author

active 1805 Mazhar Ali Khan Vila

An early nineteenth-century scholar associated with Fort William College, he is linked to the formative world of Urdu and Hindustani prose. He is best known today through classic story collections such as The Baital Pachisi, where older Indian tales were reshaped for new readers.

1 Audiobook

The Baitâl Pachchisi; Or, The Twenty-Five Tales of a Sprite Translated From the Hindi Text of Dr. Duncan Forbes

The Baitâl Pachchisi; Or, The Twenty-Five Tales of a Sprite Translated From the Hindi Text of Dr. Duncan Forbes

by John T. (John Thompson) Platts, Lallu Lal, active 1805 Mazhar Ali Khan Vila

About the author

Mazhar Ali Khan Vila, sometimes also rendered as Wila, appears in library and book records as an early 1800s writer and translator active around 1805. The clearest references connect him with Fort William College in Calcutta, an important center for language study and translation in the early colonial period.

He is associated with a circle of scholars gathered there under John Gilchrist to prepare works in Hindustani. Surviving references suggest he translated or adapted older narrative material into Urdu, helping bring traditional stories into a prose style meant for students and new readers.

His name is most often encountered through The Baital Pachisi, and archive records also connect him with Madhwanal Aur Kam Kandla. Very little biographical detail seems to survive beyond those literary traces, but his work belongs to an important moment in the development of modern North Indian prose.