
[edit]- ^ a b Husain, Firoz (1964). Life and works of Ratan Nath Sarshar (PhD thesis). SOAS University of London. pp. 11–18.
- ^ Dubrow, Jennifer (2011). From newspaper sketch to "novel": The writing and reception of "Fasana-e Azad" in North India, 1878–1880 (PhD thesis). Departments of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, The University of Chicago. p. 57.
- ^ a b Lal, Mohan, ed. (2007) [1991]. Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature: Navaratri to Sarvasena. Sahitya Akademi. p. 3830. OCLC 633744520.
- ^ a b Saksena, Ram Babu (1990). A History of Urdu Literature. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services. p. 325–326. ISBN 978-81-206-0616-6. OCLC 312754167.
- ^ a b Dubrow, Jennifer (2018). "The Novel in Installments: Fasana-e Azad and Literary Modernity". Cosmopolitan Dreams: The Making of Modern Urdu Literary Culture in Colonial South Asia. University of Hawaii Press. pp. 35–36. ISBN 978-0-8248-7270-0 – via De Gruyter. (subscription required)
- ^ Nagendra (1981). Premchand: an anthology. Bansal. p. 70. OCLC 8668427.
- ^ Report. 1985.
- ^ Sud, K. N. (July–August 1977). "Urdu Fiction and Krishan Chandar". Indian Literature. 20 (4). Ahmedabad: Sahitya Akademi: 124. JSTOR 24158701.
External links
[edit]- Works by Ratan Nāth Sarshār at Google Books
- Azad Goes to a Railway Restaurant by Ratan Nath Dar 'Sarshar' (translated by Frances W. Pritchett)
- Kashmiri Hindus
- Kashmiri Pandits
- Kashmiri Brahmins
- Kashmiri writers
- Writers from Lucknow
- 1903 deaths
- Urdu-language novelists
- Urdu-language writers from British India
- Urdu-language translators
- Urdu-language essayists
- Urdu-language poets from India
- Urdu-language humorists
- 19th-century Indian poets
- Novelists from Uttar Pradesh
- 19th-century Indian novelists
- 19th-century Indian translators
- Indian newspaper editors
- Translators of Don Quixote
- Translators of One Thousand and One Nights