He was one of the leading proponents of the Adyatma movement, which eventually led to the Terapanth sect of the Digambar Jains. Banarasidas appears to have been a better poet than a businessman; at one stage he relates how after incurring several business losses, his wife gave him twenty rupees that she had saved up. At times a friend of the Nawab of Jaunpur Chini Kilechkhan, at other times persecuted, he had to flee to other cities. Despite the long life expectancy inherent in the title of his work "Ardhakathānaka", Banarasidas died two years after writing it, in 1643.