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Raja Sivaprasad

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Raja Śivaprasāda (Sivaprasad, Raja was a title but old documents make use of the titular form. Prior to the title, documents also refer to him with the colonial prefix of "Babu") (1823–23 May 1895) C.S.I (Sitara-e-Hind "Star of India") was a prominent Indian historian from Banaras. He published a three volume work on the history of India called "Itihāsa timiranāśaka". He also translated several books from English to Hindi.

Born in a Parmar Kshatriya family that converted to Jainism and the Oswal caste that originated in Ranthambore. When Ranthambor was besieged by Allauddin Khilji in the 13th century, the family moved several times, first to Ahmedabad, then Champaner and finally Khambat. One of the family line, Amar Datt, gifted Shah Jahan a diamond and received the title of Ray. Sivaprasad's grandfather moved to Banaras and his father Gopichand died when he was eleven. His early education was from his grandmother Bibi Ratan Kuar and briefly the Benares College. With an anti-European upbringing, he chose at the age of seventeen to work for the Bharatpur Maharajah as a Vakil at the court of Colonel James Sutherland (commissioner), Governor-General's agent at Ajmer. briefly before resigning after finding the durbar "rotten". He then worked Lord Hardinge's camp at Firozpur and impressed by the conditions swore that he would never serve a native ruler again. He then worked for the British as a Mir Munshi in the Simla agency. He rose to become a Joint-Inspector for Schools in 1856. In May 1870 he was conferred the Companionship of the most exalted Star of India or "Sitar-e-Hind" and the hereditary title of "Raja" in March 1874.

Sivaprasad submitted a memorandum in 1868 Court Characters in the Upper Provinces of India, in which he pointed out that Urdu characters required interpretation to read and that the phonemes could easily be altered by minor changes to the strokes. Suggesting that this could open written documents to changes, forgeries and confusion he pushed for the use of Nagari scripts in courts.

He knew Hindi, Urdu, Persian, Sanskrit, Bengali and English, editing the news periodicals Banaras akhbaar and Simla akhbaar, contributing poems to the Awadh akhbaar ad published thirty five books. He was a promoter of the Hindi language, particularly the version known as khari boli and popularized the use of the Nagari script. He made full use of Arabic and Persian words in his writings.

References

Raja Sivaprasad Wikipedia