Puran Singh

Professor Puran Singh (Punjabi: ਪ੍ਰੋ. ਪੂਰਨ ਸਿੰਘ; 17 February 1881 – 31 March 1931) was a Punjabi poet, scientist and mystic. Born in Abbottabad, now in Pakistan, in a Sikh family, he is acclaimed as one of the founders of modern Punjabi poetry. He passed his matriculation examination at the Mission High School Rawalpindi in 1897 and, after obtaining a scholarship for the years 1900 to 1903, obtained a degree in Industrial Chemistry from Tokyo University in Pharmaceutical Sciences. Though a born Sikh he became a Buddhist Bhikshu and a sanyasi under influence of Ukakura a Japanese Buddhist monk and Swami Ramtirath respectively before he finally got settled as a Sikh mystic when he came under influence of Bhai Vir Singh during a Sikh Educational Conference meeting at Sialkot in 1912. Four crucial events—his Japanese experience, his encounter with the American poet Walt Whitman, his discipleship of Svami Ram Tirath, and his meeting with the Sikh saint Bhai Vir Singh—were influential. As a student in Japan, he was impressed with the land and its people, and was greatly influenced by the romantic aestheticism of Okakura Kakuzo, Japanese artist and scholar. Walt Whitman, the American poet, had left a deep impression on his poetics and practice as on his world view. It was in Japan that he met Rama Tirtha, under whose influence he took on the identity of a monk. An encounter with Bhai Vir Singh in 1912 led to his formal return to Sikhism. Puran Singh started the distillation of essential oils in Lahore in association with Ishar Das and Rai Bahadur Shiv Nath. He prepared thymol, and fennel and lemon oils. Owing to deceitful dealings on the part of his partners, he closed the business and migrated to Dehra Dun, where he remained as a disciple of Swami Rama Tirtha. He returned to Lahore in December 1904 and joined Diamond v.j.Hindu Technical Institute as Principal. He restarted his monthly Thundering Dawn from Lahore. He resigned the Principalship in November 1906 to establish a factory for soapmaking at Doivala (Dehra Dun) but soon sold it off to a minister of Tihri to join in April 1907 as a Forest chemist at the Forest Research Institute, Dehra Dun, from where he sought retirement in 1918. He had stints in the princely states of Patiala and Gwalior. At Gwalior (1919–23) he turned the scorching desert into a fragrant oasis of rosha grass and eucalyptus, interspersed with fruit trees. He gave up his appointment at Gwalior to join Sir Sundar Singh Majithia's sugar factory at Surayya (1923–24) where he discovered a special method for purifying sugar without mixing it with charred bones. In 1926, he moved over to Chakk 73, near Nankana Sahib, where he got a plot of land on lease from the Punjab Government to grow rosha grass on a commercial scale. In 1928, his plantation suffered a heavy loss owing to floods.