Chandar Bhan Brahman
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Chandar Bhan Brahman also known as Chandra Bhan and Chandrabhan was a Punjabi[1] poet of the Persian language born in Lahore of the Mughal Empire. His date of birth is unknown; he probably[2] died in the year 1662–63 . He belonged to a Brahman family, and chose "Brahman" as his pen name. His father Dharam Das was a government official in the Mughal service. Brahman served as a secretary (Munshi) to the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (1628–1658).
As a poet, Chandar Bhan managed to write very complex metaphors in an otherwise very straightforward language.[3] Chandar Bhan's pen-name "Brahman" allowed for ingenius wordplay because of the use of "idol" (Persian but, sanam) as a metaphor of the - human or Divine - beloved, and as the lover as "idol worshipper". By his time, the Persian Muslim lover calling himself an idol-worshipper with tongue in cheek (even when he/she meant the love of God) had become a cliché already, but Chandar Bhan added a new twist to it because it was also fact with him.
Brahman was influenced by and developed a strong respect for
Notes
- ISBN 978-0-520-97210-0.
- ^ This is the commonly assumed date. However, Rajeev Kinra cites a document in which Chandar Bhan was honoured at Shah Jahan's burial. This means he must have been alive in 1666. See Rajeev Kinra: Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary, Oakland: University of California Press, 2015, p. 58.
- ^ Rajeev Kinra: Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary, Oakland: University of California Press, 2015, p. 220.
- ^ Rajeev Kinra: Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary, Oakland: University of California Press, 2015, p. 170-173.
- ^ Brahman, Chandar Bhan (March 2007). Yunus Jaffery (ed.). Chahār Chaman [The Fourfold Flowerbed] (in Persian). New Delhi: Alhoda / Iranian Centre of Persian Research. P. 181-204. His philosophical sketches comprise the fourth "flowerbed".
- ^ Rajeev Kinra: Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary, Oakland: University of California Press, 2015, p. 174—180.
Bibliography
- Brahman, Chandar Bhan (2005), S.H. Qasemi and Waqarul Hasan Siddiqi (ed.), Munshi'at-e Brahman [The Letters of Brahman] (in Persian), Rampur: Rampur Raza Library, ISBN 8187113804
- Brahman, Chandar Bhan (March 2007), Yunus Jaffery (ed.), Chahār Chaman [The Fourfold Flowerbed] (in Persian), New Delhi: Alhoda / Iranian Centre of Persian Research, ISBN 9789644392382
- Kinra, Rajeev (2015), Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary, California: University of California Press, ISBN 9780520286467, retrieved 27 September 2021
- Kulshreshtha, Jagdish Narain (1976), A critical study of Chandra Bhan Brahman and his work (PDF), Aligarh: Aligarh Muslim University, retrieved 27 September 2021
- Kumar, Anu (15 November 2016), "The Brahman in the Mughal Court" (PDF), The Wire, India, retrieved 27 September 2021
External links
- Ahwaal o Aasar-e Chandrabhan Brahman va Divan e Parsi (Farsi) - Life and works of Chandar Bhan Brahman and his collected Persian poetry