Shardha Ram Phillauri

Shardha Ram was born in September 1837, to a Punjabi Hindu Brahmin family in the town of Phillaur in the Sikh Empire under the reign of Ranjit Singh.^[3][5] His father, Jai Dyalu, was an astrologer. Their gotra was Moudgil.^[3] His father was a hereditary priest of the Bhandari Khatris of Phillaur.^[4] He did not have any formal education as such.^[3] By age ten, he had studied Hindi, Sanskrit, Persian, astrology, and music.^[3] He learnt classical Indian music from his father.^[4] At Rishikesh he studied the Vedic and Uppanashadic literature of Hinduism. Later, he was also a missionary of traditional Hinduism (Sanatana dharma),^[3][5][6] with him revering the Vedas, Puranas, and Dharamashastras.^[4] He was able to publicly recite the Mahabharata, Ramayana, and Bhagvata Purana by the time he was nineteen.^[4]

He began working as a translator for the Christian missionaries at the American Presbyterian Mission of Ludhiana, namely Reverend J. Newton, and taught the missionaries the local languages.^[4]

At Phillaur, he was commissioned by the British to write works, such as the Sikhan de Raj di Vithya in 1865.^[4] In his books, Shardha Ram documented Punjabi culture and language.^[3][5] He later became a Hindu street-preacher.^[4] Shardha Ram gave forceful lectures on the Mahabharata, and because of this was charged with conducting propaganda against the British government^[3][5] in 1865.^{[citation needed]} As a result, he was exiled temporarily from his home town, Phillaur.^[3][5] Sharda Ram often visited Amritsar and adjoining Lahore, especially in connection with astrology.^[3] During this time, he earned a reputation as an astrologer and wrote several books in Hindi.^[3] Between 1867–68, he co-founded alongside Munshi Yamuna Prasad a Hindu school in Ludhiana that taught Sanskrit and Persian. He also founded a Hindu Sabha at Ludhiana to propagate the religion, it was the Hindu Dharm Prakashik Sabha with a printing-press to produce Hindu literature.^[4]

Shardha Ram died on 24 June 1881, aged 43, at Lahore.^[3]

In 1886, Sikhan De Raj Di Vithia (Punjabi: The Story of Sikh Rule, first written in 1865^[4]) he published, an account of Sikh religion and the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.^[5][7] The last of its three chapters documents Punjabi culture and language, including its customs, usages, and folk songs.^[5] The book was often prescribed as a text book.^[5]

Shardha Ram has recently been acknowledged as having written the first novel in Hindi.^[3][5][8] His novel Bhagyawati, believed to have been written mainly in Amritsar, was first published in 1888, after Shardha Ram's death.^[3] The novel's portrayal of women and women's rights was progressive for its day.^[3][5]