The Banjaranama is a famous satirical Urdu

Urdu

Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...

 poem, written by the eighteenth-century Indian

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 poet Nazeer Akbarabadi

Nazeer Akbarabadi

Nazeer Akbarabadi was an 18th century Indian poet known as "Father of Nazm", who wrote Urdu ghazals and nazms under nom de plume "Nazeer", most remembered for his poems like Banjaranama , a satire...

. The poem's essential message is that pride in worldly success is foolish, because human circumstances can change in a flash, material wealth and splendor is always transient, and death

Death

Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....

 is the only certainty for all men. The poem quickly captured the popular imagination, and achieved fame in the Indian subcontinent

Indian subcontinent

The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Pak Subcontinent or South Asian Subcontinent is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate from the Hindu Kush or Hindu Koh, Himalayas and including the Kuen Lun and Karakoram ranges, forming a land mass which extends...

 that has lasted for over two centuries. Critics have observed that, despite the deliberate simplicity of its language, the poem's idioms and imagery were dazzling in their span, and portrayed lives of wealth and power as ultimately subject to a nomad

Nomad

Nomadic people , commonly known as itinerants in modern-day contexts, are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world. Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but...

's whims (an allusion to death). The poem continues to be hailed as distilling "the teachings of thousands of years into one summary form."

Refrain and example verse

All verses in the poem end on the same refrain: Sab thaath para reh javega, Jab laad chalega banjara (All your splendor will lie useless, when the nomad packs-up and leaves). By itself, the refrain is frequently used in popular culture as a reminder that death is the "great leveler" and it is short-sighted to sacrifice conscience

Conscience

Conscience is an aptitude, faculty, intuition or judgment of the intellect that distinguishes right from wrong. Moral judgement may derive from values or norms...

 to greed

Greed

Greed is an excessive desire to possess wealth, goods, or abstract things of value with the intention to keep it for one's self. Greed is inappropriate expectation...

. The refrain is sometimes used in political and parliamentary speeches in India as well.

Urdu Urdu Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...	Devnagri transcription	English translation
گر تو ہے لکھی بنجارہ اور کھیپ بھی تیری بھاری ہے اے غافل تجھ سے بھی چڑهتا اک اور بڑا بیوپاری ہے کیا شکر مصری قند گری کیا سانبھر میٹھا کھاری ہے کیا داکھ منقا سونٹھ مرچ کیا کیسر لونگ سپاری ہے سب ٹھاٹھ پڑا رہ جاویگا جب لاد چلے گا بنجارہ	गर तू है लक्खी बंजारा और खेप भी तेरी भारी है ऐ ग़ाफ़िल तुझसे भी चढ़ता इक और बड़ा ब्योपारी है क्या शक्कर मिसरी क़ंद गरी, क्या सांभर मीठा-खारी है क्या दाख मुनक़्क़ा सोंठ मिरच, क्या केसर लौंग सुपारी है सब ठाठ पड़ा रह जावेगा जब लाद चलेगा बंजारा	If you are a millionaire, and your stores are brimming, Know, O ignorant! There is always another merchant who is even greater than you. What of your sugar, candy, jaggery and nuts? What of your doughs, sweet and salty? What of your grapes, raisins, ginger and pepper? What of your saffron, cloves and betel? All your splendor will lie useless, when the nomad packs-up and leaves.

Usage of common language

Contrary to the then prevalent tradition of using refined literary language in poetry, Nazeer Akbarabadi chose idioms and words from the casual language spoken in the street, both in Banjaranama and in his other works. Though the poem as a whole is completely comprehensible to native Hindi-Urdu speakers in the modern-day, some words are considered archaic today, such as dakh (داکھ, दाख, grape, from the Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

 द्राक्ष, draksh) which has been completely replaced by the Persian

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

-derived term angoor in modern Hindi-Urdu.