Qadaryarਕਾਦਰਯਾਰ

Life

Qadaryar, born Qadir Baksh, was born in 1802 in the village of Machhike in Gujranwala district, in the Punjab of Maharaja Ranjit Singh's Sikh Empire (now in Pakistan). He belonged to a Muslim Jat family of the Sandhu clan, and little of his life is recorded beyond what his own verses and later accounts preserve: he received his education at the village mosque. He became a court poet of the Lahore Darbar, where he praised the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in his Si-harfi Sarkar Ki, celebrating the Maharaja's sagacity, power, justice and patronage.

The Qissa of Puran Bhagat

His enduring fame rests on his Qissa Puran Bhagat, the story of Prince Puran, falsely accused by his stepmother and made a yogi — a tale with an ancient affinity to the Phaedra legend. According to the account preserved in the Sahitya Akademi's monograph on the poet, Qadaryar composed the qissa in 140 stanzas in just sixteen days, reciting it to the people with abandon. In his own verse he records the reward it brought him: 'Puran Raje di gal sunayeke jee, ik khuh inam likhaya main' — 'By narrating the story of Raja Puran, I got a well as reward.' Hari Singh Nalwa, pleased by the qissa, is said to have awarded the poet the well and the adjoining land. The qissa is counted among the great Punjabi classics, and has been translated into English verse by Taufiq Rafat as The Epic of Puran Bhagat.

Other works

Qadaryar began his literary career with the Mehraj Nama (1832), the longest of his poems at 1,014 couplets, giving a fictional account of the Prophet Muhammad's journey through the seven skies. His other works include Qissa Sohni Mahinwal, Raja Rasal, Hari Singh Nalwa Di Var and Var Rani Kokilan. He died in 1892, aged about ninety.