Talk:Notes on the Indian poet-mystics

Yaari

And secondarily Bulla ...
Keay and Haridas agree on Yaari's (approximate) birth year, so that's a start. The big problem is the very long lifespan Haridas gives him. In this, Belvedere turns out to have excellent agreement with Keay, not obvious at first but compelling in the end.

Belvedere's attributed lifespan is the same as Keay's, 55 years. And the kicker is this: Belvedere is very likely to be using a different calendar, the Vikram Samvat, a lunisolar Hindu calendar widely used across North India. Its starting point is 56.7 years before the Western Gregorian calendar, so do the math and there ya go.

Keay writes about the period:

There are many Muhammadan writers of Hindi religious poetry who may have been Sufis. But the fact of their writing in Hindi shows a connection with Hindu thought. Probably many of them were directly or indirectly influenced by Kabir. These include Yari Sahib (1668-1723) who lived at Delhi, who had as disciples Keshav Das and Bulla Sahib who were also writers of Hindi religious verse, and flourished about 1730. Bulla Sahib had as his disciple Gulal Sahib, who in turn was the religious preceptor of Bhikha Sahib. Both of these, who lived in the latter half of the eighteenth century, have left Hindi religious verse. Dariya Sahib of Bihar. Dariya Sahib of Marwar, and Bulle Shah, were all Muhammadans who wrote similar poetry, and lived in the first half of the eighteenth century.

Bulla's writing in Hindi is another mark which distances him from the more famous Bulleh Shah from Lahore, in that the latter would have been far more likely to have been writing in Urdu. -- doofus-9 21:39, 7 July 2022 (UTC)