Saint Nischaldas

Nischaldas (born Agari or Angari; c. 1791 – 1863), also spelled Nishcaldas, was a 19th-century Indian philosopher and teacher of Advaita Vedanta associated with the Dadu Panth. He is best known for his Hindi-language work Vichar Sagar ("The Ocean of Inquiry"), one of the few major expositions of Advaita Vedanta written in a vernacular language rather than Sanskrit during his era. In addition to Vichar Sagar, he authored Vrutti Prabhakar ("The Illuminator of Vruttis") and Yukti Prakash ("The Light of Analogical Reasoning"). He taught for much of his life at an ashram in Kihadauli, near Delhi, and numbered the king of Bundi, Ram Singh, among his disciples.

Early life

Nischaldas was born around 1791 in the village of Dhanana, in the modern state of Haryana, into a Kshatriya caste family. His mother died when he was young, and around the age of 13 or 14 he moved with his father to Delhi, where his father sought work. In Delhi, the two stayed at a local centre (ashram) of the Dadu Panth, whose head (mahant) was impressed by the boy's intelligence and initiated him into the Panth, giving him the name Nischaldas.

Education After his initiation into the Dadu Panth, Nischaldas was sent to Banaras for studies. When he arrived in Banaras, he claimed to be from the Brahmin caste to circumvent any discrimination on his pursuit of knowledge. In Banaras he studied the Vedas, Sanskrit grammar (vyakarana), Sankhya, Nyaya, and Advaita Vedanta under various pandits.

One of his teachers, impressed by Nischaldas's intellect and appearance, wished for him to marry his daughter. When Nischaldas revealed that he was not actually a Brahmin, the teacher cursed him to suffer a daily fever. To relieve himself of the affliction, Nischaldas studied Ayurveda to cure himself. To this day, followers of the Dadu Panth practise Ayurveda. His growing reputation as a pandit also provoked jealousy among his peers, and after some twenty to twenty-five years in Banaras, he returned to Delhi.

Teaching After leaving Banaras, Nischaldas settled in Kihadauli, a small village west of Delhi, where he established a Dadu Panth ashram and taught Vedanta, Nyaya, and Sanskrit grammar. He reportedly preferred to begin each day teaching texts affirming the existence of the atma, reserving texts representing opposing, non-Vedantic and Nyaya views for later in the day.

Around 1843, Nischaldas's reputation had grown to the point that Ram Singh, the King of Bundi, invited him to his palace to learn Vedanta from him. In a Sanskrit letter to Nischaldas, Ram Singh wrote that "Your fame in the Vedanta shastras had reached my ears and I am always eager for such instruction. Nischaldas travelled to Bundi and remained there for a significant time. During his stay, Ram Singh initiated a philosophical debate at court between Nischaldas and several pandits, which Nischaldas won; both Ram Singh and his wife subsequently became his disciples.

At the end of his life, Nischaldas had two or three resident disciples and five to seven additional students who studied under him without formal affiliation, indicating that he taught both within and outside the Dadu Panth.

Works Nischaldas is known to have published three works, all in Hindi: Yuktiprakash (Yuktiprakāś), Vichar Sagar (Vicārsāgar), and Vrutti Prabhakar (Vṛttiprabhākar). Composing philosophical works in a vernacular language, rather than Sanskrit, was unusual for the period.

Several unpublished works are also attributed to him, including glosses on the Isha and Katha Upanishads. At the likely request of Ram Singh, he also wrote manuscripts on the Kena Upanishad, the Mahabharata, and Ayurveda.

Vichar Sagar (Vicārsāgar) Vichar Sagar ("The Ocean of Inquiry") is regarded as Nischaldas's most significant work. Written in Hindi at Kihadauli, likely over an extended period, it synthesizes the teachings of numerous Vedanta texts within the framework of Advaita Vedanta across seven sections. The work frames its philosophical content within a narrative of three brothers who renounce the world to receive instruction from a guru, and covers topics including metaphysics, epistemology, theology, cosmology, philosophy of language, and meditation. Nischaldas regarded the text as a handbook to liberation. Vichar Sagar has since been translated into numerous languages, including Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Urdu, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, English, and eventually Sanskrit.

Despite its prominence during Nischaldas's lifetime, the text is not widely known today, because its Hindi is difficult for readers educated in the standardized Hindi of the later nineteenth century. Some scholars have also noted a prejudice holding that liberating knowledge can only be conveyed through Sanskrit, which has contributed to the work's neglect.