Nihal Chand Lahori
Biography
Nihal Chand Lahori was an Urdu prose writer and translator. His family came from Delhi, and after the upheavals that followed the decline of that city he is said to have moved to Lahore, which is why he carries the suffix Lahori. His own writings do not confirm a long stay there, and his birth and death dates are not known. What is documented is that by 1802 the need for work had brought him to Calcutta, where his reputation was made.
His best-known work is Mazhab-e-Ishq, an Urdu version of the story of Gul Bakawali, which Sheikh Izzatullah Bengali had written in Persian. Nihal Chand kept close to the original and avoided ornate wording, so the tale reads in plain, popular prose. He is linked with the translation work of Fort William College in Calcutta, although scholars disagree about whether he was formally employed there. The same story was later retold in verse as Gulzar-e-Naseem by Pandit Dayashankar Kaul Naseem.
Mazhab-e-Ishq is on this site under its full title, Mazhab-e-Ishq, known as the tale of Gul Bakawali (مذہب عشق معروف بہ قصہ گل بکاؤلی). Its importance lies in its plain style, which helped encourage Urdu prose written for ordinary readers. Reading it beside the later verse version shows how one story was reshaped for different readers at different times.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
مذہب عشق معروف بہ قصہ گل بکاؤلی
by منشی نہال چند لاہوری
Nihal Chand Lahori's Mazhab-e-Ishq, better known as Gul-e-Bakawali (1803), is a Fort William College retelling of an older Persian romance. The blind king's sons must find the flower of Bakawali, a fairy queen, to bring back his sight, and the youngest, Taj-ul-Muluk, goes after…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.