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Puran Singh: A complete man
The birthday of Puran
Singh, one of the greatest litterateurs Punjab has ever produced,
went completely unnoticed last month. It is a pity that in the dust
and tumble of electioneering in Punjab, the people know the
shenanigans of politicians but are dithering away from the glorious
human product called literature. This article is a tribute to the
great man.
 Writing
in Khuleh Lekh, a collection of scintillating essays in Punjabi,
Puran Singh observes that he who is perceptive when charged
emotionally works himself to a pitch where if he were to articulate
himself in words, it is poetry. If he were to find expression in the
movement of limbs, it is a dance measure. If he were to trace in
colour pastels, it is a piece of painting.
It is so true of Puran Singh’s writing
in English. Without any particular equipment, schooling or training,
Puran Singh took to writing in English when it was not at all in
fashion and achieved excellence that remains yet to be appreciated.
His major work is in English. It is amazing that while he has hardly
four original titles in Punjabi—three collections of poems and one
collection of essay he has to his credit nine collections of verse
and fifteen titles in prose in English. His writing in Hindi is
marginal though not without significance of its own. While in Tokyo,
Puran Singh learnt Japanese and German. If he had chosen to do so,
he may have written in these languages also with proficiency.
Born on 17 February, 1881, in an
out-of-the-way village called Saihad in Abbotabad district of the
Punjab, Puran Singh had his primary education in a mosque and a
dharamsala. He did his matriculation from a school in Rawalpindi and
then moved to Lahore where he passed his Intermediate as a student
of D.A.V. College with Mathematics and Chemistry as his main
subjects. While he was still studying for B.A., he earned a stipend
to go to Japan for higher studies in pharmaceutical Chemistry in the
Tokyo University. Here he met Swami Ram Tirath and became a Sanyasi
giving up all his worldly possessions and relinquishing even the
Sikh faith. Coming back home he was persuaded to marry the girl he
had been betrothed with and also return to the Sikh faith. He was,
then, engaged in scientific assignment one after another;
distillation of essential oils on commercial basis, preparation of
thymol and fennel. He served as Principal of the Victoria Diamond
Jubilee Hindu Technical Institute, Lahore, then as Forest Chemist in
the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun. Later he was in service
with the Maharaja of Gwalior where he raised plantation of rosha
grass and eucalyptus. He left this assignment to join a Sugar
Factory as Chemist at Sariya.
How on earth could one imagine a man
with this equipment and such pursuits write in a foreign language
and do so with such distinction?
Apart from his verse, the range of his
prose writing in English is bewildering. More important among his
poetical works, are: The Vina Players, The Wandering Minstrel, The
Burning Candles, The Himalayan Pines and Other Poems, The Rose of
Kashmir, An Afternoon with Self, Unstrung Beads, At His Feet and The
Sisters of the Spinning Wheel. His prose works are: The Spirit of
Oriental Poetry. The Story of Swami Rama, On the Path of Life, Walt
Whitman and the Sikh Inspiration, Vision of Guru Gobind Singh, Bhai
Karam Singh, The Spirit of the Sikhs 2 volumes, Sundri (a
translation of Bhai Vir Singh’s novel), The Fleeting Image of
Punjabis’ Life, A biography of Guru Nanak, The Book of Ten Masters,
The Spirit Born People, Bhagirath (novel), Prakasina (novel).
Puran Singh was a mystic and an
aesthete. He had drunk deep at the source-founts of poetry. He
enjoyed the folk-songs that his “Sisters of the Spinning Wheel” sang
in Trinjin. He reveled in the romantic escapades of Heer on one hand
and the abandon with which Puran Bhakta ignored the worldly ties.
 He
admired Jaya Deva of the Gita Govind, Omar and Hafiz, Shah Husain
and Bulleh Shah. And last but not least, every word uttered by the
Sikh Gurus seems to send him into ecstasies. He retold the romance
of Puran Bhakta in his inimitable verse and devoted most of his
literary acumen translating Gurbani into English. The language
whether it was Punjabi or Hindi, Japanese or English, was a mere
tool, a slave in his hands. He moulded it in the manner he fancied.
When he commanded, phrases and idioms, metaphors and similes came
rushing to hint. Every word that he wrote is inspired. Had it not
been so, it would be well-nigh difficult even to copy the voluminous
writing that he has left for his readers in the brief life-span at
his disposal. Puran Singh died when he was hardly 50 years old.
A talented poet of great eminence, Puran
Singh was an image of self-denial. He remained a disciple all his
life. He was happy at the feet of his master whether it was Swami
Ram Tirath or Bhai Vir Singh. He sang the praises of mystics and
rendered their utterances into English with a devotion that is
seldom to come by in a translator in the annals of literature. It is
not a faithful word-for-word translation even if he was handling the
Sacred Scriptures. He had an uncanny eye for the Kernel, he
communicated the spirit of the original and invariably succeeded in
it eminently.
Amongst his contemporaries, Puran Singh
was closest to Bhai Vir Singh, the saint poet of the Punjab. It was
Bhai Vir Siugh who brought him back to the Sikh fold, fostered in
him love of the land of five rivers and the charming lore of the
Punjab folk. An exclusive volume entitled Nargas contains
translation into English of Bhai Vir Singh’s select verse. Ernest
Rhys, the noted English poet of the time, wrote a forward to this
collection. Puran Singh as a translator, catches the imaginative
atmosphere and recreates it with the magic of his words. He enters
as if into the soul of the original and it is a reincarnation, as it
were, in another tongue.
Puran Singh was a “God-inspired” man.
When he came back to the Sikh faith, it was like a torrential
tributary rejoining the great ocean. He has an enormous volume of
the rendering of the Sikh Scriptures obtaining in a number of his
works. It seems he translated the original by way of his homage to
the Holy word. He wished to share the bliss of it with the world at
large. He chose English as his medium so that the message could
travel to as many people as possible. Also, he wrote a number of
books on the Sikh Gurus, their teachings and the religious history
of the Sikh faith. While talking about the Sikh ideals, Puran Singh
works himself to such an emotional pitch that his writings read like
lyrical effusions. He seems to have been greatly influenced by
Carlyle, Emerson and Ruskin.
Apart from Sikhism and Vedanta, Puran
Singh seems to be influenced by Buddhism and Christianity. Time and
again one comes across references to grace and charity of
Christianity and the compassion of a Buddhist Bhikshu in his
writings. And yet he did not remain uninfluenced by Marx and the
revolutionary changes that came about in the Soviet Russia when he
was actively engaged in his writings.
 In Spirit of the Sikhs, his magnum opus
published by the Punjabi University posthumously in three volumes,
Puran Singh observed: “Everywhere we see ignorance, misery,
struggle, distress, hunger, disease, death, treachery, deception and
parasitism, the strong robbing the poor. In all conscience, to call
this dark would something admirable, to be in any way thankful for,
seems to be the height of human imbecility and impotence. To feel
that we are cooped under the lid of the sky like the chicken brood
destined for someone’s food, is surely not a prospect pleasing to
any serious contemplator of life.”
Puran Singh also wrote two novels in
English — Bhagirath and Prakasina. When Kartar Singh Duggal was to
edit the latter for the Punjabi University, it wrenched his heart to
find that the MS of Prakasina had been typed and readied for the
press by the author in 1922 when Duggal was 5 years old! A whole
generation was denied an excellent work of fiction in which any
writer can take pride.
Looking at Puran Singh’s output in
English alone, a language which he never studied formally, one is
convinced that he was no ordinary genius, a born-poet and a prose
writer of rare excellence. Today, the way large sections of younger
generation are skidding away from the glorious domain of literature,
it is perhaps a bigger pity than Puran Singh’s MS gathering dust for
a few years.
(This tribute has been adapted
from the article penned by Kartar Singh Duggal for Punjab Past and
Present Vol XVI-II Serial 32)
14 March, 2007
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