Bahram Ji

Hyderabad's Parsi priest-poet — every idol a memory of God, every house of worship one search. Bahram Ji (1828–1895), born on 2 December 1828 at Navsari in Gujarat, was a Parsi high priest and Urdu poet of Hyderabad. He received his religious training in his home town and was made a mobed — a Parsi priest — in 1843; after study at Poona under his father and elder brother, he came to Hyderabad, where he perfected his Urdu and Persian and his knowledge of Parsi theology. He served as Dastur, the high priest of the Parsis of Hyderabad and Secunderabad, and from 1863 also as a talluq-dar, a revenue official of the state; in 1875 he retired from the revenue post and returned wholly to the priesthood, using the community's funds generously for Parsi welfare. Alongside a life of religious duty he wrote poetry in Urdu and Persian, and his collected Urdu verse, the Deewan-e-Bahram, was published in 1943, long after his death. His ghazals carry a priest's open gaze: the Muslim and the Brahman, the mosque and the temple, the idol and the memory of God — all one search. He died at Hyderabad on 18 March 1895, aged 66.