Ratan Nath Dhar Sarshar
Ratan Nath Dhar Sarshar (1846 or 1847 – 21 January 1903) was an Urdu novelist, columnist and editor from British India. Born into a Kashmiri Brahmin family which settled in Lucknow, he received his education at Canning College and later took up employment as a schoolteacher. In August 1878, he was appointed editor of the Lucknow-based newspaper "Avadh Akhbar", in which his most famous work "Fasana-e-Azad" was published serially. Biography. Sarshar's date of birth is uncertain. Most probably he was born in 1846 or 1847. He was born in Kashmiri Brahmin (a group  well known for their proficiency in Persian and Urdu) family. His father, Pandit Bej Nath Dhar, a trader who immigrated from Kashmir to Lucknow, died when Sarshar was four years old; thereafter Sarshar was brought up by his mother. Sarshar was initially schooled in the traditional way by learning Arabic and Persian at a local "maktab" (primary school). Sarshar joined, for his schooling, the Canning College (which later migrated into University of Lucknow), but left without taking a degree. In 1878, he joined "Avadh Akhbar" as its editor. In 1895, Sarshar moved to Hyderabad where he was engaged to Maharaja  Sir Kishen Pershad to correct and improve upon his prose writings and poetic composition. Sarshar also edited a journal, "Dabdaba-e-Asifi". He died on 21 January 1903 at Hyderabad due to heavy drinking. Works. The historian Ram Babu Saksena called Sarshar 'a most remarkable figure' in the last decade of nineteenth century. His serialized novel "Fasana-e-Azad" (The Tale of Azad), which appeared between 1878 and 1883 as a regular supplement in his paper, was influenced by novels like "The Pickwick Papers" and "Don Quixote", as well as the epic romances (dastan) of Persian and Urdu. Spanning over  three thousand pages, the novel narrates the adventures of the protagonist, Azad, through the streets of Lucknow to the battlefields of the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878). It was first published in 1881 by Munshi Naval Kishore Press. Sarshar gave copyrights of Fasana-e-Azad to Munshi Naval Kishore of Lucknow who also published "Talism Hoshruba". "Fasana-e-Azad" was translated into Hindi as "Azad Katha" by Premchand, who also translated Sarshar's "Sair-i-Kohsar" as "Parvat Yatra". Satirist Sharad Joshi also penned a Hindi TV serial "Wah Janaab" based on "Fasana-e-Azad" which ran successfully on the state -run television channel Doordarshan in the 1980s. His other novels are "Sair-i-Kohsar" and "Jam-i-Sarshar". His novel "Gor-i-Ghariban" remained unpublished due to his accidental death. His novel "Khuda-e-Foujdar" is translation of "Don Quixote".