He no where adduces the date of his birth; the earliest period of his life which he mentions, is the year of the Hejira 1028 (A. D. 1618):[16] in this year the Mobed Hushíar brought the author to Balik Nátha, a great adept in the Yoga, or ascetic devotion, to receive the blessing of that holy man, who pronounced these words over him: “This boy shall acquire the knowledge of God.” It is not stated in what place this happened. The next earliest date is five years later, 1033 of the Hejira (A. D. 1623).[17] He says that, in his infancy, he came with his friends and relations from Patna to the capital Akbar-abad, and was carried in the arms of the Mobed Hushíar to Chatur Vapah, a famous ascetic of those days. The pious man rejoiced at it, and bestowed his blessing on the future writer of the Dabistán; he taught him the _mantra_, “prayer,” of the sun, and appointed one of his disciples to remain with the boy until the age of manhood. We have here a positive statement: in the year 1623 A. D., he was “in his infancy,” and carried “in the arms of his protector.” Giving the widest extension to these expressions, we can hardly think him to have been either much older or younger than seven or eight years: not much older, for being in some way carried in the arms of the Mobed; nor much younger, having been taught a hymn to the sun, and he might have been a boy of three years when he received the first-mentioned blessing from Balik Natha. We may therefore suppose him to have been born about the year 1615 of our era, in the tenth year of the reign of the emperor Jehangir. We collect in his work fifty-three dates relative to himself between the year 1618 and 1653. From 1627 to 1643, we see him mostly in Kachmir and Lahore, travelling between these two places; in 1643, he was at the holy sepulchre, probably at Meshhad, which appears to be the furthermost town to the West which he reached; from 1634 to 1649, he dwelt in several towns of the Panjab and Guzerat; the next year he proceeded to Sikakul, the remotest town in the East which he says he has visited; there he fell sick, and sojourned during 1653, at which epoch, if the year of his birth be correctly inferred, he had attained his thirty-eighth year. We have no other date of his death than that before stated: if he died in 1670, it was in the eleventh year of the reign of Aurengzéb, or Alemgir. Mohsan Fani would therefore have passed his infancy, youth, and manhood mostly in India, under the reigns of the three emperors, Jehangír, Shah Jehan, and Aurengzeb.[18] It was the state of religion, prevailing in those days in Hindostan that he describes.