Banarsidas's Ardhakathanak: literature as a historical archive

For a long time historians have acknowledged the importance of personal history and even literature in reconstructing the historical circumstances of the time. The paper is an attempt to study Banarsi Das's Ardhkathanak as a source of history. Ardhkathanak is an autobiography written by Banarsi Das who belonged to the trading class. The book is claimed to be the first autobiography of written in Hindi. The current paper is an attempt to analyse the socio-economic conditions prevailing in the times when the book was written.