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arly Sikh Tradu:. : is a study of the ajabi narratives of ..- life of Guru ‘© known a8 janam-s; is. The janam- Sabie are important a8 examples of agiographic growth-processes, as sources Panjab history for the post-Nanak we within which they developed, as a a in subsequent Sikh history, arlieat works of Panjabi prose. as Tradition examines these four t6 of the janam-sakhi literature, “tyating ia particular on the first. It t the origins of the janam- iyle; it describes the anecdotal and uaree “me used by the janam-sakhi hor » ond Ir reconstructs a pattern N joa wakhi traditions were leg “n (ranamitted. The mens owes

EARLY SIKH TRADITION

EARLY SIKH TRADITION

A Study of the Janam-sakhis

BY

W. H. McLEOD

CLARENDON PRESS - OXFORD 1980

Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford ox2 6DP

OXFORD LONDON GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON NAIROBI DAR ES SALAAM CAPE TOWN KUALA LUMPUR SINGAPORE JAKARTA HONG KONG TOKYO DELHI BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI

© W. H. McLeod 1980

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data McLeod, William Hewat Early Sikh tradition. 1. Janamsakhis I. Title 294.682 BL2017.48 7279-40397 ISBN o—19-826532-8

Printed in Great Britain by W & F Mackay Limited, Chatham

To Margaret

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Early Sikh Tradition is the result of a year at the University of Cambridge made possible by a Smuts Fellowship. It is in fact the second and more substantial result of the academical year 1969-70, the first being the small volume of essays entitled The Evolution of the Sikh Community (Delhi 1975 and Oxford 1976). In The Evolution of the Sikh Community I expressed my deep appreciation to Professor E. E. Rich and the Managers of the Smuts Memorial Fund for their notable generosity and for the helpful interest which they took in my projects. I repeat these thanks with a sense of renewed gratitude. With the same recollection of pleasure and gratitude I also record once again my warm appreciation to the Provost and Fellows of King’s College, and to the Dean and members of the Faculty of Oriental Studies. The friendship and the facilities which I received in my two Cambridge homes contributed handsomely to an enjoyable and productive year.

The original writing of Early Sikh Tradition and its subsequent revision have also been assisted by grants from other institutions. I owe a consider- able debt of gratitude to the University of Otago for providing a thoroughly congenial place to work, for assistance with typing, and for continuing support in the form of research grants. One such grant covered the greater part of the expense required by a return visit to the Pafijab in 1972. This visit was also aided by a grant from the Spalding Fund, a most welcome supplement for which I thank the Fund’s trustees. I am likewise grateful to the British Academy for a generous grant towards the preparation of the book and to the trustees of the Isobel Thornley Bequest Fund for assistance with its actual publication. I acknowledge with thanks the fact that the trustees conferred on the book a sum which exceeded their normal maximum.

Numerous individuals have supplied information and advice or have assisted in the provision of research facilities and materials. In particular I should like to express my sincere thanks to Dr Raymond Allchin, Dr Amrik Singh, Professor N. G. Barrier, Mr Owen Cole, Mr Simon Digby, Miss E. M. Dimes, Mr Ben Farmer, Professor Fauja Singh, Dr Ganda Singh, Professor Richard Gombrich, Professor J. S. Grewal, Professor Harbans Singh, Professor Kirpal Singh, Dr Stuart McGregor, Professor Victor Ménage, Dr Albert Moore, Professor Piar Singh, Professor Pritam Singh, Principal Ram Singh, Professor G. S. Talib, and Dr John Webster. In thanking all who have assisted me I must expressly free them from association with any of the opinions expressed in this book and from responsibility for its errors. These I acknowledge to be mine alone.

Mr P. N. Kapoor of Delhi kindly permitted me to inspect his priceless Bala manuscript, a favour for which I am most grateful. Guru Nanak Dev University and Punjabi University have frequently provided me with

Vili ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

hospitality and with access to materials in their libraries, To their respec- tive Vice-Chancellors I express my cordial thanks. For prompt, friendly and efficient service J thank and commend Messrs Singh Brothers, book- sellers of Bazar Mai Sewan in Amritsar. For the same qualities as a typist I thank Miss Irene Marshall.

Ever since the early days of Gurii Nanak and the Sikh Religion I have enjoyed happy relationships with the Academic Division of the Oxford University Press. In particular I should like to thank Mr Peter Sutcliffe for his tactful guidance and unfailing encouragement. I should also like to thank his New Delhi colleague Mr Ravi Dayal and his Wellington colleague Mr John Griffin.

Finally, I must thank Margaret, Rory, Michael, Shaun and Ruth. They have been the principal sufferers, a fact which they seem determined to deny.

The University of Otago HEW McLEOD Dunedin.

a

8.

CONTENTS

ABBREVIATIONS

SECTION I The Historical Setting: the Pafijiab 1500-1800 The Janam-sakhis: A Definition and Summary Description The Principal Janam-sakhis

The Balaé janam-sakhis

The Purdtan janam-sakhis

The Adi Sakhis

The Miharban tradition

The Gydn-ratandvali

The Mahima Prakés tradition

Individual janam-sakhis

Miscellaneous works closely related to the janam-sakhis The Language of the Janam-siakhis

SECTION II The Origins and Growth of the Janam-sakhi Traditions Constituents of the Janam-sakhis 1. Episodes from the life of Nanak 2. Received tradition (a) The Epics and the Puranas (b) Nath tradition (c) Safi tradition 3. The works of Guri Nanak 4. Ascetic ideals Janam-sakhi Forms 1. Narrative anecdotes (a) Moralistic anecdotes (b) Chimeric fairy-tales (c) Devotional legends (d) Aetiological legends 2. Narrative discourses 3. Didactic discourses 4. Heterodox discourses 5. Codes of discipline

The Assembling and Transmission of the Janam-sakhi Traditions

x

CONTENTS

9. The Evolution of Sakhis

10.

15.

1. Baba Nanak’s visit to Multan 2. Mala the Khatri 3. Sajjan/Bhola the Robber 4. The Rich Man’s Pennants 5. Baba Nanak returns to Talvandi 6. Baba Nanak’s discourse with Sheikh Braham 7. Baba Nanak’s visit to Mecca 8. Discourses with Naths 9. Raja Sivanabh 10. Gurai Angad 11. Mardana and Bala

Sources Used by the Janam-sakhi Compilers

Narrative I

Narrative II

Other sources of the Adi Sakhis

Other sources of the Bgo Janam-sakhi 1. Narrative III 2. The Miharban tradition 3. Miscellaneous discourses

A summary of the B4o sources

A summary of the janam-sakhi sources

SECTION III

Purpose, Function, Value

The Purpose of the Janam-sakhis

The Function of the Janam-sakhis

The Janam-sakhis as Historical Sources

1. The janam-sakhis as sources for the life of Guriti Nanak

2. The janam-sakhi image of Baba Nanak

3. The Sikh community in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries

4. The janam-sakhis as sources for the wider history of the Pafijab

The Janam-sakhis in Pafijabi Literature

APPENDICES

Mat WwW N

. The contents of the earliest Bald versions . Contents of the Purdtan janam-sakhis

. Contents of the Adi Sakhis

. The contents of LDP 194

. English translations of janam-sakhis

117 118 120 122 124 128 131 135 144 157 165 169 174 181 197 210 220 220 226 228 229 234

237 240 244 248

249 250

256

266 268

271 276 278 280 281

CONTENTS

6. Holdings of janam-sakhi manuscripts 4. The Adi Granth 8. Date Chart

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY GLOSSARY INDEX OF JANAM-SAKHI ANECDOTES AND DISCOURSES

GENERAL INDEX

AG A’in

AS

ASI

Ast Bqo

B4o(Eng)

B4r Bala JS

BG

BL Cole FS CPL CUL Enc Isl

Enc Isl (NE)

GNM

GNSR GR GTC

Haf JS

ABBREVIATIONS

The Adi Granth.

Abu al-Fazl, A’in-i-Akbari, trans. H. Blochmann and H. S. Jarrett, 3 vols., Calcutta, 1873-94.

Piar Singh (ed.), Sambhit Nath vali Janam Patri Babe Nanak Ji ki prasidh nan Adi Sakhian, Patiala, 1960. (Printed edition of a text of the Adi Sakhis.)

Alexander Cunningham, Archaeological Survey of India annua! reports.

astapadi.

The India Office Library manuscript Panj. Bgo. The folio numbers given in B4o citations are the manu- script’s original Gurmukhi numerals. The Gurmukhi pagination is given in the margin of both Pidr Singh (ed.), Janam Sakhi Sri Gurii Nanak Dev fi (Amritsar, 1974), and W. H. McLeod, The Bgo Yanam-sakhi (Amritsar, 1979).

W. H. McLeod, The B40 Janam-sakhi (Amritsar, 1979). English translation, with introduction and annotations, of the B4o Janam-saékhi.

The India Office Library manuscript Panj. B41 (a Bala janam-sakhi).

The Bala janam-sakhi lithographed by Hafaz Qutub Din of Lahore in A.D. 1871.

The vars of Bhai Gurdas.

British Library.

The Colebrooke Janam-sa@khi.

Central Public Library, Patiala.

Cambridge University Library.

Encyclopaedia of Islam, London, 1913-38.

Encyclopaedia of Islam (New Edition) London, 1960- .

Sarip Das Bhalla, Gurii Nanak Mahima, ed. Shamsher Singh Ashok and Gobind Singh Lamba, Patiala, 1970. (Volume 1 of a printed edition of the Mahima Prakdas Kavita.)

W. H. McLeod, Gurii Nanak and the Sikh Religion, Oxford, 1968. Repr. Delhi, 1976.

The edition of the Gydn-ratandvali lithographed by Charag Din and Saraj Din, Lahore, a.p. 1891.

H. A. Rose (ed.), A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province, 3 vols., Lahore, 1911-19.

The Hafizabad Janam-sakhi,

XIV ABBREVIATIONS

IA Indian Antiquary.

IG Imperial Gazetteer of India.

IOL India Office Library.

LDP The Languages Department of the Pafijab Government, Patiala.

LDP 194 Manuscript no. 194 of the LDP.

Macauliffe M. A. Macauliffe, The Sikh Religion, 6 vols., Oxford, 1909.

Mth F$S Janam-sakhi Sri Gurii Nanak Dev Fi, ed. Kirpal Singh et al., 2 vols., Amritsar, 1962-9. (Printed edition of the extant text of the Miharbaén Janam-sakhi.)

MK Kahn Singh Nabha, Gurusabad Ratandkar Mahan Koé (commonly known as the Mahan Ko§), and edition revised with Addendum, Patiala, 1960.

NPr Santokh Singh, Gur Nanak Praka§ (the Nanak Prakaé.)

PHLS Shamsher Singh Ashok, Patijabi hath-likhatan di sichi, 2 vols., Patiala, 1961-3.

PNQ Panjab Notes and Queries.

PPP Panjab Past and Present.

Pur $S Vir Singh (ed.), Purdtan Janam-saékhi, 5th edition, Amritsar, 1959.

S Samvat, dating according to the Vikrami era.

SLTGN(Eng) Ganda Singh (ed.), Sources on the Life and Teachings of Gurit Nanak (English section), Gurii Nanak Birth Quincentenary edition of PPP, Patiala, 1969.

SLTGN(Pbi) Ibid. (Paiijabi Section).

SRL Sikh Reference Library, Amritsar.

In the case of multiple-volume works footnote citations normally give two figures, separated by a full stop. The first figure specifies the volume number(s). The same form is also used for citations from Santokh Singh’s Gur Nanak Prakdé§ (abbrev. NPr). In these NPr citations the first number indicates the section of work. (1 designates the pirabdradh section, and 11 the utardradh section.)

In Adi Granth references a single figure designates the number of a shabad or (in the case of a citation from a var) the number of a paurzi. A figure added in parentheses indicates a particular stanza (a7ik) within the designated shabad. (1R) indicates a reference from the rahau, or refrain, of a shabad. Most var references incorporate two figures, separated by a colon. This form is used for citations which refer to shaloks (lok). The second figure designates the number of the shalok; and the first that of the pauri to which it is attached. For example, Var Malar 3:2 designates the second of the shaloks attached to the third pauri of the var in Malar raga.

SECTION I

1

THE HISTORICAL SETTING The Panjab 1500-1800

HISTORICAL periods always present problems of definition and Indian history is no exception. Sharp divisions must inevitably be blurred by persistent continuities. Most historians would agree, however, that the Mughal invasions together constitute an event of unusual importance, and for many this importance has been sufficient to warrant a clear period division at the year 1526, the occasion of Babur’s victory over Ibrahim Lodi on the field of Panipat.

In the case of the Pafijab there is an additional reason for regarding the early decades of the sixteenth century as the prelude to a new period. During the last four-and-a-half centuries the most important development in Pafijab history has unquestionably been the evolution of the Sikh community and its rise to a position of enduring prominence within the Land of the Five Rivers. This community had its beginnings in a group of disciples who gathered around their chosen teacher during the first half of the sixteenth century. While Babur was securing his hold upon Northern India, Gura Nanak was instructing his followers in a village of Central Panjab. Under his guidance there developed in the village of Kartarpur the religious community which we know today as the Sikh Panth. It was a community which during the period extending from the death of Nanak to the late eighteenth century was to ascend from the obscurity of Kartarpur to a position of predominance within the Pafijab. As Mughal power in the north disintegrated, Sikh strength increased until eventually during the early decades of the nineteenth century the province became an avowedly Sikh kingdom, ruled in the name of the Khalsa by the celebrated Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

Today the prominence of the Sikh Panth remains undiminished. Although the political and military glories of Rafijit Singh did not survive his death, the Panth, after a brief period of decline, soon recovered its vigour. Today its representatives are to be found scattered throughout the world. The wave of Indian immigration which in recent years has reached the United Kingdom consists largely of Pafijabis, most of them Sikhs. An earlier wave of Pafijabi migration travelled to the east coast of North America, and during the same period ripples reached as far as the flax swamps and scrub-covered hills of New Zealand. During the past hundred years they have shown themselves to be a remarkably mobile people. In addition to the substantial communities in England, California, and British Columbia there are many thousands of Sikhs to be found in

4 HISTORICAL SETTING: THE PANJAB 1500-1800

South-East Asia, Hong Kong, Fiji, East Africa, and the Middle East.

Needless to say, the community as it exists today is no mere replica of the religious following which gathered around Nanak during the first half of the sixteenth century. Other influences have shaped the Panth during its subsequent history and the result is certainly not to be defined in exclusively religious terms. This should not, however, suggest an absence of direct links connecting the earliest disciples with their modern descend- ants. The Sikh Panth which confronts us today is the product of a process of transformation incipient within the earliest group of disciples and essentially complete by the end of the eighteenth century.

Nanak, the first of the Sikh Guris, was followed by a series of nine successors, all of them Pafijabis. There was thus established a line of ten masters, corresponding in terms of time to the period of the Great Mughals. Gobind Singh, the tenth and last of the succession, died in 1708, the year following the death of Aurangzeb.! Inevitably Sikh tradition concentrates almost exclusively upon the activities of the Guris and deals only indirectly with less obvious influences affecting the development of the community during the first two centuries of its existence. Of the more important of these influences one commands a particular significance in terms of its impact upon the evolving Panth. This was the caste constitu- ency of the community.

The first six Guris all belonged to the mercantile Khatri caste and all resided in villages of Central Pafijab.? Their caste origins and their rural domicile were of crucial significance in the development of their following. The villages of Central Pafijab contained a dominant concentration of Jats, and in accordance with established tradition Khatris were accorded a role as the teachers of Jats. This traditional status, together with the inherent appeal of the Guris’ teachings, attracted a substantial following from amongst the Jats, and during the course of the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries the Jat segment of the Sikh community acquired a preponderance which it has never lost. The Sikhs entered the eighteenth century as a community still lead by a Khatri succession, but strongly Jat in membership. It was inevitable that the community should have been influenced by its numerically dominant element. Without relinquishing its loyalty to the teachings of Nanak it had assumed features which _ derived from its Jat antecedents.

This pattern of development received a considerable impetus during the eighteenth century. In 1708 Gura Gobind Singh died without an heir. Ever since the time of the fourth Guri a hereditary principle of succession

1 The nine successors of Nanak were Angad (1539-52), Amar Dis (1552-74), Ram Das (1574-81), Arjan (1581-1606), Hargobind (1606-44), Har Rai (1644-61), Har Krisan (1661-4), Tegh Bahadur (1664-75), and Gobind Singh (1675--1708).

4 The remaining four Guris were also Khatris. Nanak and Angad both passed over the members of their own families in choosing successors. Gur Amar Dis bestowed the succession upon Jethi, husband of his daughter and a Khatri of the Sodhi sub-caste. Jeth assumed the name Rim Dis and in turn chose his youngest son Arjan as successor. Thereafter the succession remained within the male line of Sodhis descended from Ram Das. The last four Guris were compelled to spend most of their time beyond the borders of the Pafijab.

HISTORICAL SETTING: THE PANJAB 1500-1800 5

had been accepted and Gurii Gobind Singh’s death without surviving heirs brought a crisis. At first the answer appeared to be a transfer of the legitimacy to a different line and for this distinction the obvious candidate was a Sikh named Banda Bahadur, or Banda the Brave.

During the time of Gurti Arjan the Panth had begun to attract the unfavourable notice of the Mughal emperors and in 1606 Arjan had died in a Mughal prison. Skirmishes between Sikhs and the Lahore administra- tion broke out during the period of Arjan’s son, Hargobind, but these petered out when Hargobind withdrew to the Sivalik Hills in 1634. The period of peace which followed was abruptly terminated when in 1675 the ninth Guri, Tegh Bahadur, was executed at Aurangzeb’s command. Although Guri Gobind Singh remained in the Sivalik Hills for most of his life, his principal enemy was to be a Mughal force from Sirhind which entered a hills war against him. Immediately after his death and that of Aurangzeb Mughal authority in the Pafijab declined rapidly. Persistent rural unrest now developed into a widespread rebellion and threw up a new Sikh leader. This was Banda Bahadur.

Banda’s early successes against the Mughal administration in the Pajijab qualified him in the eyes of many as a suitable successor to Gural Gobind Singh. It was, however, a disputed status, and his execution in 1716 finally settled the issue. A more dispersed variety of leadership now developed, together with other features which increasingly distinguish the later Sikh community from the earlier following of the Guris.

The eighteenth century was a period of considerable confusion. Earlier patterns of belief and behaviour were either extinct or largely unsuited to new needs and it is scarcely surprising that fresh patterns should have emerged during this turbulent period. As one might expect, the customs and ideals which now ascended to prominence within the Sikh Panth related closely to the cultural inheritance of the Panth’s dominant element and to the distinctive circumstances which forced the change. The patterns which emerged under these pressures derived in large measure from Jat antecedents and from the nature of the warfare which occupied the middle years of the century. For the Panth this crucial century began in 1699 and may be said to have concluded in 1799. In 1699 Gura Gobind Singh promulgated the Order of the Khalsa, the Sikh brotherhood which in its developed form~has dominated subsequent Sikh history; and in 1799 Ranjit Singh secured control of Lahore, the key to the Pafijab. The Khalsa brotherhood served as a focus of Sikh ideals throughout the century, faithfully reflecting in its evolving discipline the development and con- solidation of these ideals.

Banda’s unsuccessful rebellion was followed by a period of restored Mughal authority and persecution of the Sikhs. This campaign was rarely pursued with any vigour, for the restoration was never strong and Nadir Shiah’s invasion in 1739 brought another collapse. The restoration which followed Nadir Shah’s withdrawal was the last. The next invader, Ahmad Shah Abdali of Afghanistan, finally destroyed all hope of a Mughal revival in the Pafijab.

6 HISTORICAL SETTING: THE PANJAB 1500-1800

Ahmad Shah Abdiali’s nine invasions covered the years from 1747 to 1769. The Afghan failed to establish himself in Northern India, but having destroyed the Mughals and seriously weakened the Marathias Ahmad Shah did serve to prepare the way for the establishment of Sikh authority. This authority first passed into the hands of twelve warrior bands or associations known as misls. These were independent groups of Sikhs bound in a loose confederation by their rural origins, by the ties of a common religious affiliation, and in the earlier days by opposition to a common enemy. The third of these was the more important, for the final withdrawal of Ahmad Shah brought a period of internecine warfare amongst the misls. Eventually one of the chieftains, Rafijit Singh of the Shukerchakia misl, secured an ascendancy over the remainder. This brought him to sovereignty over the entire area of the Pafijaéb, and with the establishment of that sovereignty the most significant period in Sikh history came to an end. Although the teachings of Nanak had never been abandoned, the community which, in the form of the evolved Khalsa, emerged at the end of the eighteenth century was something radically different from the group of disciples who first gathered at Kartarpur.

This account covers in outline the period from the time of Nanak to the emergence of the fully-fledged Khalsa. It should be added that whereas an outline can be sketched with a certain distinctness much of the detail remains very obscure. Sources for the period are few and generally unsatisfactory, and conclusions concerning this earlier period must be in part dependent upon social patterns described in sources which relate to later periods. An obvious source for the early period is the Adi Granth, the scripture compiled by Gurad Arjan during the years 1603 and 1604. The Adi Granth provides an abundance of information concerning the religious beliefs of Nanak and his immediate successors, but the historian who pursues a wider social, economic, or political interest must labour hard in order to extract from it the material which he requires. Material of this sort, although certainly present, is not provided ina readily accessible form.

The help offered by Persian sources is also limited. Several Persian chronicles deal with this period, but almost all of them direct their courtly interest away from the Panjab. Only two significant exceptions exist. One is the A’in-i-Akbari, which several times refers to features of the Lahore Siba;? and the other the Khuldsat-ut-Tavarikh of Sujan Rai Bhandari. Sujan Rai was a native of Batala and his narrative, which was completed in 1696, largely concerns his native province.? The section on the Nanak-panthis in the Dabistan-i-Mazahib+ and Nir Muhammad’s

1 For a fuller outline of the same period see W. H. McLeod, The Evolution of the Sikh Com- munity (Oxford, 1976), chaps. 1 and 3.

2 A’in 11, 310-47.

3 For an English translation of Sujan Rii’s treatment of the Pafijab see Muhammad Akbar, The Punjab Under the Mughals (Lahore, 1948), pp. 285-311.

4 David Shea and Anthony Troyer, The Dabistan or School of Manners, vol. ii (Paris, 1843), pp. 246-88. Most of the section dealing with the Nanak-panthis has also been translated by Ganda Singh in PPP 1. i (April 1967), pp. 47-71. The portion of the latter translation dealing specifically with Guru Nanak also appears in SLTGN(Eng), pp. 45-53.

HISTORICAL SETTING: THE PANJAB 1500-1800 7

Jang-nama' might also be added, but beyond these four works there is little except the brief comments included in such works as the Babur-ndma and the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri. Although European visitors subsequently had much to say about the Pafijab, and although some of their material is of great value, the principal contributors all arrived too late to observe the critical period of Sikh development or to secure access to reliable sources.? In view of this paucity of source material it is perhaps surprising that the devotional literature of the Sikhs has not received more attention. In such circumstances problems associated with the reading and analysis of the Adi Granth do not constitute a sufficient reason for continuing to neglect it, nor do they provide adequate justification for our undisturbed ignorance of other early products of the Sikh community. Three varieties of devotional literature deserve particular attention. First there are the poetic works of Bhai Gurdas, a nephew of the third Guri and a contem- porary of the three Gurias who followed him. The vars of Bhai Gurdas constitute a source of considerable importance, one which has yet to receive the close scrutiny and analysis which it deserves. Secondly, there is the substantial Dasam Granth, a heterogeneous collection of writings attributed to the tenth Gura. Although the attribution seems plainly erroneous for the bulk of its contents this in no way impairs their value, for all are products of the period of Guri Gobind Singh or of the years immediately following his death. With this collection should be bracketed the Persian compositions of Nand Lal Goya, another Sikh of the same period. Thirdly there are the janam-sakhis, hagiographic accounts of the life of Nanak. These had their first beginnings in the late sixteenth century, flourished during the seventeenth century, and then decreased as other concerns increasingly dominated the Panth’s interest. The decline has, however, never been total. Janam-sakhis are still extensively read today.? This study concerns the third of these categories. In the case of the janam-sakhis the problem has been one of misunderstanding rather than total neglect. The various janam-sakhis purport to narrate the events of the life of Nanak and it is as generally trustworthy biographies that they have hitherto been used. This accords them a reliability which they do not possess, while ignoring the considerable interest and value which they do in fact offer. The janam-sakhis are important as examples of hagio- graphic growth-processes, as sources of Pafijab history for the post-Nanak period within which they developed, as a cohesive factor in subsequent Sikh history, and as the earliest works of Pafijabi prose. The purpose of this study will be to examine these four aspects of the janam-sakhi literature.

1 An English translation by Gand Singh was published by Khalsa College, Amritsar, in 1939.

2 The more important of these early observers were: James Browne, History of the Origin and Progress of the Sicks (published with his Indian Tracts, London, 1788); George Forster, 4 Journey from Bengal to England &c. (London, 1808); John Malcolm, Sketch of the Sikhs (first published in Asiatich Researches, vol. x1, Calcutta, 1810, pp. 197-292, and reprinted separately, London, 1812); H. T. Prinsep, Origin of the Sikh Power in the Punjab &c. (Calcutta, 1834); W. L. M’Gregor, The History of the Sikhs (London, 1846); J. D. Cunningham, A Htstory of the Stkhs (London, 1849). See also Ganda Singh (ed.), Early European Accounts of the Sikhs (Calcutta, 1962).

3 For surveys of all three varieties see W. H. McLeod, op. cit., chaps. 2 and 4.

2

THE JANAM-SAKHIS A Definition and Summary Description

THE janam-sakhis are commonly defined as ‘biographies of Gurti Nanak’. This standard description is mentioned here only in order to reject it. Whatever else the janam-sakhis may be they are certainly not biographies. It is true that they do concern the person of Gurii Nanak, and it can also be claimed that certain elements within the janam-sakhis must assuredly derive from authentic incidents associated with the actual life of Nanak. This does not, however, mean that they can be regarded as biographies, nor that they can be uncritically used as sources for the life of the Gura. Much misunderstanding has resulted from the application of this mistaken interpretation of the janam-sakhis.

The janam-sakhis are properly defined not as biographies of Guri Nanak, but as hagiographic accounts of his life. They are tradition in precisely the same sense as the Hadith, and although they lack some of the features associated with their Muslim counterpart they have nevertheless developed in response to the same impulses, and in a less formalized manner they have fulfilled much the same role within their parent com- munity. Although the distinction between biography and hagiography may seem obvious, it has in practice been largely ignored and much misunderstanding has consequently persisted. Until the distinction is clearly understood there can be no appreciation of the true nature of the janam-sakhis, nor of their manifold contents. It is not sufficient to interpret them as nuclei of authentic tradition overlaid and in some measure obscured by the legendary accretions of later periods. There are indeed a few isolated anecdotes which appear to fit this description, but it is not an accurate representation of the janam-sakhis as a whole. Even when stripped of all their wonder stories the janam-sakhis do not offer an account of the actual events of the Gurii’s life. What they do provide is an inter- pretation of that life, an interpretation springing from the piety and commitment of later generations.

This fundamental distinction may be expressed in a slightly different way. The janam-sakhis find their origin not in the actual life of Nanak but rather in a myth which derives from that life. The word ‘myth’ will recur during the course of this analysis and it is of vital importance to the analysis that its meaning in this context should be clearly understood. This clarification is all the more important because the term is a new- comer to Sikh studies. Although ‘myth’ has for long been used in a tech- nical sense by scholars working in biblical and Near Eastern studies, and

THE JANAM-SAKHIS 9

although the concept has proved so valuable to social anthropologists, there are still extensive areas largely untouched by it. Sikh tradition provides one such area, one which offers considerable scope for fruitful application of a particular understanding of the concept.

In this context it is most important that the term ‘myth’ should not be interpreted as a synonym for ‘legend’. Although legendary material has been extensively used in the janam-sakhis to give expression to the myth which constitutes their origin the two terms must be kept rigidly distinct. As far as the purpose and the function of the janam-sakhis are concerned this distinction between legend and myth is of much greater importance than the difference between legend and the authenticated historical event. Whenever the janam-sakhis are used as a source for the actual life of Guri Nanak the latter distinction becomes primary, and the historian who seeks to reconstruct the events of the Gurii’s life must endeavour to separate the authentic elements embedded in the janam-sakhis from the vast quantity of strictly spurious material within which they are set. This, however, is not the principal role or value of the janam-sakhis. Their principal role has concerned their function within the later community; and as historical sources their value lies chiefly in their testimony to the period and the society within which they evolved. For an analysis of either the role of the janam-sakhis or of their primary historical value the distinction between legend and history is of little practical importance. It is the myth which matters, and the myth can be served with equal advantage by both legend and history, provided only that the legendary element does not do serious violence to accepted conventions. In this sense myth is a fundamental aspect of the janam-sakhis. It therefore follows that a firm grasp of this particular usage is a pre-requisite for any sufficient understanding of their true nature.

According to this usage a myth is a construct of the human imagination, developing out of an actual situation and seeking to give meaning to that situation. It is, in other words, an interpretation based upon a particular understanding of a given array of circumstances. This interpretation must be expressed in concrete form. It evolves in response to particular needs and if it is to survive it must continue to fulfil its distinctive function for the society within which it took shape. As long as it retains the capacity to do so it will survive. If it is to retain an acceptable relevance it must evolve in accordance with the changing needs and understanding of the society which it serves, for when it loses its capacity to fulfil a relevant function it will wither. Eventually it will either die or, if it lingers on, will survive as a cultural curiosity. Although every myth should accord with accepted norms of truth and reality, neither its rise nor its survival will relate primarily to such issues. It is the function which must sustain it and when a myth ceases to fulfil its function it must either change or make way for a more effective substitute.

Myths may be expressed in a wide variety of forms. They may exist in oral or in written tradition, and in either case they may be poetry or narrative prose. They may be drama, sagas, anecdotes, or series of

<0) THE JANAM-SAKHIS

discourses. Their conscious emphasis may be religious, historical, philoso- phical, or a mixture of all and much more besides. Though commonly expressed in oral or recorded tradition myth is not necessarily limited to the spoken or written word. It may be expressed in the ritual of a sacrifice, in the structure of a liturgy, in the design of a building, or in the multitude of customs observed by a particular society. The range of possibilities is enormous. Every society must find means of expressing its myths and any form which will provide a concrete and immediately comprehensible expression qualifies thereby as an appropriate vehicle.

It is in precisely this sense that the janam-sakhis have served as the vehicle of a powerful myth, one which still commands a wide acceptance within the society which developed it. The myth which they express may be briefly stated as follows. Baba Nanak was the divinely commissioned giver of salvation. To all who would seek salvation the way lies open. The means of salvation consists in loyalty to the person of Baba Nanak and acceptance of his teachings. This is the myth. The form which was developed to give it expression was the narrative anecdote which, in relating some incident concerning the life of Nanak, sought to authenticate the claims made on his behalf. These anecdotes, collected into anthologies or structured ‘biographies’, constitute the janam-sakhis.

Let it be stressed once again that the issue does not involve questions of historical truth, at least not in a primary sense. The fundamental question to ask of a myth should concern not its historical truth but its functional utility. Inevitably the janam-sakhi narrators have employed both historical and legendary material in order to give concrete expression to the myth of Baba Nanak. It is, for example, safe to accept as historically accurate their claim that Nanak was born in Talvandi village, in the year S.1526 (A.D. 1469), and that he was the son of Kali Bedi.! This is a statement of actual fact and it is also a part of the myth. Having made this statement concerning place, date, and parentage, the narrators add that a mighty concourse of celestial beings hailed his birth—three hundred and thirty million gods, eighty-four Siddhs, nine Naths, sixty-four Yoginis, fifty-two Virs, and six Jatis.2 Legend has been joined to historical fact but the myth remains the same.

This example will at once suggest the Lucan account of the Nativity. Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph, born in Palestine, is greeted at his birth by the heavenly host of angels.? The authentic statement is coupled with a legendary element in order to express one aspect of the myth of Jesus. For an analysis of this kind the question is not whether the myth of Nanak or the myth of Jesus is true. In either case the issue can be affirmed only by an act of faith.

The nature of the janam-sakhi myth is clearly indicated by the declara- tions of purpose which some of the narrators attach to their collections of

1 Byo, f. 1.

2 Ibid. For Siddhs and Naths see below, pp. 68-9, 296. Yoginis, Virs, and Jatis are legen- dary figures possessing superhuman powers.

3 Luke 2:2-14.

THE JANAM-SAKHiS II

anecdotes. In one of the more important janam-sakhis it is expressed in the following terms:

He who reads or hears this sékhi shall attain to the supreme rapture. He who hears, sings or reads this sakhi shall find his highest desire fulfilled, for through it he shall meet Gura Biba Nanak. He who with love sings of the glory of Baba Nanak or gives ear to it shall obtain joy ineffable in all that he does in this life, and in the life to come salvation.

The word sdékhi which is here used by the writer to designate his work means, literally, ‘testimony’. This is precisely what the janam-sakhis are intended to be. They are testimonies to the belief which, in its concrete form, becomes the myth of Nanak. In a more specific sense they are, or claim to be, witnesses to actual episodes from the life of Nanak. These episodes are believed to authenticate the soteriological status of Nanak which constitutes the fundamental myth. For this reason the earliest collections were styled simply sdkhidn, or “Testimonies’.

It was not long, however, before the title was expanded and the word sakhi underwent a slight shift in meaning. One of the earlier collections assumed the title janam-patri (‘horoscope’ or, more precisely, the piece of paper on which a person’s horoscope is recorded).? Although in a strict sense the expression janam-patri related only to the opening anecdote describing the birth of Nanak it came to be applied to the collection as a whole. It was consistently used as a title for the collection which had first appropriated it, and eventually coalesced with the earlier term. The word patri was dropped and sakhi substituted to form the new compound janam-sakhi.

‘This compound has been used ever since and continues to be used today. Although in a literal sense it can be translated as ‘testimonies to the birth (of Nanak)’ it no longer projects this meaning. The coalescence has produced a different sense. The translation which best accords with the popular understanding of the meaning of janam-sakhi today is ‘biography’ and, as we have already observed, this is the term which is most commonly used in English translation. The word saékhi has, meanwhile, assumed a somewhat different connotation when used in this context. Occasionally one encounters a usage which implies the earlier meaning of ‘witness’ or ‘testimony’. The usual meaning in modern usage is, however, an ‘episode’ or ‘chapter’ from the ‘biography’ of Nanak. Individual incidents are recorded separately or in integrated series, and each incident or series is called a sdkhi. The individual sdkhis have been gathered into collections, some random and some ordered. These collections constitute the janam- sakhis.

Although janam-sakhis of other religious figures have since been

1 AS, p. 101. See also Mth JS 1. 1.

2 This was the title used by the janam-sakhis of the Bald tradition. Bald 7S, p. 2. 'The same term is also affixed to the collection known as the Adi Sakhis, but in this latter case may perhaps be a copyist’s addition. AS, p. 1. Piir Singh, ‘A Critical Survey of Panjabi Prose in the Seventeenth Century’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Panjab University, 1968), p. 68.

12 THE JANAM-SAKHIS

written,! the term is generally restricted to collections of tales concerning Gurai Nanak, and if used without any specific indication of its subject it will invariably refer to him. As a result janam-sakhi is commonly translated not simply as ‘biography’ but as ‘biography of Gurii Nanak’. Whereas this is certainly an accurate representation of the meaning popularly attached to the term today, it must again be emphasized that it is in fact a mis- representation. The emphasis is necessary because of the extensive mis- understanding which still results from a persistent use of the janam-sakhis as historical accounts of the life of Nanak. This was the method followed at the turn of the century by M. A. Macauliffe and in this sense his ghost is still very much with us. The janam-sakhis do indeed have a considerable importance as historical sources, but only a limited measure of that importance relates to their usefulness as sources for the life of Nanak. Their primary significance as historical source-material lies elsewhere. It consists, first, in the role which the janam-sakhis have played in the subsequent history of the Sikh community. Secondly, it is to be found in those elements incorporated within the janam-sakhis which relate to the period of their actual emergence rather than to the earlier period of Gura Nanak. In both respects the importance chiefly concerns the period stretching from the sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century. The first of these will be more fully explained when dealing with the function of the janam-sakhis.2 The second will be treated in the section which dis- cusses the contribution of the janam-sakhis as historical sources.

The customary interpretation of the janam-sakhis must accordingly be rejected and an effort made to redefine them. A janam-sakhi is a collection of hagiographic anecdotes concerning the person of Gurit Nanak (a.p. 1469-1539). These anecdotes, both individually and in their collective form, all serve to express a single myth relating to the life and teachings of Nanak, namely that he was sent into the world by God to demonstrate the way of salvation to an erring and confused mankind. In order to express this myth the anonymous narrators responsible for the various anecdotes have drawn in some small measure from authentic memories concerning the actual life of Nanak, and in considerable measure from current legend.

Some of the individual anecdotes are the product of simple borrowing from earlier traditions, whereas others derive from complicated growth processes. Most of the borrowings and much of the growth process must be related to the period of oral transmission. This not only preceded the first recording of anecdotes, but continues to the present day. As a result the expansion of the janam-sakhi traditions, though particularly active during the seventeenth century, is still continuing. It was during the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century that material drawn from oral sources was first recorded in written form. The earlier written collections (and some of their later descendants) recorded individual anecdotes in a random manner, the only deference to chronology being a simple sequence of birth, childhood, manhood, and death. Later collections devised more

1 There exist janam-sakhis of Kabir and Nimdev. 3 See below, pp. 244-7. 3 Chap. 14, pp. 250-67.

THE JANAM-SAKHIS 13

detailed chronological structures and reordered the individual anecdotes to accord with these predetermined patterns. In some instances a later manuscript will represent a generally faithful copying of an earlier version, but in most cases there will be some significant departures. Earlier versions are commonly augmented by the addition of minor details, extra anecdotes, or clusters of anecdotes, and are sometimes distinguished by alterations in the chronological pattern. In some instances supplementary manuscripts have served as sources for such additions, and in others the later copyist has drawn from current oral tradition.

The language of most janam-sakhis is Pafijabi and until the nineteenth century the script was almost invariably Gurmukhi. Versions copied in the Arabic script do eventually appear, but they are exceedingly rare. Although distinct variations of language are to be found within the janam-sakhis only occasionally are they sufficient to justify any claim that a writer has actually abandoned Panjabi. Three principal varieties of linguistic difference are to be found. There is, first, a range of dialects extending from the Majhi of the central tract (the Bari Doab) to the Pothohari of Rawalpindi District. Secondly, there is within the narrative traditions a gradual change from the primitive Pafijabi prose of the earliest manuscripts to the more refined language of the latest letterpress editions. Thirdly, there is a pronounced difference between the same crude Pafijabi of the earliest manuscripts and the sophisticated language of that variety of later janam-sakhi which stresses exegesis rather than narrative.

Several of the copyists have recorded the date on which they completed their work, and if to their manuscripts we add the modern printed editions the period which they span runs from the middle of the seven- teenth century to the present day. It must be stressed that these dates refer to the actual copying of extant manuscripts. They do not necessarily refer to the original compiling of particular collections and in most cases it is abundantly evident that the extant work has been directly copied from an earlier manuscript or manuscripts. In a few important instances manu- scripts bearing eighteenth-century dates must be related to the seventeenth century rather than to the time when they were actually copied, for it is clear that their material derives mainly from the earlier period. The seventeenth century was the formative period in the development of the janam-sakhis, and it is with this century, running over into the opening decades of its successor, that any discussion of the janam-sakhis must be primarily concerned.

The outcome of this continuing process is an indeterminate but obviously substantial number of manuscript janam-sakhis. Most of these are concentrated within the Pafijab.1 Others are to be found scattered throughout India and the libraries of the western world, two of the most important being held by the India Office Library in London.? In 1870 the first printed edition appeared and the trade has flourished ever since. Most of the manuscript copies can be distributed amongst four, or perhaps five,

1 See Appendix 6. = IOL MSS. Panj. B6 and Bgo.

14 THE JANAM-SAKHIS

recognizable traditions. The printed versions, although they have con- tinued the process of growth and diversification, are later extensions of these same groups or traditions. In our attempt to analyse the janam- sakhis frequent reference will have to be made to these various traditions and to their principal manuscript collections. For this reason a description of the more important extant janam-sakhis will precede the attempt to analyse their actual development.

3 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS

Most of the janam-sakhis fall into one of a small number of recognizable groups or traditions, the only significant exception being the unique B¢o Janam-sakhi held by the India Office Library. Each of these traditions possesses distinctive characteristics and there is rarely any difficulty in allocating a manuscript to its appropriate category. For this reason the various manuscripts will be described under the headings of their various traditions.

One feature common to all the traditions which should be made clear at the outset is that they are all, in their extant forms, composite products. All have drawn upon a diversity of earlier sources. Their identity as distinctive groups or traditions has arisen only because particular selec- tions were subsequently copied, completely or in substantial part, by later hands. For this reason it is important to distinguish three varieties of participant in the development process. These are the original narrators of oral tradition; the compilers who made selections from oral tradition and recorded their individual selections in manuscripts; and the copyists who with varying degrees of faithfulness reproduced these earliest compilations in later manuscript or, even later, printed form. During the later stages of

‘the development process participants occasionally combined the roles of

both compiler and copyist. They were copyists in that they reproduced earlier manuscripts but compilers in that they combined extracts from more than one source to produce new selections.

Such details are, however, aspects of the discussion which must follow the account of extant janam-sakhis. This account will be largely descrip- tive, its purpose being to provide a frame of reference for the analysis which will follow.

THE BALA ¥ANAM-SAKHIS

When during his visit to the Pafijab in 1805 Colonel Malcolm made inquiries concerning Sikh history and religion he was informed that Baba Nanak had been accompanied on his travels by ‘a person named Bala Sandhi’.! He adds that it is on this person’s authority that ‘most of the miracles and wonders of his journeys are related’.2 Although Malcolm does make passing reference to two other sources,? it is evident from his

1 John Malcolm, ‘Sketch of the Sikhs’, in Astatick Researches, vol. xi (Calcutta, 1810), p. 205.

® Ibid.

3 ‘The first is the Bhacta Malli, an unidentifiable work evidently confused with the Bhakta Mala of Nabha Dis and perhaps with the Bhagat-ratandvali of Mani Singh. The second is Bhai Gurdias

16 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS

account that the Bald version of the life and travels of Baba Nanak had been accepted as standard by the beginning of the nineteenth century.

It is this status which constitutes the principal importance of the Bala janam-sakhis. In spite of their claims to be the ‘original janam-sakhi’ there can be no doubt that they represent an intermediate stage in the evolution of the form, and that others are accordingly more significant in terms of age and simplicity of structure. Having first emerged during the middle decades of the seventeenth century the Bald tradition flourished increasingly during the eighteenth century and eventually secured its position as the standard version of the life of Nanak. This position it retained unchallenged until the rediscovery of the Purdtan tradition late in the nineteenth century. The publication of Macauliffe’s The Sikh Religion in Ig09 eventually transferred the primary reputation to the Purdtan version, but the Bala janam-sakhis yielded nothing in popularity and to this day they dominate the Pafijabi market.

Although the reasons for this Bala ascendancy are not altogether clear, one which certainly played a major role was its confident claim to re- present an eye-witness account of the life and travels of Baba Nanak. All Bala janam-sakhis begin with a prologue which purports to describe the manner in which Bala Sandhi (commonly known as Bhai Bala) was summoned before Nanak’s successor Angad and how he then proceeded to narrate all that he had witnessed as the first Gurti’s constant companion. The earliest of the extant Bald versions begins as follows:

The Janam-patri of Baba Nanakji

In the year Sammat fifteen hundred and eighty two, S. 1582, on the fifth day of the bright half of the month of Vaisakh, Paira Mokha, a Khatri of Sultanpur, wrote this book. Guri Angad commanded it to be written. Paira recorded the dictation of Bala, a Sandhii Jat who had come from Talvandi, the village of Rai Bhoi. He had come in search of Guri Angad. The recording of his account took two months and seventeen days to complete. All the facts and all the places visited by Gura Nanakji were faithfully and fluently described by Bhai Bala, with the result that Gura Angad was greatly pleased with him. Bhai Bala and Mardanda the Bard accompanied Baba Nanak on his travels and Bhai Bala was with him during the period he spent at the commissariat [of Daulat Khan in Sultaénpur].!

The narrative then proceeds to describe how Guri Angad was one day sitting in his village of Khadir disconsolately reflecting upon the fact that he did not know Baba Nanak’s date of birth. It so happened that Bala Sandhi, the first Guri’s companion, had only recently learnt the identity of his Master’s successor, and having discovered the location of Guri Angad’s residence he arrived at this convenient moment to pay his respects. In response to a request from Gurd Angad he agreed to go back to Talvandi and search for the horoscope (janam-patri) which had been recorded on Nanak’s birth. When he returned triumphantly bearing the

(see below, pp. 43-45), whom Malcolm mistakenly declares to have been the author of the Gydn-ratandvali. Ibid., pp. 203, 204.

1 Bala JS, p. 1. For janam-patri as the title of a janam-sakhi see above, p. 11.

THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS 17

document it was discovered that the horoscope had been written in Sastri (Nagari) characters. Fortunately there lived in Sultanpur a Sikh named Paira Mokha who knew ‘both characters’ and who could accordingly write Gurmukhi as well as read Nagari. Paira was duly summoned and having received the horoscope he sat down to transcribe it.

This process mysteriously turns out to be a recording of Bala’s lengthy dictation instead of a transcription of the horoscope. The horoscope incident is clearly a contrived episode designed to create an impression of authenticity, and the clumsiness of the transition from horoscope to narrative has evidently done nothing to frustrate this intention. It has, on the contrary, been abundantly fulfilled, and to this day there still survives a conviction that the Bald tradition must be at least based upon an eye- witness account delivered in the presence of Gura Angad. This reputation it has retained in spite of numerous inconsistencies, a high incidence of fantasy, and a generally incoherent travel narrative.

Two theories have been advanced to account for the origin of the Bala tradition. The first assumes the authenticity of the tradition’s own claims as outlined above. There are, however, inescapable problems involved in the acceptance of these claims, problems which must in some manner be answered before there can be any prospect of sustaining them. The early Bala manuscripts all include denigratory references which could hardly have proceeded from a loyal disciple and would never have been tolerated by the Guri’s successor. These references are plainly the work of the Hindialis, a schismatic group which evidently regarded itself as Sikh but which accepted the leadership of a rival claimant in opposition to the claims of Guri Hargobind (1595-1644). This rival was Bidhi Chand, son of Baba Hindal of Jandiala, and because his claim was advanced in the name of his father the group bore the name Hindiali.?

Within the earliest extant janam-sakhis of the Bald tradition there are several episodes which seek to exalt Baba Hindal at the expense of Nanak. These references vary in emphasis. At one point there is propounded a threefold apostolic succession which begins with Kabir, continues through Nanak, and reaches its climax in Hindal.? Elsewhere Nanak and Hindal are both accorded earlier incarnations in the court of King Janak, with Nanak cast in the humble role of oil-bearer (teli).4 Finally, there occurs in some of the manuscripts a story which seems to suggest that Nanak once requested Angad to grant him seignorial rights over his daughter.

1 Bala JS, pp. 1-7. 3 GNSR, p. 23. The group is also known as the Nirafijani panth. Jandiala in Amritsar District was the group’s centre. Hindal was himself a Jat from the pargana of Batal’. B¢r, f. 142b. 8 This is expressed in the form of a brief verse. age hid ab bhi hoi th kambird nanak doi tijd hor handal jatetd janko ap ntrafijan bheta atsi kirapG kari kambir to dujai ndnak bandhi dhir Br, f. 166b. 4 Bor, f. 189a. 5 Bgr, f. 25ra-b. This third element, although cerrainly a part of the same polemic, may be a later addition to the Bald narrative.

18 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS

The first theory concerning the origins of the Bald tradition interprets these references as interpolations introduced into an earlier ‘original’ janam-sakhi narrated before Guri Angad. This theory was popularized by the early nineteenth-century Sikh hagiographer Santokh Singh, who thereby managed to reconcile the tradition’s occasional Hindali declara- tions with its confident claims to originality.1 It was a relatively simple matter to excise the offending material, and having done this Santokh Singh used the Bala version as the basis for his Nanak Prakag.2 Numerous successors have followed the same method, some confidently and some with evident misgivings.

A second theory claims that the entire janam-sakhi is the work of the Hind§alis and that it was first composed to serve as a vehicle for their polemic against the supporters of the orthodox line. This interpretation was vigorously if erratically propagated by Karam Singh in his Kattak ki Visadkh, a book which in spite of its manifold inconsistencies did serve to strengthen doubts which had been raised by Macauliffe.

The first of these two theories must certainly be rejected. The reasons for this rejection will be treated in greater detail when discussing the sources used by janam-sakhi compilers.® At this point they need be only briefly summarized. There are, first, the numerous and irreconcilable inconsistencies involved in the tradition’s own account of its origins. Secondly, there is the unusually strong element of fantasy which character- izes the Bala version of the Nanak narratives. Thirdly, there is a significant absence of any reference to Bhai Bala in the other janam-sakhis predating the eighteenth century. Even in the eighteenth century he receives only passing mention in other traditions.4 This would have been inconceivable if in fact Bala had been a regular companion of the Gura. Their omission of his name further strengthens a conclusion which is already apparent from the first two objections. In terms of content, structure, and language the earliest Bala version bears all the marks of a middle period in the pattern of janam-sakhi evolution and theories based upon its claim to originality must assuredly be repudiated.

Whilst this disposes of the first theory it does not necessarily mean that the second thereby stands affirmed. It does not follow that Karam Singh’s alternative theory is automatically established by a repudiation of the claims which he so vigorously contested. Karam Singh insisted that the earliest extant versions represent an original Hindali composition, not an earlier janam-sakhi corrupted by them. The incidence of the Hindali references does, however, offer some support for the suggestion that they must be interpolations and it is accordingly necessary to postulate a third theory. The earliest extant versions of the Bald traditions may represent a

1 NPr t. 37. 2 See below, pp. 45-6. 3 See below, pp. 174-6.

4 The Mahima Prakaé§ Varatak makes a single mention of Bhai Bala in its account of the life of Nanak, one which accords him no special importance. SLTGN(Eng), p. 79. SLTGN(Pdt), p. 42. At one point the Bgo and Adi Sakhis versions, following a common source, refer to ‘another man’ who was with Nanak in addition to Mardana, a reference which might perhaps be intended to

indicate Bala. Bo, f. 83b. AS, p. 27. The failure of Bhai Gurdis to mention him in his Var xr catalogue of principal disciples is of particular significance.

THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS 19

mid-seventeenth-century janam-sakhi interpolated by the Hindalis. This remains no more than a possibility, for there is no manuscript evidence to support it, and if it is in fact correct the Hindalis must have made use of it very soon after its first emergence. Either this or the second theory could be correct and if the Hindalis were not actually responsible for the first Bala compilation they must certainly have appropriated it almost immediately after it appeared.

It will be observed that in describing the products of the Bald tradition reference is made to the Bald janam-sakhis, not to a single Bala fanam- sGkhi, Although there is an obvious relationship linking all versions of the tradition, with much common material, there are also marked differences. These are almost certainly linear in the sense that the various versions can be regarded as successive amplifications of an original Bald janam-sakhi, first recorded in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. There are two principal manuscript recensions extant, followed by four main printed versions. Although the latest of the printed editions differs greatly from the first manuscript recension the lineal connection can be easily traced. The one link which may still be missing from the chain is the first. Whereas one of the extant manuscript recensions may represent the first Bala version there is no conclusive means of establishing this status.

Manuscripts

1. Bala MS Recension A Recension A can be easily distinguished from Recension B by its omission of sakhis describing the death of Nanak. There seems to be little doubt that A must be earlier than B. The earliest of all extant Bald manuscripts bearing a date follows the A text, and the inclusion of death sakhis adds one further inconsistency to the narrative. The introduction attached to all versions relates that Bhai Bala was unaware of the identity of Baba Nanak’s successor, an ignorance which would have been altogether inexplicable had he been present at the time of Nanak’s death. The editor responsible for Recension B, taking cognisance of this fact, has Qurii Angad narrate the death sakhis for Bhai Bala’s benefit. In order to do so, however, he borrows a significant portion of his account from a janam-sakhi of the Mtharbén tradition. This brands the passage as a later addition, and implies that the briefer Recension A version must be earlier.

The earliest of all dated Bala janam-sakhis is a manuscript in the possession of a Delhi family, an illustrated copy bearing the date 8.1715 (A.D. 1658).2 Two of the three Bald manuscripts in London also follow the

1 The case in favour of an original Hindali composition has recently been restated in a more developed form by Gurbachan Kaur, ‘Janam Sakhi of Bhai Bala: authentic text and its critical editing’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Gur Nanak Dev University, 1978). Dr. Gurbachan Kaur identifies Bal4 with the elder son of Baba Hindal.

2 The actual manuscript is in the possession of Shri P. N. Kapoor of Hauz Qazi, Delhi. A photocopy is held by the Department of Punjab Historical Studies, Punjabi University, Patiala. An abbreviated text is given in Kirpal Singh, Janam Sakhi Parampara (Patiala, 1969), Appendix, pp. 221-329. See also Rattan Singh Jaggi, Dasam Granth dd pauragik adhiain (Jalandhar, 196s), p. 59.

20 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHiS

Recension A text. The better of the two is the India Office Library manuscript Panj. B41. This consists of two parts, the first being the janam-sakhi proper (folios 1-253a) and the second a version of the two discourses entitled Makke di gosti and Madine di gosti (folios 254a-348a, 348b-95). Between the two sections a shabad in Gauyi raga has been inserted. The copyist is named Thakur Das Fagqir and both portions of the work are said to have been completed in S.1831-2 (a.p. 1775).! The second London representative of the tradition is the British Library’s manuscript Or. 2754.1. This is undated and omits the story of how Gurti Nanak asked Gurii Angad to send his daughter to him.? Although it has been copied by various hands on inferior paper it is generally clear.

2. Bala MS Recension B_ This version, with its Miharban death adden- dum, is represented by MS 104975 of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and also by MS Add. 921 of the Cambridge University Library. Both are recent works. The London manuscript is dated S.1912 (A.D. 1855) and the Cambridge manuscript S.1922 (A.D. 1865). An example noted in the Pafijaéb by Professor Pidr Singh is manuscript no. 342 of the Panjab Archives in Patiala.?

These are the two principal recensions available in manuscript form. Needless to say, a comparison of any two manuscripts will reveal many variants, some of them substantial.4 These variants do not, however, upset the pattern of a relatively mature janam-sakhi emerging with strong Hindali associations in the middle of the seventeenth century and sub- sequently augmented by the addition of sakhis narrating a version of Nanak’s death. Of all janam-sakhis this is the most common. In his catalogue of Pafijabi manuscripts Ashok has listed twenty-two Bald manuscripts. This catalogue relates exclusively to the Pafijab. It does not include the Delhi and United Kingdom manuscripts noted above, nor a Bald manuscript in the possession of Mr Jan Nielsen of Denmark.®

1 The first is dated Magh studi 13, S. 1831; and the second portion Vaisakh sudi 4, S. 1832. Loc. cit., ff. 253b, 395b

2 See above, p. 17.

3 Piar Singh in AS, Introduction. p. xxxv.

4 Other sakhis added to the original Recension A collection by later copyists are noted by Gurbachan Kaur, op. cit, Appendix.

5 PHLS i. 342-9 and ii. 224-9, 235-6. The distribution of the manuscripts is as follows: Library of the former Maharaja of Patiala (6 MSS). Languages Department, Patiala (3). Central Public Library, Patiala (3). Pafijab Archives, Patiala (2). Pafijab University, Chandigarh (2). Dr. Ganda Singh, Patiala (2). Pafijabi Sahit Akademi, Ludhiana (1). Central Sikh Museum, Amritsar (1). Professor Pritam Singh, Amritsar (1). Sardir Shamsher Singh Ashok, Amritsar (1). Two manu- scripts not noticed by Ashok are held by Khalsa College, Amritsar. Kirpal Singh (ed.), A Catalogue of Punjabi and Urdu Manuscripts in the Stkh History Research Department (Amritsar, 1963), pp. 16-17. Both are nineteenth-century manuscripts.

6 A microfilm copy of this manuscript is held by Punjabi University, Patiala. The original, which was copied in Multan in S. 1884 (A.p. 1827), bears the following note signed by Mr. Rich. Ash. Hannaford: ‘The Ghrunt of the Seikhs. Taken from the altar in one of their temples by Lieut: G: Moxon. Given to me by Mrs. Moxon Dec: 22, 1851.’

THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS 21 Printed editions

The printing of janam-sakhis appears to have begun in 1870. In October of that year the owners of the Ganesh Prakash Press in Lahore issued a composite volume comprising three Sikh works lithographed in the Arabic script. The second of these was a version of the Bald narrative, a popular retelling which plainly derived from a Gurmukhi original.

The Gurmukhi version was not far behind and within months the dominant Bald text had followed the 1870 forerunner into print. In 1871 a generally faithful replica of the Recension A Gurmukhi text was issued by another Lahore publisher, establishing thereby a firm link between the earlier manuscripts and the progressively expanding versions delivered by printing presses. During this same year the process of expansion was given a substantial impetus by the appearance of an extensively augmented version. The process continued into the twentieth century, each successive product claiming to represent the authentic text delivered by Bala Sandha to Gurii Angad. The four Gurmukhi versions which constitute this developing sequence are as follows:

1. Bala Lithographed Edition A (a.D. 1871) ‘This edition, published in Lahore by Hafaz Qutub Din, establishes the firm link with earlier Bala manuscripts. Most of its text follows that of Bala MS Recension A closely and thus effects only a slight advance in the expansion process. For this reason, and because it is more accessible than manuscript copies, this Hafiz Qutub Din edition (Bala Lithographed Edition A) will be used for most Bala citations in this study.? It should, however, be noted that some significant variants do occur. These are set out in Appendix 1, together with a list of all Recension A and Lithographed Edition A sakhis.®

2. Bala Lithographed Edition B (a.D. 1871) The second of the 1871 editions is a much larger product, both in actual dimensions and in content. As indicated above, this second 1871 edition marks the first significant stage in the rapid and substantial expansion which transformed the Bala tradition during the last three decades of the nineteenth century and created the twentieth-century Bala Janam-sakhi still so popular in Pafijab villages. From this point of view it commands a considerable interest, although it is of no help as a source for the primary period of

1 The three works which comprise the volume are Japji paramarath (50 pp.), Poth? janam- s&khi (114 pp.), and Gur-bilds (44 pp.). Each appears to have been lithographed as a separate booklet and the three subsequently bound as a single volume. The October 1870 date is recorded on the cover and evidently refers to the issue of the complete volume. A copy is held by the IOL (call number: VT 1552).

2 It is to this edition that the abbreviation Bald 7S applies. The copy in the India Office Library is catalogued as Panj. 1522. The India Office Library also holds two later editions of the same version, one published in A.D. 1874 (Panj. 30.E.3) and the other in A.D. 1886 (Panj. 1523). The book is relatively small, measuring 25 < 15 cm.

8 See below, pp. 271-5.

22 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHiS

janam-sakhi development during the seventeenth century. The edition was published by Malik Divan Bata Singh of Lahore.

3. Bala Lithographed Edition C (a.p. 1890) The Bala tradition was further expanded by an even weightier volume published in 1890 by Maulvi Maibiib Ahmad of Lahore.?

4. Bala Letterpress Edition ‘The climax was finally reached with the twentieth-century letterpress edition which still sells well in the bazaar bookshops of the Pafijab.3 The first of the lithographed editions described above contains 90 sakhis, the second jumps to 311, and the third leaps still further to 495. In the standard modern letterpress version the number is reduced to 183 by amalgamating earlier sikhis. Some portions have been omitted, extra material has been added, and there has been some rearrangement, but the pattern of linear descent is still clear.

THE PURATAN ¥$4NAM-SAKHIS

Having established its supremacy during the course of the eighteenth century the Bald tradition remained the standard account of the life of Nanak for more than a hundred years. It was only in 1872 that a serious rival reappeared, and it was not until the early twentieth century that this rival tradition began to make any serious impression upon the Bala reputation. Because it was alleged by some of its promoters to be the oldest of all versions this variant account of the life of Nanak was dubbed the Purdtan or ‘Ancient’ tradition.

The term Purdtan Janam-sakhi, which has ever since been used with reference to this second major tradition, is misleading in two respects. It is misleading because it implies (and the claim has sometimes been expressed in explicit terms) that this must be the original janam-sakhi. The claim that the Purdtan version represents the oldest of all extant accounts may perhaps be accurate. It is certainly disputable, but the possibility must be acknowledged. What is not acceptable is the suggestion that the Purdtan tradition represents an ‘original’ janam-sakhi. The Purdtan tradition is, like all extant janam-sakhi collections, a composite version based upon more than one antecedent source.

The term is also misleading in that its use of the singular implies the existence of a single Purdtan janam-sakhi. This too is incorrect. As in the case of the Bald tradition there is more than one Purdtan janam-sakhi, and it is because more than one exists that the heading given above for this section uses a plural form. The intimate relationship which connects the various Purdtan janam-sakhis cannot be doubted and for this reason they

1 IOL Panj. 31.1.9. A reprint was issued in A.D, 1890 (IOL Panj. 31.1.7).

2 IOL Panj. 31.I.10.

3 IOL Panj. H.18 is an example. The best available copies are those published by Munshi Gulab Singh and Sons of Lahore.

THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS 23

are here grouped within a single definable tradition. This grouping should not, however, suggest identity. The terms ‘Purdtan janam-sakhis’ and ‘Purdtan tradition’ serve as convenient collective labels, whereas the singular form, the Purdtan Yanam-sakhi, must be restricted to the published text which bears this misleading title.! In addition to this and an earlier published text three of the more important Purdtan manuscripts will be noted. Two of these manuscripts (the Colebrooke and the Hafizabadd) have enjoyed a particular fame. This they owe not to their dates (which are unknown) nor to any uniqueness of text, but rather to the manner of their discovery and to the fact that the names bestowed upon them have also been used to designate the two principal recensions of the Purdtan tradition. The third manuscript, likewise undated but obviously later than its more celebrated analogues, deserves notice because it illustrates so well the persistent tendency of copyists to expand earlier collections.

Manuscripts

1. The Colebrooke Janam-sakhi In 1869 the Pafijab Government com- missioned Ernst Trumpp to translate the sacred scripture of the Sikhs.? Although Trumpp’s responsibility was limited to the Adi Granth he was naturally interested in surviving traditions concerning the lives of the Guris, and specifically those relating to Nanak. Knowledge of the Nanak traditions was largely confined to the Bald version and because this version seemed to him to be so unsatisfactory Trumpp endeavoured to procure older and more trustworthy traditions regarding the life of Nanak. In India his search was unsuccessful, but after his return to Europe he chanced upon a manuscript which seemed to answer his need.

After my return to Europe in 1872, some manuscripts of the Granth were forwarded to me from the India Office Library, for the prosecution of my labours, and to these some other Gurmukhi manuscripts were added in the expectation that the one or the other might prove useful in my researches. In looking them over, I found an old manuscript, partly’ destroyed by white ants, the early characters of which, resembling those of the old copy of the Granth, preserved at Kartarpur, and signed by Guru Arjun himself, at once caught my eye. On the first leaf it contained in Sanskrit letters the short title, Nanak ka Granth Jana- masakhi ka, A book of Nanak, referring to his birth (or life). The copy had been presented to the Library of the East India House, according to the entry on the first leaf, by the famous H. T. Colebrooke, without his being aware, as it appears, of the contents of the book. As soon as I commenced to read the book, I observed with great pleasure, that this was a description of the life of Nanak quite different from all the others I had hitherto seen. As the characters, so also was the idiom, in which it was composed, old and in many words and expressions agreeing with the diction of Guru Arjun.

After a lengthened examination and comparison of this manuscript with the later Janam-sakhis, I am satisfied that this is the fountain, from which all the others have been drawn largely: for the stories, as far as they are common to both

1 See below, pp. 28~9. 2 E. Trumpp, The Adé Granth (London, 1877), p. III.

24 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS

relations, very frequently agree verbally, with the only difference, that the later Janam-sakhis have substituted more modern forms for old words, which with the progress of time had become unintelligible. This old Janam-sakhi, as hinted already, belongs, according to all external and internal marks, to the latter end of the time of Guru Arjun or to that of his immediate successor. The Granth, which Guru Arjun compiled of the writings of his four predecessors and the old famous Bhagats, as well as of his own numerous poetical effusions, is cited throughout, without any paraphrase, whereas the later Janam-sakhis have deemed it already necessary to add to every quotation from the Granth a paraphrase in the modern idiom.

We are enabled now, by the discovery of this old Janam-sakhi, which is now-a~ days, as it appears, quite unknown to the Sikhs themselves, to distinguish the older tradition regarding Nanak from th« later one, and to fix, with some degree of verisimility, the real facts of his life.

Although Trumpp was astray in his estimate of the age and reliability of the manuscript there can be no doubt that he had discovered one of the most important of the janam-sakhis. H. T. Colebrooke had presumably presented the manuscript to the Library of East India House in 1815 or 1816. In English works it is commonly referred to as the Colebrooke Janam-sakhi, and in Pafijabi references as the Valaitvali Janam-sakhi, or ‘the janam-sakhi from overseas’. ‘The manuscript is almost complete, the only missing folios being 2-6, 12-13, and 18-19.

Trumpp had, in the manner of late nineteenth-century religious polemic, made some exceedingly discourteous remarks about the Sikh sacred scriptures and for this reason his book was ill received by the community when it was published in 1877.3 His description and transla- tion of the rediscovered janam-sakhi did, however, arouse considerable interest and in 1883 a group of Amritsar Sikhs petitioned the Lieutenant- Governor of the Pafijéb to have the manuscript brought to India for inspection. Sir Charles Aitcheson accepted the request and in the autumn of the same year the manuscript was sent to the Panjab. There it was made available for scrutiny in Lahore and Amritsar, where interest was sufficiently marked to persuade Sir Charles to have it reproduced. This was done by means of a zincographic process in 1885 and copies bearing the title Janam Sakhi or the Biography of Guru Nanak, Founder of the Sikh Religion were presented to selected institutions as gifts.4 In the meantime a transcribed copy had been prepared and lithographed by the Singh Sabha of Lahore.§

Although the manuscript bears no date for either an original compila- tion or the actual copying, a cryptic reference in the sakhi ‘Jhanda the Carpenter and the Fugdavali’ points to the year A.D. 1635.° It is possible

1 Ibid., p. ii. ® The manuscript is IOL MS Panj. B6.

3 For examples of his opinion see E. Trumpp, op. cit., pp. VI-VIII, i-ii; and N. Gerald Barrier, The Sikhs and their Literature, (Delhi, 1970), pp. xix-xx.

4 Loc. cit., prefatory note, p. ii. Because the reproduction was carried out at the Survey of India offices in Dehra DOn the Colebrooke version is sometimes referred to as the Dehrd Diin Vali Janam-

s&khi. The India Office Library copy is catalogued as Panj. 30.E.4. 5 IOL Panj. 30.E.2. 6 Pur JS, p. 116n.

THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS 25

that this reference is intended to indicate the year in which the Purdtan version was first compiled, and there can be no doubt that a janam-sakhi of the Purdtan variety might well have been recorded at that time. A refer- ence of this kind is, however, slender evidence. It occurs in the apocryphal Jugavali (a work borrowed by the Colebrooke compiler from one of his sources), and it does not appear in all other Purdtan manuscripts. The reference may relate to an original compilation, or to a later recension, or to a particular part of the composite Purdtan tradition. Another possibility is that it may be entirely spurious. It occurs as an obscure reference within an esoteric work, circumstances which are scarcely favourable to positive conclusions. The text bears all the marks of an early seventeenth- century janam-sakhi, but beyond this supposition it is impossible to proceed. The actual manuscript is evidently later than this period. This conclusion is suggested by the salutation with which the manuscript con- cludes: bolahu vahi gurit ji ki fatai hoi. There is no evidence to suggest that this formula was used prior to the time of Gurii Gobind Singh, from which it follows that the manuscript was probably copied during the early eighteenth century.

2. The Hafizabad Janam-sakhi In 1884 Gurmukh Singh of Oriental College, Lahore, acquired a second Puratan manuscript from the town of Hafizabad in Gujranwala District. This manuscript he loaned to M. A. Macauliffe, who, having separated the individual words of the unbroken text, had it published at his own expense in 1885. This version is variously known as the Hafizadbad Janam-sakhi or as the Macauliffe-vali Janam- sakhi.

The Hafizabad text differs from the Colebrooke version in three signifi- cant respects. First, it includes in addition to all the Colebrooke material (which it reproduces with minor variants) a small cluster of two con- secutive sakhis, neither of which appears in the Colebrooke analogue. These are the anecdotes entitled “The Proud Karori Humbled’ and ‘The Merchant and Raja Sivanabh’.? Secondly, it contains a discourse with Babur which the Colebrooke text lacks.4 Thirdly, it omits the three lengthy compositions entitled Asa Patti, the Juga@vali, and the Pran Sazgali.5 One other difference reported by Gurmukh Singh in his introduction to the lithographed edition is that there were some folios missing from the end of the manuscript. In order to complete the text Macauliffe used the Colebrooke manuscript.®

Macauliffe’s decision to publish a lithographed edition of the Hafizabad Sanam-sakhi was particularly fortunate in that the original manuscript is now no longer extant. When Gurmukh Singh died in 1896 his collection of

1 Ibid., p. 115.

2 Yanam Sakhi Babe Nanak Ji ki: the Most Ancient Biography of Baba Nanak, the Founder of the Sikh Religion, edited by M. A. Macauliffe, lithographed by the Gulashan Press, Rawalpindi, 15 November 1885, with introduction by Gurmukh Singh.

3 Ibid., pp. 184-97. Pur JS, pp. 73-8. 4M. A. Macauliffe, op. cit., pp. 163-7. Pur JS, pp. 65-7. 5 M. A. Macauliffe, op. cit., introduction, p. 9. § Ibid.

26 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS

manuscripts passed to his widow Parameshari Devi; and when she died in 1923 they came into the possession of his adoptive nephew. The nephew’s possession was disputed (presumably by other relatives of Gurmukh Singh) and although a court decision was delivered in his favour he evidently decided to dispose of the property which threatened to involve him in further litigation. This he did by casting the manuscripts into the Ravi river. No inventory of the manuscripts exists, but it is presumed that the Hafizabad Janam-sakhi must have been amongst them.!

In addition to the Macauliffe text at least two other extant manuscripts follow the Hdafizabad Janam-sakhi version of the Purdtan narrative. These are manuscript number 2913 of the Central Public Library, Patiala, and manuscript number 2310A in the Sikh History Research Department of Khalsa College, Amritsar.2 The Patiala manuscript is dated S.1747 (A.D. 1690)8 and the Khalsa College manuscript $.1829 (A.D. 1772).4

Other manuscripts are distinguished by their use of both Colebrooke and Hafizdbdd. An example of this pattern is provided by a Purdtan manuscript dated 8.1814 (A.D. 1757), copied in Burdwan and now in the possession of Sardar Kuldip Singh Bedi of Batala. This manuscript is much closer to Colebrooke than to Hafizdbdd and is best classified as an example of the former. It does, however, include occasional readings which have evidently been adapted from a Hafizabad source.®

3. The Prachin Janam-sakhi The title Prachin Janam-sakhi designates a manuscript in the possession of a private collector, Seva Singh Sevak of Tarn Taran. This manuscript represents a relatively late and substantially expanded Purdtan collection. Although no date is given it is evident from the language and structure of the collection that the seventeenth-century estimate suggested by its owner must be too early.®

The bulk of the manuscript consists of Purdtan material, rearranged in places but plainly attesting its basic source. To this foundation have been added sakhis drawn from several other sources. Only a few of these have been introduced into the Purdtan sequence. Most have been added at its

1 Information supplied by Sardar Shamsher Singh Ashok of Amritsar, who reports having learnt it while scrutinizing the Lahore Sitigh Sabha records in 1945.

2 Piar Singh, op. cit., pp. 83-4. Kirpal Singh, op. cit., pp. 11-12. PHLS i.340.

3 Loc. cit., f. 276b. The manuscript is said to have been copied at Galgali. The copyist adds: ‘Galgala is twelve kos from Bijapur on the Kistna river. . . . It was written in the south, in the camp of Naurang Patséah [Aurangzeb].’ Ibid.

4 Loe. cit., f. 185. Kirpal Singh, op. cit., p. 12.

5 Two other complete Purdtan manuscripts and two fragments are PH'LS i.340 and ii.225, 230. Ashok reports two additional Purdtan manuscripts located after the compilation of PHLS, one in Ferozepore District and the other in Hoshiarpur District. Shamsher Singh Ashok, Purdtan Janam- sdkhi Sri Gurit Nanak Dev Ji ki (Amritsar, 1969), introduction, p. 46. He also reports having seen ‘several Purdtan janam-sikhis’ in Lahore prior to Partition in 1947. Ibid., p. 45. Karam Singh, writing in 1913, claimed to have seen five Purdtan manuscripts in addition to Colebrooke and Hafizdbdd, and to have received a report concerning a sixth. Karam Singh, Kattak ki Visdkh (Amritsar, 1913), p. 218. It seems certain that one of these must have been the B4o Janam-sakhi (see below, p. 43). and in view of the looseness with which the term Purdtan is used it is likely that other manuscripts to which this title has been applied may have been misnamed.

® Seva Singh Sevak (ed.), Prachin Janam Sakhi (Jalandhar, 1969), introduction, pp. 28, 35.

THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHiS 27

conclusion.! A variety of sources lie behind these supplementary sakhis. Several obviously derive from two major traditions unknown to the Purdatan compilers but extensively used in some other janam-sakhis.? The Mtharbdn tradition (discussed below) is well represented by several lengthy discourses, grouped within four sakhis.? A cluster which plainly derives from a Bala source manages to avoid all reference to the person of Bhai Bala.4 Another cluster appears to be unique to the Prachin Janam- sGkhi.5 The manuscript also includes a version of the apocryphal ‘Mecca Discourse’.®

Authorship and dating of the Puratan version

In The Sikh Religion Macauliffe states that the Purdtan version ‘was written by a Sikh called Sewa Das’.’ He claims to have obtained ‘several copies’, and adds: ‘One of them in our possession bears the date Sambat 1645 = A.D. 1588.’8 The first of these claims can be safely dismissed. Macauliffe himself acknowledges the information to be hearsay, no manu- script bearing this name exists, and it seems clear that Macauliffe’s informant (Sir Attar Singh of Bhadaur) must have mistaken the identity of a writer of Gurii Gobind Singh’s period named Seva Das Udasi.® The second is also open to considerable doubt. Apart from the Hafizabad manuscript in its printed edition none of Macauliffe’s ‘several copies’ seems to have survived, and it is highly unlikely that a janam-sakhi as maturely structured as the extant Purdtan version could have evolved by 1588. It is possible that Macauliffe may have seen a manuscript bearing this date, but if so it will almost certainly have been a much more primitive collection than the extant version.

Other attempts to devise a date for the compiling of the Purdtan tradi- tion must be treated with the same scepticism, for no specifically dated

1 Sakhis 19, 33-6, and 51 have been interpolated; also portions of sakhis 10, 41, and 53. The Purdtan material concludes immediately prior to the Pur@tan account of Nanak’s death, and the remaining sakhis (58-81) are almost all taken from other sources. The sole exception is sikhi 80, a brief return to Purdtan material immediately prior to the death silchi.

2 These are the so-called Narrative II and Narrative III traditions. (See below, pp. 197-226) The former had, on earlier occasions, been extensively used by the compilers of the Adi Sakhis and the Bzo Janam-sakhi, both following a common source-manuscript. In its recorded form the latter can be traced to the Byo Janam-sakhi, and it is possible that the compiler of the Prachin Janam- sakhi actually copied his Narrative III sakhis directly from the Bgo manuscript. His source was at least very close to the original B¢o. It is also possible that he may have had access to a late recension of the Adi Sakhis, for sources which are blended in the loter Adi Sakhis appear in the same form in the Prdchin Janam-sakhi. Narrative II saikhis in the Prdchin Janam-sékhi are 58, parts of 59, and 62-5. Narrative III sakhis are 71 and 75-9. Other sakhis which may have been derived from the B4o Janam-sdakhi are parts of 10 and 41, 51, 66—70, and 81.

3 Siakhis 19, parts of 59, 60-1. 4 Sakhis 72-4. 5 Sakhis 33-6.

6 Seva Singn Sevak, op. cit., p. 174. 7 Loc. cit. i.bexxvi. 5 Ibid.

® Seva Dis \Jdasi was the author of a collection of anecdotes entitled Parchidn, completed in A.D. 1708, Only one of these anecdotes (a version of the discourse on Mount Sumeru) refers to Baba Nanak. Jagjit Singh, ‘A Critical and Comparative Study of the Janam Sakhis of Guru Nanak up to the Middle of the Eighteenth Century’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Panjab University. 1967), pp. 33-1. For the Pafijabi text of this anecdote see SLTGN(Pbi), pp. 30-1.

28 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHiS

reference survives. Calculations based on indirect references are of little help, except perhaps for the sikhi or poetic composition within which they occur. The extant Purdtan version is, like all extant janam-sakhis, a composite product and different portions have been incorporated at different times. A date within the middle decades of the seventeenth century may be assumed as highly probable but further than this it is not yet possible to go.

Printed editions

1. M. A. Macauliffe (ed.), Janam Sakhi Babe Nanak fi ki. Rawalpindi, 1885. This printed edition has already been briefly described in the section dealing with the Hafizabdd manuscript. According to Gurmukh Singh’s introduction the lithographed text represents a faithful reproduc- tion of the Hafizadbadd manuscript, the only significant difference being the editor’s separation of individual words, the addition of punctuation, and the terminal section drawn from the Colebrooke manuscript. Copies of this printed edition are now rare. The British Library possesses one,! but not the India Office Library. A few copies are still held privately and in libraries in the Pafijab.

2. Vir Singh (ed.), Purdtan Janam-saékhi. In 1926 the distinguished Sikh novelist and theologian Bhai Vir Singh of Amritsar published a conflation of the Colebrooke and Hafizdbdd versions under the title Purdtan Janam- sGkhi.2 For this printed edition Vir Singh took as his primary text the Colebrooke manuscript (using the zincographic reproduction) and added to it material included in the Hafizabdd manuscript which the Colebrooke manuscript lacked. For the portions covered by both manuscripts the more important of the Hafizdbdd variant readings were listed in footnotes. This still left some gaps in the text, notably at the conclusion of the death sakhi. These Vir Singh filled in his second edition (1931), by adding readings drawn from the Purdtan manuscript in the possession of the Khalsa College Sikh History Research Department.? The three manu- scripts were, like all Pafijabi manuscripts of this kind, written without gaps be ween individual words and with only rudimentary punctuation.

1 BL 14162.¢.14,

® Amritsar; Khilsi Samachir. The complete title is Hug tak milidn vichon sab ton Purdtan JSanam-sakhi Sri Gurii Nanak Dev Ji (‘The Earliest Extant Janam-sakhi of Sri Gurl Nanak Dev Ji’). Several subsequent editions have been issued by the same publisher and the book is still in print. The abbreviation Pur JS used in this study refers to the fifth edition of this work (February 1959). An abridged version appears in Kirpil Singh, Janam Sdkhi Parampard (Patiala, 1969), Appendix, pp. 1~-§7.

3 One gap which still remained, and which can only be filled by speculation, is the prologue which evidently preceded the birth narrative in the Colebrooke manuscript. Although the extant manuscript begins with the birth of Nanak, the folio numbering indicates that five folios have been detached from the beginning of the manuscript. Yanam Sdkhi or the Biography of Gurit Nanak (Photozincograph Facsimile, Dehra Don, 1885), Introduction, p. iii. These presumably recorded a pre-natal commissioning of Nanak by God in the manner of the introductory portions of the Adi Sakhis and the Mtharbaén Janam-sGkhi.

THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHiS 29

In the printed edition the individual words have been separated and additional punctuation provided.!

Three other features of this printed version should be noted. First, Vir Singh has added headings to the individual sakhis and also section headings to mark the commencement of each of the five journeys which according to the Purdtan version Baba Nanak is said to have made. Secondly, he has amended the narrator’s numerous quotations from Nanak’s own compositions in order to bring them into conformity with the Adi Granth text. This frequently involves substantial changes in the Purdtan text. Vir Singh defends these amendments on the grounds that ‘because the authentic text of the Guri’s utterances is that of the Gurii Granth Sahib it would be offensive to print a corrupt text’.2 Thirdly, he has omitted from his main text compositions attributed by the janam- sakhi to the Gura which he regards as apocryphal. These he has relegated to a series of appendices.* The shorter compositions are there printed in full, but for the remainder (including the important Prar Sazigali) only the opening stanzas are given.

3. Seva Singh Sevak (ed.), Prachin Janam-sakhi. Jalandhar, 1969. This volume represents a printed edition of the third of the Purdtan manu- scripts noted above. The text follows a brief Pafijabi introduction by the owner-editor.

4. Shamsher Singh Ashok, Purdtan Janam-sakhi Sri Gurit Nadnak Dev ji ki. Amritsar, 1969. In spite of its title this recent publication is not strictly a Purdtan text and it is included here only because claims to this status have been made on its behalf. It is, like Vir Singh’s Purdtan Janam- sakhi, a conflation. Unlike Vir Singh’s version, however, the component texts are not all Purdtan. Although the primary text has been provided by a Purdtan manuscript the finished product contains much material derived from two non-Purdtan manuscripts. It differs from the Prdchin Janam- sGkhi in that its non-Purdtan sakhis have been dispersed through the complete collection, extensively supplementing the Purdtan content without disrupting its distinctive pattern. In the Prdachin fanam-séakhi most of the non-Purdtan sakhis have been appended at the conclusion of the Purdtan material.

Ashok has constructed his text in two stages. The first step was to conflate two Adi Sakhis texts (representatives of a separate tradition which is described below). These texts were taken from a manuscript in his own possession and from another in the library of the Maharaja of Patiala. The second step was to conflate this conflated Adi Sakhis text with the text of the Purdtan manuscript in the possession of Sardar Kuldip Singh Bedi of Batala.4 This Purdtan text is basic in the sense that it supplies not only a

1 Pur JS, Introduction, pp. s-k. 3 Ibid., p. h. 3 Ibid., pp. 116-20.

4 Shamsher Singh Ashok (ed.), Purdtan Janam Sadkhi Sri Gurit Nanak Dev Ji ki, Introduction, pp. 13, 47. The two Adi Sakhis manuscripts are dated respectively S. 1791 (A.D. 1734) and S. 1758 (A.D. 1701). See below, p. 32. The Purdtan manuscript is dated S. 1814 (A.D. 1757).

30 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS

majority of the sakhis but also the structure of the conflated product. In all Purdtan manuscripts the narrative is distinguished by an ordering of the travel sakhis into four major journeys, one to each of the four cardinal points of the compass, together with a minor journey to a place called Gorakh-hatari. This chronology has been retained by the editor and the extra sakhis provided by the Adi Sakhis version have been introduced into this Purdtan narrative individually or in clusters, at points which seemed appropriate.

Because the Adi Sakhis chronology disagrees with the Purdtan pattern these supplementary sakhis could not be interpolated in the same order as they appear in their Adi Sakhis form. In the case of common siakhis, however, the editor has preferred their readings to that of his Purdtan text. Wherever the Purdtan and Adi Sakhis versions have sakhis in common the conflated Adi Sakhis text has normally been used.} No indication of this is given in the printed text, the only manuscript identifications being occasional footnote references to variant readings. In a few places a passage included in one or more of the manuscripts has been omitted from the published text. An example is the Adi Sakhis explanation for Nanak’s decision to visit the pilgrimage-centres.2 The Adi Sakhis compiler, following a source used by other janam-sakhi compilers, records a tradition that Nanak’s visit was in quest of a guri.? This passage, which should have been attached to the end of sakhi 174 or the beginning of sakhi 24,5 was evidently omitted because the suggestion that Baba Nanak should ever have sought a guri is now held to be offensive.

English translations

An English translation of the Colebrooke text is given by Trumpp in his introduction to his The Adi Granth.® This rendering is exceedingly stilted and contains numerous inaccuracies. Much of the first volume of Macauliffe’s The Sikh Religion is a paraphrase of the Purdtan narrative, but no indication is given of the points at which the author briefly moves away from his principal source.

A list of the sakhis included in the Purdtan janam-sakhis is given in Appendix 2.?

THE ADI SAKHIS

At some unspecified date prior to the partition of India in 1947 Dr Mohan Singh Dewana of Punjab University, Lahore, discovered in the Uni-

1 Both versions of the ‘Death of Nanak’ sakhi are given. Loc. cit., pp. 191-3 (Adi Sakhis version) and pp. 193-6 (Purdtan version).

2 AS, p. 23. 3 Bgo, f. 76b. Mth JS 1.111. For a note on the common source see below, pp. 198-205. 4 Shamsher Singh Ashok (ed.), op. cit., p. 40. 5 Ibid., p. 52.

S Loc. cit., pp. vii-xlv. For a summary paraphrase of the Purdtan narrative (Hdfizdbdd as well as Colebrooke) see GNSR, pp. 36-51. ? See below, pp. 276-7.

THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHiS 31

versity’s library a janam-sakhi manuscript which recorded a version different from any of the extant traditions. This collection he named the Adi Sakhis, or ‘First Collection of Sakhis’.! Mohan Singh did not make a complete copy of the manuscript and efforts to trace it made in early 1969 proved unsuccessful.? In the meantime, however, four manuscript copies of the same collection had been located on the Indian side of the border by Professor Piar Singh of Punjabi University, Patiala, and in October 1969 Pidr Singh published a printed edition of the text.®

The name chosen by Mohan Singh for this collection is misleading, for it implies a precedence which in fact the janam-sakhi does not possess. This is made clear by an analysis of its contents. At least three distinct sources can be recognized,4 and from the material provided by these sources the compiler of the collection has fashioned a coherent travel itinerary. These are features of a relatively mature janam-sakhi and any theory that the Adi Sakhis represent a ‘first’ collection must be rejected.

The composite nature of the Adi Sakhis collection must also prompt a measure of caution in attempting to place the janam-sakhi within any reconstructed sequence of janam-sakhis. It has, for example, been argued that a reference to Akbar which is repeated in the Miharban Janam-sakhi indicates that the Adi Sakhis is earlier than the Miharban collection.5 The portion of the Miharban Janam-sdkhi in which this reference appears claims to be a product of the year S.1707 (A.D. 1650), and because the Akbar reference in the extant Miharban Janam-saékhi appears to be later than the Adi Sakhis version it would seem to follow that the Adi Sakhis must antedate the middle of the seventeenth century. In fact, however, both the Adi Sakhis and the Miharban Janam-sakhi in their earliest extant forms are the products of a continuing process of expansion. Whereas on the one hand there can be no doubt that the extant Mtharban Janam-sakhi embodies borrowings from the Adi Sakhis, on the other there seems to be little question that the extant Adi Sakhis includes reciprocal borrowings from the Mitharbdn tradition. The Akbar reference appears to be one of the latter, taken not from the extant Miharban Janam-sakhi but from an earlier recension.’

1 Mohan Singh’s information is dispersed over several publications, summarized by Piar Singh in AS, pp. ix-xi. The copyist’s name is given as Sibhi (or SambhO) Nath Brahman and the manuscript’s number as PUL 4141.

2 Failure to locate the manuscript does not necessarily mean that it has been lost. The Gurmukhi manuscripts held by Punjab University, Lahore, are said to be in a condition of total confusion at present.

3 See below, p. 33. “ See below, pp. 219-20.

5 Piair Singh, ‘A Critical Survey of Panjabi Prose in the Seventeenth Century’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Panjab University, Chandigarh, 1968), pp. 94-5. AS, Introduction, p. xlviit. The AS reference reads: thu sakhi akbar patisahu suni thi. ‘The Emperor Akbar heard this sakhi.’ 4S, p. 90. The longer Miharbdn version reads: eh sakhi akbar patisah kari sunai thi. jab gurit arjun lahauri Gi milia thd patisaéh kau, “The Emperor Akbar heard this sakhi related. [This happened] when Gurt Arjan visited Lahore to meet the Emperor Akbar.’ Mth JS 11.137.

6 Mth JS 11.357.

? See below, pp. 212-14. Piar Singh actually carries the date of the Adi Sakhis compilation as far back as a period preceding the compilation of the Adi Granth (A.D. 1603-4), adding to the argument set out above the claim that anything later than this period would have utilized Bhai Gurdas’s

32 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS

This cannot be affirmed in categorical terms, but it does at least demonstrate the perils of seeking to date janam-siakhis on the basis of isolated references. The only positive assertions which may be regarded as permissible are, first, that the original Adi Sakhis collection must have been compiled during the seventeenth century; and secondly, that it incorporates material from earlier sources. The first is a safe assumption because two of the extant manuscripts bear dates corresponding to A.D. 1701 and both are evidently copies of an earlier manuscript.

Manuscript coptes

The four manuscripts known to exist in Indian Pafijab are located in the following places:

(1) Sikh Reference Library, Amritsar. MS no. S462.

(2) The library of the Maharaja of Patiala in Moti Bagh Palace, Patiala. (3) The personal library of Sardar Shamsher Singh Ashok of Amritsar. (4) Central Public Library, Patiala. MS no. 495.1

Of these only the first two correspond in arrangement and content to the Lahore collection reported by Mohan Singh. Sardar Ashok’s manuscript is limited to twenty-five of the thirty sakhis included in the older manu- scripts,? and the remaining manuscript records the Adi Sakhis anecdotes as part of a much larger collection.? The undated manuscript held by the Sikh Reference Library lacks its first five folios, but is otherwise complete. 4 Only one folio is missing from the Moti Bagh copy. This manuscript is dated S.1758 (a.D. 1701), six months earlier than the Lahore manuscript.5 Both manuscripts number their saékhis up to thirty, but both have at different places overlooked a sakhi in the process.® Several of the sakhis are composite and contain two or more separate anecdotes.

work and so would have included the anecdote which Bhai Gurdis sets in Multan. 4S, Introduc- tion, p. xlvitt, For Bhai Gurdas and the Multan anecdote see below, pp. 118-20. With the sole excep- tion of the Gydn-ratandvali none of the later janam-sakhis use Bhai Gurdis in this manner. The Byo Janam-sa&khi, compiled in A.D. 1733, also omits Bhai Gurdas’s Multan anecdote.

1 AS, Introduction, pp. x—xii. Jagjit Singh claims that there is also a copy in the possession of ‘S. Kundan Singh, a close friend of S. Randhir Singh, Department of Historical Studies, Panjabi (sic) University, Patiala’. ‘A Critical and Comparative Study of the Janam Sakhis of Guru Nanak’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Panjab University, 1967), p. 31.

2 Shamsher Singh Ashok (ed.), Purdtan Janam Sakhi Sri Gurii Nanak Dev Ji ki (Amritsar, 1969), pp. 11-12. Ashok’s manuscript is dated S. 1791 (A.D. 1734). He reports having obtained it from Bhai Kirpi Singh Darzi of Guirai Upoke village. The manuscript contains twenty-five of the thirty sakhis recorded in the longer versions. Ibid., p. 45.

8 AS, Introduction, pp. xt-xti.

« The pagination begins with the figure 6. This, however, is not the original numbering. The fourth folio of the extant text also bears, in an earlier hand, the number 167. From this it is evident that the manuscript must originally have been part of a larger manuscript and it can be assumed that the Adi Sdkhis portion must have commenced on folio 159. The extant manuscript concludes with folio 155 of the later numbering.

5 sammat 1758 mah asdr badi 13. Mohan Singh reported the date of the Lahore manuscript as Sammat 2758 poh sudi x. AS, Introduction, p. xi. Ashok’s manuscript is dated S. 1791 (A.D. 1734) and the Central Public Library manuscript S. 1813 (A.D. 1756). Ibid., pp. xi-xit.

® Sikh Reference Library manuscript no. 5462, f. 35b. AS, p. 81.

THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIiS 33

Printed edition

Piar Singh’s printed edition of the Adi Sdakhis was issued in 1969 under the title Sambhit Nath Vali Janam Patri Babe Nanak Ji ki prasidh nan Adi SGkhidn.) In preparing this edition the editor followed the Moti Bagh text supplementing it where necessary with the Sikh Reference Library manu- script. Footnotes have been added to indicate variant readings in the texts of the Sikh Reference Library and Ashok manuscripts. A list of the janam-sakhi’s contents as printed in this edition is given in Appendix 3.

THE MIHARBAN TRADITION

Sodhi Miharban, putative author of the discourses recorded in the Mtharban Janam-saékhi, occupies an unenviable position in Sikh annals. His father Prithi Chand, although the eldest son of Gura Rim Das, had been passed over as successor to the office of Guri in favour of his younger brother Arjan. The succession of Arjan did not, however, go unchallenged. Prithi Chand, claiming to be the only legitimate heir, evidently managed to retain the allegiance of a portion of the Sikh community and when he died in 1619 he was succeeded by his son Miharban. The followers of Prithi Chand and his successors were stigmatized Minas, or unscrupulous rogues, by the adherents of Gurai Arjan’s line? and enmity between the two groups persisted until the Mina strength eventually dwindled to insignificance during the latter part of the eighteenth century. Miharban himself led the Mina sect until his death in 1640, when he was succeeded by his son Hariji.?

Although there persisted in Sikh tradition a belief that Miharban had written a janam-sakhi it was not until well into the twentieth century that a copy was actually known to exist. In the absence of any text, and on the basis of the prologue to the Gydn-ratandvali,‘ it was assumed that the work of one so notoriously inimical to the established line of Guris would certainly be dangerously heretical, and in this assurance the absence of a copy went unmourned. It was only in 1940 that a copy was discovered in the village of Damdama Sahib.5

Unfortunately the manuscript found in Damdama Sahib covers only the first three sections (pothi, ‘volume’) of the six which constituted the com- plete janam-sakhi. To this day the three remaining sections are still untraced, except for the portion of the Miharbdan account of Nanak’s death

1 Published by the editor, Patialé, and printed at the Phulkian Press, Phulkiin Marg, Patiala. Pajfijabi introduction, pp. tx-lii, and text, pp. 1-101. The abbreviation 4S used in this study refers to this edition.

2 BG XXxvi: 33, XXXVI: 1 ff.

3 GNSR, pp. 18-19. See also the Dabistan reference in PPP 1.1 (April 1967), p. 61.

4 See below, p. 37.

5 GNSR, p. 19. Damdami Sihib, also known as Sabo ki Talvandi, is located cightcen miles south of Bhatinds. It acquired the name Damdami, or ‘resting-place’, in memory of the occasion when in 1705 Gurii Gobind Singh rested there following the Battle of Muktsar,

34 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS

which appears in the later Bald tradition.! The three sections included in the manuscript are entitled respectively Pothi Sach-khand, Pothi Hariji, and Pothi Chatarbhuj. According to the colophon of the first of these the three remaining sections were entitled Kefo Rai Pothi, Abhat Pad Pothi, and Prem Pad Pothi.?

An examination of the extant portion indicates three important con- clusions. The first is that if the works of Gurii Nanak are to be accepted as the standard of orthodoxy the sect responsible for the Miharban tradition cannot possibly be branded as heretical. Differences between the teachings Nanak and the theology of the Miharbdn sect can certainly be detected, but they represent no more than the shifting of interpretation and emphasis one might expect after a period of one hundred years. The followers of Miharban must be regarded as loyal perpetuators of the Divine Name theology propounded by Nanak rather than as heretics. Their sin plainly was schism, not heresy.

The second point to be noted is that if the collection of Miharban discourses is to be classified as a janam-sakhi the definition of that term will require some extension. The so-called Miharban Janam-sakhi is not simply a collection of hagiographic anecdotes. It does indeed incorporate many such anecdotes, and Pothi Sach-khand uses a janam-sakhi variety of travel sequence as a framework for its discourses. The interest of the Miharban commentators, however, is not primarily in this narrative material. Their chief interest is in exegesis of the works of Nanak and it is for precisely this reason that they must be called commentators rather than narrators. For the same reason the word used to designate its subdivisions is gost (‘discourse’), not sa@khi. Anecdotes rarely provide more than settings for the scriptural quotations and exposition which the Mtharbén com- mentators were so concerned to propagate. In Pothi Sach-khand this exegetical interest is dominant and in the two succeeding sections it is overwhelming.

The third point to emerge from an examination of the manuscript is that the extant Miharban text is a late and highly evolved product. According to the Miharban group’s own claim the janam-sakhi represents discourses delivered orally by Miharban and recorded shortly after his death in 1640.3 There may well be truth in this claim, but if it is to be allowed it must follow that the extant text does not correspond to the original version. The colophon at the conclusion of the manuscript declares that the actual copying was concluded in 8.1885 (a.D. 1828).4 It is to this early nineteenth- century period rather than to the early seventeenth century that the extant text should be related, for it clearly represents a process of growth requiring much more than a hundred years. This is indicated by the number of discourses it contains,> by the enormous length and variety of its scriptural commentary, by interpolations which can only have come

1 MS Recension B of the Bald tradition. See above, pp. 19, 20.

3 Mth JS 1.519. 3 GNSR, p. 21. 4 Mth FS 11.624.

5 Pothit Sach-khayg contains 153 discourses, Pothi Hariji has 61, and Pothi Chatarbhuj has 74. The total recorded in all six pothis is said to have been 575. Mih JS 1.519.

See

{~

THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS 35

from late eighteenth-century sources, by evidences of earlier Miharban recensions in other extant janam-sakhis, and by comparisons of highly developed Miharban narratives with the more primitive analogues recorded in these other janam-sakhis. The basic structure of the Miharbdan Janam-sadkhi and an indeterminate quantity of its material may derive from the first half of the seventeenth century, but the text as it now stands is the composite product of several generations of later commen- tators. This expansion applies particularly to the scriptural quotations and exegesis which set the Mtharbdn tradition apart from all other janam- sakhis.

The distinctive religious concerns expressed throughout the extant Miharbadn material suggest that the tradition must have been sustained throughout the eighteenth century by groups (sa7igat) of Sikhs who did not subscribe to the evolving beliefs and discipline of the Khalsa brotherhood. These non-Khilsa savigats stand in a direct line leading from the teachings of Nanak through to the so-called sahaj-dhari section of the modern Sikh community.! The followers of Miharban may be regarded as seventeenth- century representatives of this Nanak-panthi stream and it would be entirely natural for the Miharbén writings, with their strongly religious emphasis, to survive within the eighteenth-century and nineteenth- century continuation of the same stream. The Mtharbdn following did not, of course, constitute the entire membership of this portion of the wider Sikh community, merely that of its most articulate section. It was also representative of this continuing Nanak-panthi tradition in that it perpetua- ted Khatri influence, as opposed to the rapidly increasing Jat dominance in the Khalsa.

Within the Khalsa the influence of the Miharbdn tradition was negligible except in a purely negative sense and it was ironic that the principal Miharban manuscript should have been discovered at Damdama Sahib, a village redolent with Khalsa associations. It is, however, possible that the Miharban works may have commanded a continuing interest amongst sadhis of the Udasi sect and that versions of the Miharbdn tradition may have been preserved in their akhayds.?

1 The term sahkaj-dhari is normally translated ‘slow-adopter’, i.e. one who is moving towards a full acceptance of the Khalsa discipline but who has not yet proceeded further than an acceptance of Nanak’s teachings concerning salvation. It is much more likely that the compound should be traced to Nanak’s own distinctive usage of the word sahaj. In the works of Nanak sakaj is the most popular of several expressions used to designate the condition of ineffable bliss induced by the disciplined practice of ndm stmaran. GNSR, pp. 224-5. The term sahaj-dhdri probably assumed this usage and should accordingly be understood to mean ‘one who accepts the ndm simaran teachings of Nanak’, without any reference to the adoption of the Khilsa discipline.

2 The Udiasis constitute an order of ascetics within the Sikh community. Although they claim as their founder Siri Chand, one of Guri Ninak’s two sons, they are more accurately understood as a continuation within the new community of an earlier ascetic tradition. Nath influence is plainly evident in some of their customs and beliefs. Their connection with the wider Sikh community is sustained by the reverence which they show towards the Adi Granth and by close family ties. In theory, and generally in practice, the Udasis have been celibate and have relied largely upon the Jat community for recruits. The word akhdyd, ‘arena’, is used to designate their temples and monasteries. See H. A. Rose (ed.). GTC, vol. iii, pp. 479-81; and J. C. Oman, The Mystics, Ascetics, and Saints of India (London, 1903), pp. 194-6.

36 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS Manuscript copies

The manuscript discovered at Damdama Sahib in 1940 was acquired early in the following year by Khalsa College, Amritsar, and lodged in the College’s Sikh History Research Department where it bears the number SHR 427.! This manuscript, as already noted, is dated S.1885 (a.D. 1828) and covers only the first three of the janam-sakhi’s six sections. It is also incomplete in that two small clusters of folios are missing.? In 1961, however, the College obtained a second Miharbaén manuscript (SHR 2190). This was no more than a large fragment covering seventy-two discourses of Pothi Sach khand, but it did at least supply the two portions missing from the first manuscript. Its text corresponds closely to that of SHR 427. No date is given, but the copyist identifies himself as a Brahman Sikh of Gujar Mal Mandi in Lahore City.

Apart from these two Khalsa College manuscripts no copies of any sub- stantial portion of the Mtharbdn tradition are known to exist. There are, however, other works which were produced by the Minas and of these one deserves a brief mention. This is the Mina account of Miharban’s own life, a work attributed to his son Hariji and entitled Gostan Miharban ji didn (‘Discourses of Miharban’). The work deserves attention because of the light which it casts upon the nature of the Miharban following and their distinctive beliefs. Two manuscript copies are extant, one dated S.1836 (A.p. 1779) held by the Sikh Reference Library in Amritsar, and the other an undated copy in the Central Public Library, Patiala.4 The text has not been published.

Printed edition

The text of Pothi Sach-khand was published by the Sikh History Research Department of Khalsa College, Amritsar, in 1962 under the title Janam Sakhi Sri Gurii Nanak Dev fi (edited by Kirpal Singh and Shamsher Singh Ashok). This edition follows the text of SHR 427, supplemented where necessary by SHR 2190. The remainder of SHR 427 (Pothi Hariji and Pothi Chatarbhuj) was edited by Parkash Singh and published in 1969 as a second volume under the same title. Both volumes include a series of introductory essays by various contributors.5

1 Mth FS 1, Introduction, p. v, and personal communication from Dr. Ganda Singh of Patiala. See also Kirpal Singh (ed.), A Catalogue of Punjabi and Urdu Manuscripts in the Sikh History Research Department (Amritsar, 1963), pp. 13-15. PHLS i. 231.

2 Loc. cit., ff. 82-84 and 121~125. The first cluster covered the concluding lines of gost 51, all of gost 52, and the opening portion of gost 53. The second cluster covered gosts 68 and 69. Mth JS 1, Introduction, p. x, and ibid., Introductory Essays, p. 153n.

8 Mik JS 1, Introduction, p. x. Kirpal Singh (ed.), op. cit., pp. 12-13. PHLS 1. 232.

4 SRL MS no. 3510 and CPL MS no. 2527. PHLS ii. 255-6 and i. 375-6. The contents of the work are summarized in Pidr Singh, ‘A Critical Survey of Panjabi Prose in the Seventeenth Century’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Panjab University, 1968), pp. 150-4. For other Mina works see ibid., pp. 138-50, 154-62. LDP MS no. 359 is a particularly valuable collection of Mina material. Piar Singh, op. cit., pp. 142-9. PHLS i. 232-3. The Khalsa College MS no. SHR 2306 also deserves notice.

5 In this study the abbreviation Mth JS I signifies the 1962 edition of the Pothi Sach-khagd text:

THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS 37 THE GYAN-RATANAVALI

Tradition attributes the authorship of the Gyan-ratandvali to Mani Singh, a famous Sikh of the early eighteenth century, executed by Zakarya Khan of Lahore in 1738.! A prologue attached to extant copies of the janam- sakhi relates the circumstances of its composition as follows:

The Sikhs once made a request to Bhai Mani Singh, saying, ‘The Chhote Mel Vale” have in several places introduced errors into the record of the first Master’s discourses and life, and as a result of hearing these the Sikhs’ faith in the Guri is declining. Just as milk is adulterated with water and the swan separates the two, so you be our Great Swan and separate the Gurii’s words from those of the Minas.’ Bhai Mani Singh replied, ‘At the time when the fifth Master established the canon of Sri Granth Sahib the Sikhs besought him, saying, ‘There is no authenticated version of the discourses. The Pavij Mel Vale? have all interpolated objectionable things in the janam-sakhi and are leading the Sikhs astray.”’ Bhai Gurdas was instructed to write a janam-sakhi in the form of a vdr so that by means of the var the Gurii’s Sikhs might hear and read the record [of the Guri’s life]. Bhai Gurdias’s var, that treasury of wisdom,‘ is a janam-sakhi.’ The Sikhs then said, ‘He has written [simply] the record. Please give us an expanded com- mentary on it so that faith may grow in the Sikhs who hear it.’ Bhat Mani Singh replied, ‘Just as an ant cannot lift an elephant’s burden and a turtle cannot raise Mount Mandar, so I am unable to prepare a commentary on the discourses of Baba [Nanak]. But just as swimmers fix reeds in the river so that those who do not know the way may also cross, so I shall take Bhai Gurdis’s var as my basis and in accordance with it, and with the accounts which I have heard at the court of the tenth Master, I shall relate to you whatever commentary issues from my humble mind.’5

This passage is certainly important in so far as it testifies to the early eighteenth-century influence of the Minds (the Chhote Mel Vale) and to Khilsa hostility towards them. It may even be essentially accurate as an explanation for an original eighteenth-century Gydn-ratandavali.4 The professed connection with Mani Singh is, however, open to serious doubt and so too is the alleged period of composition. No eighteenth-century text

and Mth JS I signifies the 1969 edition of the two remaining pothis. Extensively abridged texts of all three pothis appear in Kirpal Singh, Janam Sa&khi Parampard (Patiala, 1969), Appendix, pp. 58-220.

1 MK, p. 712. Macauliffe, i. Ixxiv—vi.

3 Lit. ‘the lower congregation’, a term which could be applied to any heretics or dissenters but which came to be attached specifically to the Minas. MK, p. 603. See above, p. 33.

3 The five execrated groups whom Khilsa Sikhs, in accordance with their baptismal oath, must spurn. These include the Minas. MK, pp. 593-4. The usage in this context is anachronistic as the term dates from the seventeenth or early eighteenth century.

4 gydn (fiian): knowledge, wisdom. ratandvali: a string of pearls or necklace of gems.

5 GR, pp. 3-4. For Bhai Gurdis see below, pp. 43-S.

S Although the prologue refers to Bhai Gurdias’s var as the Gydn-ratandavali the title is more commonly applied to the janam-sakhi attributed to Mani Singh. The vdr in question is Bhat Gurdis’s first. The Bhagat-ratandvali, or Sikhadn di Bhagat-mél, a work based on Bhai Gurdis’s eleventh var, is also attributed to Mani Singh.

38 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS

appears to have survived. All we have are lengthy nineteenth-century products which incorporate substantial quantities of extraneous material, much of it plainly derived from Bald sources. In addition to numerous anecdotes this supplementary material also includes commentaries on Asa di Var, Guri Nanak’s Yapji, and his Siddh Gost.

The evidence provided by extant texts suggests the following pattern. At some indeterminate date an amplified version of Bhai Gurdas’s first var was produced. This, in its original form, probably comprised no more than the actual stanzas of the vdr, with a comparatively brief paraphrase in each instance. Most stanzas were quoted individually, each with its corresponding paraphrase. Whenever a particular anecdote extended over more than one stanza, however, the relevant stanzas would be cited together and followed by a single paraphrase. The result would have been a brief janam-sakhi incorporating Bhai Gurdas’s limited selection of anecdotes together with his preliminary description of the darkness preceding the light of Nanak and also his summary treatment of Gura Nanak’s immediate successors.

This nucleus must have been a brief work, its contents apparently limited to quotation of the successive stanzas of Var 1 and simple para- phrases of these stanzas. To it have been added materials drawn from all available sources. The original stanzas and paraphrases are still easily identifiable in most instances, but inserted between them one now finds a vast fund of supplementary anecdotes and commentary. This interpolated material is so substantial that the late nineteenth-century version of the Gydn-ratandvali rivals its Bala contemporary in length.

The additions which have so impressively enlarged the Gydn-ratandvali cannot have been the work of a single interpolator. This is made clear by a division within the nineteenth-century collection. While covering the Guri’s early life and a period of travels which takes him to eastern and southern India the modern Gydn-ratandvali is relatively coherent. Parts of it are, moreover, distinctively different from the analogues provided by the other major janam-sakhi traditions. Instances occur of borrowings from the Bald tradition, but most nineteenth-century texts omit the person of Bhai Bala from this first section. It is the introduction of Bhai Bala which marks the line of division between the two sections.! Some clusters of anecdotes continue to ignore him and these retain the essential consistency of the first section. On the whole, however, this latter portion of the modern Gydn-ratanavali resembles the disordered Bala pattern and lengthy passages represent direct borrowings from the Bald tradition.

One other element remains to be noted. At some stage in this growth process an explanatory prologue (quoted above) and epilogue were added. Like the supplementary anecdotes these two passages refer to Mani Singh in the third person and thus cannot be attributed to him personally. It seems likely that they were appended at a comparatively early date, before the introduction of significant interpolation, and that they provide a correspondingly early stage in the evolution of the bulky product which

1 GR, p. 264. For further details see GNSR, pp. 26-7.

THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS 39

we now possess.! The final stage was reached when the heterogeneous result was lithographed at the end of the nineteenth century.

Manuscript copies

The only important collection of Gydn-ratanavali manuscripts consists of three copies in the possession of Professor Pritam Singh of Amritsar, all of them complete and all dated. One bears the date S.1778 (A.D. 1721) which, if correct, would firmly place the Gydn-ratandvali in the first two decades of the eighteenth century. It is, however, evident both from the modernity of the manuscript’s language and from its actual contents that the date must be incorrect.2 The two remaining manuscripts are dated S.1883 (a.p. 1826) and S.1927 (A.D. 1870). In addition to these three copies Shamsher Singh Ashok lists four undated manuscripts, two of them substantially complete and two incomplete.? Two more are held by the Sikh History Research Department of Khalsa College, Amritsar, both of them complete and both dated.4

Printed editions

At least three editions of the amplified Gydn-ratandvali text have been lithographed. One was published in 1891 by Charag Din and Saraj Din of Lahore; a second was published by the Sanskrit Book Depot of Lahore in 1892;5 and a third was issued by Gulab Singh and Sons, also of Lahore, in 1908.6

THE MAHIMA PRAKAS TRADITION

Internal evidence suggests that most of the important janam-sakhi tradi- tions evolved in areas to the north and north-west of Lahore. The Bala tradition may perhaps be an exception to this rule, but this has not yet been established. The only proven exception is the Mahima Prakaés. This version of the life of Nanak represents a tradition which developed in Khadir, a village south-east of Amritsar on the right bank of the Beas river. It was here that Gurii Angad lived during his years as leader of the Sikh community (1539-52). Two centuries later the same village produced

1 Jagjit Singh argues that the original work was written in A.D. 1739 by Sarat Singh of Bath, a follower of Mani Singh. ‘A Critical and Comparative Study of the Janam Sakhis of Guru Nanak’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Panjab University, 1967), pp. 445-9.

3 For examples see PHLS ii. 243.

8 PHLS ii. 240-5.

4 MSS nos. SHR 2300C, dated S. 1891 (A.D. 1834); and SHR 1440, dated S. 1895 (a.D. 1838). Kirpal Singh (ed.), A Catalogue of Punjabi and Urdu Manuscripts &c (Amritsar, 1963), pp. 5-6.

5 An abridged text of this 1892 edition is reproduced in Kirpal Singh, Janam Sakhi Parampara (Patiala, 1969), Appendix, pp. 330-401. This edition was lithographed in Bombay.

6 The abbreviation GR used in this study refers to the first of these. The book is now very difficult to procure. The British Library and the India Office Library each possess a copy.

40 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS

its own distinctive janam-sakhi tradition, the Mahima Prakéé or ‘Light of Glory’.

Although two janam-siakhis bearing the title Mahima Prakaé now exist only one of these strictly qualifies as a separate and distinct janam-sakhi tradition. This is the collection of sakhis known as the Mahima Praka§ Varatak, or ‘Mahima Prakdaé in Prose’. Unlike its predecessors this tradition does not deal exclusively with Nanak anecdotes, traversing instead the lives of all ten Guris and treating each of them relatively briefly. The first Guri naturally receives special attention and the portion covering his life can be detached to form a complete janam-sakhi. It is, however, an unusually brief one, omitting many of the well-established anecdotes one might otherwise expect in an eighteenth-century collection. In the actual selection of anecdotes a primary criterion has obviously been the reputation of Khadir. No reference to the village from earlier tradition appears to have been overlooked and some extra anecdotes relating to it have been added.

The second of the janam-sakhis bearing the Mahima Prakdé title is the so-called Mahima Praka§ Kavita, or ‘Mahima Prakéé in Verse’. Apart from the actual title and the fact that both were evidently compiled in Khadir there is little to suggest any close connection between the two janam- sikhis. The third of the Kavita sakhis corresponds to one which first appears in the Mahima Praka§ VGratak,' but thereafter the Kavita version follows a pattern which indicates a variety of sources. Sakhis found only in the Vdratak collection are ignored and at two critical points (the dates of Nanak’s birth and death) the two versions directly contradict each other.?

The Mahima Praka§ Kavita in its extant form evidently represents the product of two distinct phases. The first was the composition of a metrical janam-sakhi, based upon earlier narrative janam-sakhis and probably the oral tradition of Khadir. This first stage, representing the authentic Mahima Praka§ Kavita, has subsequently been augmented by later borrowings from other janam-sakhis and from apocryphal works attributed to Gurtii Nanak. In some instances these prose borrowings have been interspersed within particular sakhis between sections of the original verse. Elsewhere they have been incorporated as complete prose sakhis. Particu- larly obvious are extensive borrowings from a Miharban source, complete with the exegetical supplements so characteristic of the Mtharbdn tradition.

The metrical portion of the Mahima Prakaé Kavitd presents no apparent problems of authorship or dating. The author gives his name as Sarip Das and specifies $.1833 (A.D. 1776) as the year in which he com- posed his poetic account in Khadiir. In the case of the Mahima Prakaé Varatak, however, the extant text provides no information. The author is variously known in modern works as Kirpal Singh Bhalla and Kirpal Das Bhalla; and the date of composition as either S.1798 (a.p. 1741) or S.1830

1 GNM, pp. 7-8. SLTGN(Pbi), p. 32. 2 GNM, pp. 5, 347. SLTGN(Pbi), pp. 32, 46.

~~

ta:

THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS 41

(A.D. 1773). Either date is possible. An earlier date is unlikely and any date more than two years later would appear to be impossible.!

Manuscript copies

Manuscript copies of both Mahima Prakdé versions are surprisingly scarce. Only four Mahima Praka§ Va@ratak manuscripts are said to exist, and it is possible that the actual number is even smaller. One manuscript is (or was) in the library of the Languages Department of the Pafijab in Patiala.2 A second is in the personal library of the late Bhai Vir Singh, now housed in Dehra Din; and a third is held by the Sikh History Research Department of Khalsa College, Amritsar. The fourth is reported to have been in the Punjab Public Library, Lahore. The third of these manuscripts is a copy of the second, made in 1932. The second is itself a recent product, having been copied only four years earlier.

Manuscript copies of the Mahima Prakas Kavité are more numerous. Eight such copies are known to be extant.5 Those which are dated range in age from 8.1857 (A.D. 1800) to S.1897 (A.D. 1840).

Printed editions

A text of the portion of the Mahima Prakaé§ Varatak which deals with Gurii Nanak has been printed in Sources on the Life and Teachings of Guru Nanak, together with an annotated English translation.* This text follows the Khalsa College manuscript SHR 2308 noted above. An earlier edition of the same text which was privately printed in Dehra Din in 1959 is now out of print.? A list of the Nanak anecdotes included in the Mahima Prakaé Varatak is given in Appendix 5.

A complete text of the Mahima Prakaéé Kavitaé was published in two volumes by the Languages Department of the Pafijab in 1970-1.8 The first of the volumes, issued under the title Gurii Nanak Mahimd, covers

2 For a more detailed discussion of the authorship and dating of the two versions, together with citations, see W. H. McLeod, introduction to an English translation of the Mahimd Prakdaé Varatak, in SLTGN(Eng), pp. 55-7.

2 Efforts made to trace it in 1969 were unsuccessful.

3 MS no. SHR 2308. Kirpal Singh (ed.), A Catalogue of Punjabi and Urdu Manuscripts &c (Amritsar, 1963), pp. 17-18.

4 MS no. SHR 2308, f. r29a. The copyist, Akali Kaur Singh, evidently left no information con- cerning the location of the manuscript which he used.

5 LDP MS no. 176; SRL MS no. 1151; Khalsa College MS no. SHR 2300A; Pafijabi Sahit Akademi, Ludhiana, MS no. 792 (incomplete) ; Pafijab Archives MS no. 792/M;amanuscript in the possession of Giani Prakaran Singh of Sangrir; and two manuscripts in the Punjab Public Library, Lahore. PHLS i. 368 and ii. 249-51. Kirpal Singh (ed.), op. cit., pp. 18-19. Ganda Singh, A Bibliography of the Punjab (Patiala, 1966), p. 208. Gobind Singh Lamba, introduction to GNM, pp. 9-14. LDP MS no. 176 bears the date S. 1857.

6 SLTGN(Pbi), pp. 32-46. SLTGN(Eng), pp. 59-87.

7 Kirpal Singh (ed.), ivan Katha Sri Gurii Nanak Dev fi Mahima Prakaé (Varatak) vichon (Dehra Din, 1959).

§ Sartp Das Bhalla (ed. Shamsher Singh Ashok and Gobind Singh Limba), Gur Nanak Mahima (Patiala, 1970), and Mahima Prakaé (Patiala, 1971). The abbreviation GNM refers to the first of these,

42 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS

the portion which concerns the life of Nanak. The second volume, mis- leadingly entitled simply Mahima Prakdé, contains a brief introduction by one of the editors and the portion dealing with the nine remaining Guris. The manuscript held by the Languages Department has been followed in the preparation of this text, with supplements and amendments drawn from three other manuscripts.!

INDIVIDUAL {ANAM-SAKHIS

Two important janam-sakhis which have not produced distinctive tradi- tions are the manuscripts which for convenience will be referred to as LDP 194 and B4o. (In both cases the titles are library catalogue numbers.) Both are closely related to other traditions, notably to the Purdtan and Adi Sakhis collections, but not to the point of justifying inclusion within either of them.

LDP 194 The abbreviation LDP 194 designates manuscript no. 194 in the library of the Languages Department of the Pafijab, Patiala. At first sight it may appear that the manuscript is an early recension of the Colebrooke and H4afizabdad janam-siakhis, and that it should accordingly be in the Purdtan group. This would be misleading. Although the manuscript certainly stands within a line of descent leading to the Hafizdbad Janam- sGkhi, it is the line which accounts only for the extra material added by the Hafizabdd compiler to the Colebrooke nucleus. Later it will be shown how an early tradition (designated Narrative I) divided into two streams (Narrative Ia and Narrative Ib). The first of these leads directly to the Colebrooke version and accounts both for the distinctive structure of the Purdtan narrative and also for almost all of its material. To this Colebrooke version the Hdfizabad compiler added two anecdotes and a discourse drawn from a Narrative Ib source.”

It is to this second stream that LDP 194 belongs, and as this was no more than a supplementary source for the Purdtan tradition it would be misleading to bracket the manuscript with the Colebrooke and Hdafizabad janam-sakhis in a common tradition. The link connecting it with the Purdtan tradition is plain, but so too is its distinction from the main line of Purdtan development. This same Narrative Ib tradition also contributes directly to the Adi Sakhis and Bgo compilations, and less directly to the Miharban collection.?

The LDP 194 manuscript is in poor condition. Several leaves are missing, some of the folios have been bound out of order, and having reached the figure 100 the pagination reverts to 43 in the middle of a sakhi. It is, however, easily read. The script, although very immature, is unusually clear. The manuscript bears no date.

The actual text of the manuscript consists of two principal elements. The first portion is narrative, and although it is not regularly divided into

1 LDP MS no. 176, supplemented by the SRL, Panjab Archives, and Khalsa College MSS. 2 See above, p. 25. 3 See below, p. 195.

Tere Se ae IRs

THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIiS 43

sakhis a total of twenty can be distinguished. These are listed in Appendix 4. The second portion comprises extended quotations from the works of Nanak, notably the Siddh Gost and Var Asa. The Siddh Gost begins on folio 56a of the second set of folio numbers, The text briefly reverts to narrative with the Achal discourse on folio 77b and then continues its scriptural quotation through to folio 117b. A few folios of scriptural quotation in a different hand conclude the manuscript.

The B4go Janam-sakhi The B4o manuscript (so called because of the number which it bears in the India Office Library catalogue) is perhaps the most important of all extant janam-sakhis. This reputation it deserves partly because of the quality of its illustrations; partly because of the unusually specific information which is provided concerning its origins; but chiefly because it is of all janam-sakhis the most representative in terms of content. It is, like all janam-sakhis, a composite product. The range of sources and styles, however, is superior to that of any other collection. Oral and written sources have both been used by its compiler and from these sources he has drawn examples of all the major forms to be found in the janam-sakhi literature.

Two notes appended to the text describe the genesis of the B40 Janam- sGkhi.1 It was commissioned, the scribe informs us, by a certain Bhai Sangii Mal, ‘servant of the congregation’. The copyist identifies himself as Daya Ram Abrol and his artist colleague as Alam Chand Raj. The work was completed in 8.1790 on a date corresponding to 31 August 1733. In 1907 the manuscript was acquired from Lahore for the India Office Library.

An edition of the Gurmukhi text of the Bgo Janam-sakhi was published in 1974 by Professor Piar Singh under the title Janam Sakhi Sri Gurii Nanak Dev Ji. To this has since been added an English translation by W. H. McLeod entitled The B40 Janam-sakhi. Its contents are listed below on pp. 230-2.

MISCELLANEOUS WORKS CLOSELY RELATED TO THE $ANAM-SAKHIS

In view of their enormous and sustained popularity it is scarcely surpris- ing that the janam-sakhis should have stimulated an affiliated literature, most of it appearing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Four representatives of this literature will be briefly noted. Reference must also be made to a related work composed during the early seventeenth century. This latter is the first of a collection of thirty-nine vars by the distin- guished Sikh poet Bhai Gurdias, a collection which possesses a considerable importance for any understanding of the early Sikh community.

Var 1 of Bhai Gurdas Bhai Gurdas Bhalla has three major claims to fame in the history of the Sikh community. The first of these is that he .) Bago, ff. 84b, 230a-231A4.

44 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS

was a nephew of the third Guri, Amar Das. Secondly, he was the amanu- ensis employed by Guri Arjan to record the contents of the Adi Granth during its compilation in 1603-4. Thirdly he was himself the author of thirty-nine poetic works written in the vdr form, and of 556 others composed in the kabitt form. Although none of these works was included in the Adi Granth the vdrs came to be regarded as ‘the key to the Guri Granth Sahib’ and the compositions of Bhai Gurdas are specifically approved for recitation in Sikh gurdwaras. His date of birth is unknown, but his death is said to have occurred in 1637.1

Although Bhai Gurdis’s first var is not strictly speaking a janam-sakhi no survey of the janam-sakhis would be complete without reference to it. The var differs from the standard janam-sakhi form in two respects. First, it uses a poetic form instead of the narrative of the janam-sakhis; and secondly its primary intention is to eulogize the unique status and power of the Guri. These are, however, only marginal differences. In order to fulfil his intention, Bhai Gurdias has used anecdotes of precisely the same kind as those of the janam-sakhis, all of them to be found at various points in different janam-sakhis. A loose definition of the janam-sakhi would certainly embrace the relevant portion of Bhai Gurdas’s first var (stanzas 23-45). To this portion should be added stanzas 13~14 of the eleventh var, a passage in which Bhai Gurdas lists the more prominent of Baba Nanak’s followers. The standard printed edition is that of Hazara Singh.? An English translation is given in Sources on the Life and Teachings of Guru Nanak.

Because of its relatively early date Bhai Gurdas’s contribution is of notable importance, and its value is enhanced by the personal links which connected the author to the line of Guriis descended from Amar Das. Its importance must not, however, be exaggerated. Bhai Gurdas’s Var 1 has commonly been read as a historical account of the Gurii’s life and a strong insistence has been laid upon an obligation to accept all that he writes as literally true. This scarcely does justice to Bhai Gurdas’s method and understanding. His purpose was to magnify the Guri’s greatness, a task which he performs with notable success. In early seventeenth-century Panjab there was no reason why his panegyric should have been written with scrupulous concern for the canons of later historical scholarship. It was the myth that mattered and, as already indicated in the discussion of the purpose of the janam-sakhis,* legend and history were alike legitimate ingredients.

The point deserves to be stressed in this context because the defence of the historical reliability of the janam-sakhis generally takes its stand upon an assumed inerrancy of the works of Bhai Gurdas. To deny this inerrancy as far as strictly historical information is concerned is not to suggest that

1 For citations and further details concerning Bhai Gurdas see GNSR, pp. 14-15. See also Khushwant Singh, A History of the Sikhs, vol. i (London, 1963), pp. 310-12.

2 Varadn Bhai Gurdds, ed. Hazara Singh and revised by Vir Singh. Amritsar: Khalsa Samachar, several editions. Also SLTGN(Poi), pp. 13-19.

3 SLTGN(Eng), pp. 32-44. « See above, pp. 8-10.

THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS 45

Bhai Gurdis was dishonest or even credulous. Bhai Gurdas relates various miraculous occurrences,! sets a discourse with the long-deceased Gorakh- nath on the legendary mountain of Sumeru,? and attaches to Baba Nanak an anecdote which had already been extensively used in earlier Sifi hagiography.? None of these elements destroys the value of what Bhai Gurdas has written, provided only that the nature of that value is under- stood. His approach and his understanding were not those of a twentieth- century historian, nor were they inferior. It is merely that he pursued a different understanding of the nature of truth, the truth which myth seeks to express and for which it may utilize legend as well as history. For those who believe in the divine inspiration of Gura Nanak Bhai Gurdas’s words are eternally true, regardless of what use he may make of legendary material. To read him as a chronicler of literal historical facts is to misunderstand him.

None of the vars of Bhai Gurdas are dated and the only statement which may be made with any assurance is that they must have been written before 1637. The fact that he obviously had before him a janam-sakhi model‘ suggests a date close to 1637 rather than earlier in the seventeenth century, but falls far short of proof. A list of the anecdotes utilized in the composition of his Nanak stanzas is given in Appendix 5.

The Nanak Prakda§ of Santokh Singh Santokh Singh’s Nanak Prakaé was completed in 1823 and since that date has exercised a considerable influence upon the popular understanding of the life of Gura: Nanak.® It is of interest for two reasons. First, it did much to strengthen a Bala dominance which by the beginning of the nineteenth century was already well established. Confronted by the Hindali content of the extant Bala manuscripts Santokh Singh decided that these manuscripts must represent a corrupted version of an original janam-sakhi delivered before Guri Angad. The original version had, he believed, been corrupted simply by means of interpolation and he accordingly concluded that an authentic text could be restored by excising the recognizably Hindiali portions of the janam-sakhi. This he did and the first section of his Nanak Prakd§ (the pitrabdradh section) was based upon the remainder,

The Nanak Prakdé is also of interest for the extensive additions which it makes to the Bald tradition as Santokh Singh had received it. Three supplementary sources are of particular importance. First, there is the Purdtan tradition. This appears in such distinctively Colebrooke anecdotes as ‘Dini Chand and the Wolf’ and “The Kashmiri Pandit’.6 Secondly, there was the B4go Yanam-sakhi or a source very close to it. The Bgo Janam-sakhi is itself an amalgam drawn from several sources, one of them an oral tradition (designated Narrative III) which is peculiar to Bgo.’

1 BG 1:31, 32, 36, 41. 2 BG 1:28.

3 BG 1:44. See below, pp. 118-20. * See below, p. 204.

5 ‘The correct title of the work is Gur Nanak Praka§. The shortened form is, however, almost invariably used. For a brief account of Santokh Singh’s life see Macauliffe, i. bcxvi-vii.

6 NPr 11.4, 14. See also II.15, 20, 21, 25. 7 See below, pp. 220-6, 229-32.

46 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHiS

Most of the Narrative III anecdotes recorded in the B4o Fanam-sakhi reappear in the Nanak Prakd§.! Thirdly, there are numerous details together with a few complete anecdotes which have no antecedents in extant janam-sakhis. Much of this material was presumably derived by Santokh Singh from current oral tradition. These ‘three supplementary sources together contribute the bulk of the anecdotes recorded in the second of the two sections in the Nanak Prakds (the uttaradradh sec- tion).

Like the vdrs of Bhai Gurdias the Nanak Prakéé is in verse, but in both form and intention it comes much closer to the standard narrative janam- sakhi. Although the form is clearly intended to be poetic the product offers constant reminders of its prose origins. A charitable judgement might describe it as narrative poetry, with the qualification that its merits are essentially narrative rather than poetic. Today even its narrative qualities are difficult to appreciate, for Santokh Singh’s crabbed mixture of Pafijabi and Sanskritized Hindi is far removed from the simple language of the janam-sakhis.

Even more important in terms of its subsequent influence was the lengthy sequel to the Nanak Prakd§, a work entitled Gur Pratap Siiray and popularly referred to as the Siraj Prakas. This substantial composi- tion, completed in 1844, covers the lives of Nanak’s nine successors. Whereas the Nanak Prakd§ stands as one of several janam-sakhis the Sitiraj Prakag commonly stands alone, and references by modern authors to incidents in the lives of the Guris can often be traced no further than statements by Santokh Singh. This is particularly true of the eight Guris between Nanak and Gobind Singh. An edited text of both the Nanak Prak&§ and Siraj Praka§ was published in fourteen volumes by Vir Singh between 1927 and 1935, and is still in print.?

The Nanak Praké§ is divided into two parts, the piirabdradh and the uttararadh. In footnote citations these will be designated by the roman figures 1 and 11 respectively. Sections of each part (adhydya) will be indicated by arabic numerals without parentheses, and for individual stanzas within an adhydaya arabic numerals within parentheses will be used. The actual title of the work will be represented by the abbreviation NPr.

The Nanak Vijay of Sant Ren Sant Ren’s Nanak Vijay, or Sri Guri Nanak Dig Vijay is another nineteenth-century contribution to the hagio- graphic literature concerning Gurii Nanak. Its importance has been slight and it warrants mention here only because the author has sometimes been represented as a contemporary of Nanak. This misunderstanding has evidently arisen because the leader of a group of sadhis figuring in the Bald anecdote entitled “The Good Bargain’ is also named Sant Ren. The

1 NPr 11.12, 13, 14, 40, 44. Also I1.11, 38.

® Amritsar: the Khilsi Samachar. No single title is applied to the complete edition. The thirteen volumes comprise the following: vol. i, Sri Gur Pratap Siraj Granthdavali (Vir Singh’s Introduction); vols. ii-iv, Sri Gur Nanak Prakd§; vols. v-xiii, Sri Gur Pratadp Siraj Granth (the Siraj Prakag).

THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHis 47

account of Baba Nanak which it offers is, as one would expect, another amplified version of the Bald tradition.

The Sichak Prasaig Gurit ka attributed to Bhai Bahlo Bahlo is said to have been an early Sikh who died in the month of Chet, S. 1660 (a.p. 1603).? If the composition entitled Siichak Prasatig Gurit ka were in fact the work of such a person it would rank as the earliest of all extant accounts of the life of Nanak. It is, however, another Bdald-based nineteenth- century product. This is evident both from the modernity of its language and from its contents.

The Sichak Prasang Gurit kd differs from its nineteenth-century contemporaries in that it offers an epitome of the Bald tradition instead of an expanded version, compressing a remarkable amount into a very brief space. Although the section dealing with Gura Nanak consists of only thirty-eight couplets the author manages to mention more than fifty janam-sakhi anecdotes. Occasionally an anecdote receives more than one couplet, but normally each is limited to a single line or half a line. The terseness of the style is well illustrated by couplet 24:

ali yar niin bali bandyd bimal jot niin sudhu kardya manak chand kdbal bich tard bal guddi tille bara

Ali Yar he made a saint; Bimal Jot he cleansed. Manak Chand he redeemed in Kabul; and Balgundai in Tilla,

This may be compared with a Bala version similar to the source which the author has obviously used. In the India Office Library manuscript Panj. B41 the portion so summarily expressed in this couplet covers eleven folios.4

The only extant copy of the work is a manuscript in the possession of Dr. Ganda Singh of Patiala. This bears the date S. 1907 (A.D. 1850).5 The text of the portion which concerns Gurii Nanak has been published in Sources on the Life and Teachings of Guru Nanak.§

Vir Singh’s Sri Gurii Nanak Chamatkaér. Bhai Vir Singh’s two-volume work Sri Gurit Nanak Chamatkar is of interest as a singularly attractive twentieth-century representative of the continuing janam-sakhi form.’

1 Jagjit Singh, ‘A Critical and Comparative Study of the Janam Sakhis of Guru Nanak’, pp. 190-3. Jagjit Singh, following Shamsher Singh Ashok, lists four extant manuscripts. A microfilm copy of one of these is held by the Languages Department in Patiala.

2 PHLS i. 361. 3 SLTGN(Pii), p. 27. 4 Bar, ff. 187a-198a,

§ PHLSi. 361. The text is inscribed upon account books (vai) of the kind used by shopkeepers.

* SLTGN(P8i), pp. 26-8.

7 Vir Singh, Sri Gurii Nanak Chamatkar. Amritsar: Khilsi Samachar. First edition: vol. i, 1928, and vol. ii,1933. The work is still in print. Vir Singh used the same form to re-create versions of the traditions concerning the lives of Gur Angad, Gurt Amar Dias, Gurit Rim Dis, and Gur Arjan (Sri Ast Gur Chamatkar, Amritsar, 2 vols., 1952 and 1968), and Gurti Gobind Singh (Sri Kalgidhar Chamatkar, Amritsar, 2 vols., 1925). For another twentieth-century janam-sikhi see Kirpal Singh, Janam Sakhi Parampard (Patiala, 1969), pp. 1-166.

48 THE PRINCIPAL JANAM-SAKHIS

Just as Santokh Singh and others rewrote the received Bald tradition so in like manner Vir Singh produced in contemporary language an augmented version of the Purdtan tradition. Vir Singh was an unusually gifted Pafijabi writer and his Sri Gurii Nanak Chamatkar can be regarded, in terms of language and style, as the climax of janam-sakhi development.

4

THE LANGUAGE OF THE JANAM-SAKHIS

Grierson, when dealing with the language of the janam-sakhis, is both brief and confusing. In the primary definition given in The Linguistic Survey of India he declares: “The celebrated Janam-Sakhi (a life of Nanak) is in Lahnda, not in Panjabi.’! Elsewhere he contradicts this statement. In an earlier volume, having claimed that ‘Lahnda... contains no prose literature’, he adds the footnote: “The Janam Sakhi, a well known Sikh book, is written in a dialect which is half Panjabi and half Lahnda.’?

The contradiction is of less importance than might appear. It would be of importance only if Grierson’s rigorous distinction between Panjabi and Lahnda as two separate languages could be sustained. The line which, with due caution, he drew at 74° E. to distinguish the ‘Indo-Aryan’ Pafijabi from the ‘Dardic’ Lahnda® is meaningful only as a convenient division between two groups of Pafijabi dialects. Although the language group which he labelled Lahnda provides a viable linguistic unit, it must be regarded as a segment of the larger Pafijabi group, not as a separate language. The line which he drew amounts to no more than a convenience. There is, as Grierson well understood, a substantial area within which the Lahnd§a dialects merge into Majhi and others of the eastern group.4

Once the essential vagueness of this distinction is recognized it becomes possible to accept an adapted form of Grierson’s second definition. Most of the janam-sakhis are written in varying blends of Pafijabi dialects, to which some exotic elements have also been added. In most instances Lahnda is dominant. Two notable exceptions are the Mahima Prakas Varatak, in which Majhi strongly predominates, and the Mitharban Janam-sakhi which generally uses Sadhukkari. Partial exceptions also occur in the case of the Bgo and Adi Sakhis collections. A variety of sources have been used in the preparation of both, and because at least one of these sources happened to be in Sadhukkari a small number of sakhis in that language appear in both janam-sakhis. This feature is more prominent in the Adi Sakhis than in the Bgo Janam-sakhi.

The Lahnda group of Panjabi dialects has been variously subdivided. Grierson’s classification was based upon a primary distinction between a large southern segment and a smaller northern group, the line being drawn

2 G. A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, vol. ix, part i (Calcutta, 1916), p. 618. Grierson’s use of the singular indicates the Bala tradition.

2 Ibid., vol. viii, part i (Calcutta, 1919), p. 247.

3 Ibid., vol. i, part i (Calcutta, 1927), p. 136. * Ibid. ix.i.608.

50 THE LANGUAGE OF THE JANAM-SAKHiS

a little to the south of Jhelum. The northern group was further divided into north-eastern and north-western groups, and all three sections were then subdivided according to Grierson’s understanding of their dialects. Most of the area covered by the districts of Gujrat, Gujranwala, and Lahore he classified as ‘Panjabi merging into Lahnda’.!

Provided that the extreme vagueness of such definitions is given due stress this classification can be generally accepted. It is, however, con- venient to ignore Grierson’s subdivision of Northern Lahnda and to lay greater stress upon his principal subdivision of Southern Lahnda. In the case of the latter he drew an east-west line a little to the north of 30°N. This line deserves rather more prominence, and if with the usual insistence upon a necessary vagueness of definition it is given this prominence a threefold division emerges. In the north there is Northern Lahnda, with the Pothohari dialect occupying a position of particular prominence; and in the south the dialects of Multan, Muzzafargarh, Bahawalpur, and Dera Ghazi Khan. This leaves Central Lahnda covering the area of Mianwali, Shahpur, Lyallpur, Montgomery, Jhang and Mankera.

The eastern portion of this central area must be closely linked with the immediately adjacent areas of Gujrat, Gujranwala, and Lahore. This link enables us to circumscribe the geographical area and the distinctive dialect which dominates the janam-sakhi literature. To this linguistic area belong the Purdtan, LDP 194, and Bald janam-sakhis, and the greater part of the B4o and Adi Sakhis collections.2 LDP 194 and the Bala janam-sakhis are generally more homogeneous in terms of language forms, and in the case of the latter the language is more modern. The other three collections, all of them using a variety of sources, display a greater diversity of dialect forms. Of the exotic elements the more prominent are Persian and Braj.

The principal exception to this general rule is the Miharbaén Janam- sakhi which for most of its material uses the language variously called Sadhukkari or Sant Bhasa, ‘the language of the Sants’. This language consists of a Khari Boli base, supplemented by elements drawn from Braj and other North Indian vernaculars. It served as a lingua franca for devotional works of the Sant tradition, a religious movement which spread over much of Northern India during the late medieval and early modern period.? Representatives of this tradition commonly took the Khari Boli of the Delhi area as their foundation and added to it vocabulary and supplementary grammatical forms derived from their own geo- graphical areas. In the case of its Adi Granth and janam-sakhi examples the supplement is, predictably, provided by Panjabi dialects. This supple- ment is frequently insignificant to the point that the resultant language might well be described simply as Khari Boll.

Passages written in Sadhukkari occur in both the Adi Sakhis and the

1 [bid. viii.i.233 ff., and ix.i.607 ff.

2 All five display the terminal forms which constitute the most distinctive feature of Lahnda. The most prominent are the verb-endings usu (Perfective) and si (Future). Gurcharan Singh et al., Paiijabi sahit da ttihds (madh kdl), section 5 (Paiijdbi gadd), pp. 20-8.

3 GNSR, pp. 151-8.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE JANAM-SAKHiS 51

B4o Janam-sakhi. Such passages are normally confined to particular sakhis and are of considerable help in identifying changes of source within both janam-sakhis. This may be illustrated by three consecutive sakhis from the Adi Sakhis collection. The brief narrative portion of sakhi 25 runs as follows:

ta phiri gurit horu sdgu kita. baki did sikhd de vdsate. sitrid age litid. dui kute nali lite. laki chhurd badhd. je koi sd so sabh bhaji gae. koi thahardi na sakiu. ta sabh lage Gkhani ndnak bhala fakir sé par devana hid. bhala fakir kamal daraves sd. paru devana hid. dhdnakau ralid. ta babe siri rdg vichi sabadu kita .. .1

This is unmistakably Pafijabi, and so too is the even briefer narrative portion of sakhi 26. There is, however, a hint of difference. The passage is in fact an editorial link connecting sakhis 25 and 27:

jab ehu gosti kari chuke tab gorakh nath babe no kahia nanak tit pitrad purakh hat paru jog de ghari du. tab baba nanak boliad . . .2

In sakhi 27 the compiler, having changed his source, abandons the Pafijabi of the earlier source.

babe nadnak kau udasi jo upaji chak te chalidjatd tha. dekhai ta eku bagu hai udian ke bikhaz. .. .3

This is not unadulterated Khari Boli but certainly it is much closer to Khari Boli than to the Pafijabi of the preceding sakhis. It is Sadhukkari of the kind so commonly found in the Adi Granth and in the non-Pafijabi portions of the janam-sakhis. Even within a passage as brief as this one both the Khari Boli base and Pafijabi supplement are evident.4

In the Adi Sakhis Sadhukkari is subordinate to Pafijabi, and in the B4o FJanam-sGkhi this same relationship is even more pronounced. Within the extant Mtharban Janam-sakhi, however, the balance moves strongly inthe opposite direction. Although Panjabi passages do occur, andalthough the Miharban Sadhukkari betrays ample evidence of Pafijabi influence, the language of the Miharbadn Janam-sdkhi must nevertheless be dis- tinguished from the Pafijabi which, with varying blends of dialect, dominates all other janam-sakhis. It is a distinction which corresponds to the fundamental difference separating the Miharbdén tradition from the remainder of the janam-sakhi literature. Whereas the other janam-sakhis are primarily concerned with popular narrative the Miharbdan tradition is much more interested in religious discourse. Pafijabi was the natural language for the former and Sadhukkari the appropriate language for the latter. In addition to its Panjabi contribution the Miharbdn language also includes elements derived from Braj.

The linguistic difference which distinguishes the Miharban tradition

1 AS, p. 84. The remainder of the sakhi consists of a recitation of the shabad Sirf Rdg 29.

8 AS, pp. 84-5. The remainder of the sakhi consists of a recitation of five stanzas of the Yapji Sahib. 3 AS, p. 86. 4 For a more detailed examination of the Bgo language sec the introduction to B4go(Eng).

52 THE LANGUAGE OF THE JANAM-SAKHIS

from all other janam-sakhis has been considerably obscured by a con- sistent use of the Gurmukhi script. Although the distinction between Pafijabi language and the Gurmukhi script is now clearly understood there still persists a tendency to assume that Gurmukhi is used only for Panjabi. The Miharban Janam-sadkhi provides an important example of the fallacy of this assumption. The same regular use of the Gurmukhi script is shared by all janam-sakhi traditions, regardless of their linguistic content.

SECTION II

FS NC TE | CE OY eee Lee ae

oat ate Pp,

mw

5

THE ORIGINS AND GROWTH OF THE JANAM-SAKHI TRADITIONS

THE ultimate origin of all the janam-sakhi traditions is the person of Nanak or, to be more precise, an interpretation of that person. Nanak had recast a particular range of popular religious doctrine in a uniquely coherent form, expressing it in poetry of a compelling directness and beauty. It was natural that such qualities should attract disciples, and those who in this manner gathered around their chosen teacher during the early decades of the sixteenth century constituted the nucleus of the Nanak-panth, ‘the community of those owing allegiance to Nanak’. These were the first Sikhs, a word which in its literal sense means simply ‘learner’ or ‘disciple’. It was in this sense that it was first used to describe the early followers of Gurii Nanak and only gradually did it acquire the distinctive and more restricted meaning which it now possesses. Although the Gurmukhi script makes no provision for capitalization the conventions of written English permit us to express the process in terms of a gradual change from ‘sikh’ to ‘Sikh’, from ‘disciples’ to ‘Disciples’.1

Inevitably there developed within this community an interpretation of the life and teachings of its first Master. A religious community can have neither purpose nor coherence without a distinctive pattern of belief, and when such a community owes a conscious allegiance to a particular person it must assuredly incorporate within that pattern a particular understanding of the Master’s mission and message. In the case of the emergent ndnak-panthi or sikh community this understanding constitutes what we have already called the myth of Nanak. It is this myth which provided, and continues to provide, the source and origin of the ever-evolving janam-sakhi traditions.

At this point a clarification of terms is needed. Although the myth of

1 A Miharbén commentator claims that in the earlier period the word sikh was reserved for the Hindu disciples of Nanak. Muslim disciples were called murid. Mih JS 1. 414. The other term commonly used in the janam-sakhis to designate a follower of Nanak is, predictably, ndnak-panthi. Although the term na@nak-panthi is rarely used nowadays, the word panth from which it derives provides another example of the process which can be represented in terms of a change from the lower case to the upper case. The word panth, in its normal usage, designates a ‘sect’ or definable area of Indian religious tradition distinguished by loyalty to a particular teacher or adherence to particular doctrines. In this sense it clearly implies distinctiveness within Hindu tradition and society, and in this sense the early community of Nanak’s followers may be properly designated a panth, As the community began to develop a consciousness of sharp differentiation panth tended increasingly to become Panth. In other words, it came to represent a religious community distinct from Hindu society. This distinction, however, has never become absolute. Whereas some Sikhs will draw the line with all possible clarity, others seem to be unaware of its existence.

56 ORIGINS AND GROWTH OF JANAM-SAKHi TRADITIONS

Nanak has just been described as the source of the janam-sakhis the word ‘source’ will not hereafter be used in this sense. Instead it will be reserved for the section which discusses the compilation of extant manu- script collections.! In all instances it is evident that the copyists responsible for the manuscripts now extant must have had access to one or more earlier manuscripts. These earlier manuscripts served as sources for the composite products we now possess and it is in this sense that the word will normally be used. The only extension beyond this usage will be to cover borrowings made by these copyists from developed oral traditions. It will be shown, for example, that the B40 compiler has copied material from at least two recognizable manuscripts, and that he has drawn another substantial cluster of anecdotes from the oral tradition of his own area.? Both the oral tradition and the manuscripts will be referred to as sources, and the term will normally be limited to this usage.

This means that another term will be required to designate the materials utilized by those responsible for the earliest traditions. A few anecdotes can presumably be traced to actual incidents in the life of Nanak; others were obviously borrowed direct from even earlier pre-Nanak sources; and many developed organically in accordance with processes of varying complexity. In all three cases ‘sources’ were required in order to provide either the complete anecdote or the elements which were drawn together to form one. Wherever possible these ‘sources’ will be covered by the term ‘constituents’. The word will have a particular relevance to the earliest traditions, but because the janam-sakhis have persisted in growing there has always been a continuing if irregular inflow of constituents. For this reason the term will also be applied to the materials which, to the present day, continue to supply extra details or additional anecdotes. Occasionally it will be convenient to use the word ‘sources’ when indicating the origin of these elements, but its usage will be restricted and will be accompanied by a reference to the constitutents which derive from any such origin.

It seems safe to assume that the earliest of all constituents must have been authentic memories concerning actual incidents from the life of Nanak. Anecdotes concerning the Master will have begun to circulate during the Master’s own lifetime, and although his actual presence will not have prevented the addition of legendary details it will certainly have served to inhibit their entry into the earliest tradition. They will have been added more as embroidery. The fabric will have been the narrative of authentic incidents.

This period was, however, brief, and an examination of the janam-sakhi literature plainly demonstrates that the vast bulk of their material entered the tradition after the death of Nanak. For this subsequent period of expansion three constituents proved to be of particular importance. One was the body of received tradition current in the Pafijab during the seventeenth century. Some of the material which entered the janam- sakhis in this manner has obviously been taken from the Epics and the

2 See below, pp. 174ff. 3 See below, pp. 187-94, 197-210, 220-6. See also the introduction to Bgo(Eng), pp. 11-15.

ORIGINS AND GROWTH OF JANAM-SAKHI TRADITIONS 57

Puranas. Other features evidently derive from the distinctive legends of the Nath yogis, and yet others betray a Safi origin. All three varieties represent a natural process. The Pafijab of this period was impregnated with Puranic lore, and both the Naths and the Sifis combined a consider- able reputation with a well-stocked treasury of legend. Living within such a context the janam-sakhi narrators were inevitably directed by its more powerful influences.

The second of the major constituents was provided by the poetic works composed by Nanak for the benefit of his followers. There are many examples to be found in the janam-sakhis of anecdotes which have been developed out of particular hymns by the Gura, or out of isolated refer- ences from various compositions. Whenever this occurs in a sakhi the hymn which prompts the anecdote will be quoted during the course of the narrative, normally as the answer given by Nanak to an interlocutor or as his comment on the episode which provides the substance of the sakhi.

Although this is an important constituent it should be noted that all such quotations from the works of Nanak are not to be explained as the seeds from which their associated anecdotes grew. Many of the hymns which appear in the janam-sakhis represent later additions to evolved sakhis. A hymn introduced in this manner was normally added because its theme seemed to accord well with the subject of a particular anecdote. In other cases a hymn has evidently been quoted because the narrator wished to add to the hymn his own commentary on it. When this occurs in one of the narrative janam-sakhis it commonly reflects a doctrinal issue current within the later community, the hymn with its commentary serving to express a particular view concerning the issue. Yet other hymns have been added to sakhis for reasons which now elude us. In some cases the reason may have been nothing more than a narrator’s partiality.

Most of the hymns quoted in the janam-sakhis are by Nanak and are to be found in the Adi Granth. In such instances the janam-sakhis invariably depart from the standard Adi Granth text and in some quotations their variant readings diverge extensively. A few hymns which are attributed by the janam-sakhis to Nanak are listed in the Adi Granth as the works of later Guris, and a number do not appear in the Adi Granth at all. In the analysis which follows compositions of the latter kind are described as apocryphal. This they probably are, and in some cases there can be no doubt whatsoever. There remains, however, the possibility that genuine works may have escaped the Adi Granth and yet been retained in an oral tradition later used by a janam-sakhi compiler.

The third of the important constituents was more restricted in scope than either the influence of received tradition or the impulses derived from Nanak’s own words. This third element was provided by the con- tinuing influence within the Sikh community of an ascetic tradition. Although Nanak himself had spurned extreme asceticism the conviction was too deeply rooted in Indian tradition to be easily eradicated and its influence emerges at several points in the janam-sakhis.

Four principal constituents may accordingly be discerned in the

58 ORIGINS AND GROWTH OF JANAM-SAKHI TRADITIONS

janam-sakhis. The first of these is fundamental in that it provided the original impulse and a significant portion of the earliest traditions. This is the authentic material derived from actual episodes in the life of Nanak. Subsequently this element comes to be vastly overshadowed by materials derived from received tradition, the works of Nanak, and resurgent ascetic ideals. These constituents are discussed at greater length in chapter 6.

This is followed in chapter 7 by a description of the various literary forms which have been used in order to give expression to these traditions. A preliminary survey of the janam-sakhi forms indicates an obvious division into two categories. First there are the narrative anecdotes; and secondly the numerous discourses which Nanak is said to have conducted. There is, however, a more meaningful distinction which becomes evident when the various discourses are analysed. This would link with the anecdotes the type of discourse which contains a strong narrative element, separating these two forms from the remainder of the discourses.

The first two forms we shall designate the narrative anecdote and the narrative discourse. The narrative anecdote is the janam-sakhi form par excellence. Sakhis which employ it are normally brief and succinct, although a more complicated pattern sometimes emerges. During the later stages of janam-sakhi evolution composite saékhis are commonly formed by grouping anecdotes which concern a single person, place, or theme. Some of these clusters enjoy a particular popularity and continue to grow as extra sub-sakhis are added. The various traditions concerning Baba Nanak’s visit to Mecca provide a good example of this combination and growth process.

Narrative discourses are closely allied to the anecdotal form in terms of purpose, but can be easily distinguished in terms of structure. The term narrative discourse has been reserved for conversation pieces which have been developed out of quotations from the works of Guri Nanak. A shabad or a shalok by the Gurda is sometimes incorporated within a sakhi in a manner which plainly marks it as the actual origin of the story in which it is set. In such instances the Guri’s actual composition serves as his answer, or series of answers, to questions or comments which are fashioned to suit the given reply. Several simple stories, communicating the same message as the narrative anecdotes, have been constructed in this manner.

These two narrative forms provide the bulk of the material recorded by the Purdtan and Bala janam-sakhis, Bgo, the Adi Sakhis, and the Gyan- ratandvali. There are, however, two other distinctive forms which make occasional appearances in all of them. Both are discourses and both can be distinguished in terms of structure, content, and intention. One of them dominates the Miharban tradition, thereby providing a clear line of demarcation between the Miharban Janam-sakhi and all other important janam-sakhis. This line can be drawn with a sharpness which might suggest that the Miharban Janam-sakhi is not really a janam-sakhi at all. Any such conclusion would, however, mean carrying the distinction too

ORIGINS AND GROWTH OF JANAM-SAKHI TRADITIONS §9

far, for although the demarcation is certainly clear it cannot be regarded as an absolute one. The Miharban Janam-sakhi differs not because it has abandoned the characteristic features of the janam-sakhi but because it has incorporated them within something larger.

The primary difference between the distinctively Miharbdan variety of discourse and those of the narrative janam-sakhis is the consciously preceptive nature of the former. For this reason it will be referred to as didactic discourse. Once again there are individual instances which are not easy to classify, but these are very rare. The shift of interest from narrative to doctrine is usually obvious, and is plainly reflected in the discourse structure which has been developed to give expression to doctrinal concerns,

The didactic discourse is, in a sense, an extension of the narrative discourse, for it commonly uses the narrative variety as a basis. The narrative form is however little more than a point of departure, a con- venient framework within which to set the distinctively doctrinal portion of the discourse. Narrative settings and the introduction of interlocutors provide a context for the basic pedagogical purpose. This purpose was to provide an explanation or interpretation of Gurtii Nanak’s own works, an intention which seems to have been directed primarily to members of the community (or particular groups within it) but which might also extend to others outside.

The hermeneutic purpose was served by first quoting a passage from the works of Nanak and then attaching to it an exegetical supplement. Dis- courses which had already developed within the narrative traditions were appropriated for this purpose and transformed by means of adding passages of exegesis to every individual quotation of a stanza, shabad, or shalok by Gurii Nanak. These were, however, soon exhausted, and a substantial majority of the didactic discourses have been constructed with the obvious intention of expounding particular passages from the works of Nanak.

This blend of discourse and commentary constitutes the distinctive Mtharbaén approach. Examples which are to be found in other janam- sikhis normally represent borrowings from the Miharbén tradition. Each division of the Miharban Janam-sakhi is called a gost, not a sakhi, and because these divisions embody something characteristically different the term gost has been retained as a convenient means of reference when dealing with the Mtharban Janam-saékhi. Although its literal meaning is ‘discourse’ this translation will not be used for the gost form of the Mtharban tradition, this particular form being distinctively different from all other varieties of discourse. For the same reason the persons responsible for the development and transmission of the Miharban Janam-saékhi will normally be designated commentators rather than narrators.

The exegetical portion of the gost is sometimes referred to as the param- Grath. This is because the commentary which follows each quotation almost always begins with the formula tis ka paramdrath, literally ‘its sublime meaning’. The words ‘is as follows’ are understood, and the

60 ORIGINS AND GROWTH OF JANAM-SAKHi TRADITIONS

formula thus serves to distinguish the exegesis from the quotation. Modern usage does this by means of indentation, together with a separate line in the text to correspond to each line of a hymn or poem. Lacking these conventions the Miharban commentators had to devise a method of their own to mark off exegesis from quotation.!

The last major form to be noted makes only rare appearances in the janam-sakhis. This is the heterodox discourse, an independent form which has occasionally provided janam-sakhi compilers with acceptable material. The origins of these discourses are to be found in heretical doctrines and gnostic interpretation of earlier esoteric traditions (principally Nath and Safi) which have found expression in a small group of apocryphal works attributed to Guraii Nanak. Most of these compositions were of sufficient length to warrant independent circulation, and for this reason they were commonly recorded as separate works, distinct from the janam-sakhis. Their claim to authenticity was evidently viewed with suspicion by some of the compilers, but others were sufficiently impressed to include selec- tions in their janam-sakhis, All are, without doubt, spurious. Neither their curious doctrines nor their banal expression could possibly be imputed to Gurii Nanak.

The principal forms employed by the janam-sakhi narrators and commentators may thus be divided into two groups:

Narrative

1. Narrative anecdotes 2. Narrative discourses Non-narrative 1. Didactic discourses, comprising both (a) Narrative discourses, and (b) Exegetical supplements 2. Heterodox discourses These four forms together account for practically all that the janam- sakhis contain. Other forms are exceedingly rare.

The chapter describing the various janam-sakhi forms is followed by a brief examination of oral transmission procedures and of the manner in which selections drawn from oral tradition were gathered into the written collections to which the term janam-sakhi is properly applied. Four stages can be observed in the development of recorded janam-sakhis. The first is the random collection, a phase which continued long after the emergence of the more intricate second and third stages. For some compilers it was, however, and inadequate method. Random collections of anecdotes were regarded as an unsatisfactory way of narrating the Guri’s life-story and there soon emerged an impulse to order disjointed traditions into a coherent chronological sequence. This constituted the second stage. The

2 In the English translation of the Bgo Janam-sdkhi the formula tis kd paramdrath has been rendered: “The exegesis (of this stanza etc. is as follows].’ See for example B4o, ff. 118b, 119b. B4o(Eng), pp. 134, 136. In sakhi 2 of this janam-sakhi the formula is reduced to tis ka arath (perhaps an earlier form) and is translated : ‘Its meaning [is as follows).’ B40, ff. 4a-sb. B¢o(Eng), pp. 8-9.

ORIGINS AND GROWTH OF JANAM-SAKHI TRADITIONS 61

third followed when to the narrative anecdotes there were added exegetical passages; and the fourth when the introduction of the printing-press enabled particular recorded versions to be widely disseminated.

In chapter 9 the discussion proceeds to a more detailed examination of the manner in which the different kinds of sikhis evolved. This examina- tion consists largely of an analysis of representative types. In some instances an anecdotal sakhi turns out to be little more than a repetition of pre-Nanak tradition. Others are simple anecdotes which have been suggested by a particular reference in one of Nanak’s compositions, or discourses of the kind already noted which have been constructed on the basis of a complete hymn or a series of quotations. In such cases the pattern is relatively uncomplicated and requires little elucidation. Else- where the origins and structure of particular sékhis are found to be more complex. Most of the samples chosen for analysis have been taken from these more complicated sakhis. This is partly because the need for explanation is obviously greater, but also because the complex sakhis usually embody sub-sakhis which serve to illustrate the simpler forms.

The period of evolution was, of course, an extended one and is in fact still continuing. New sakhis, though now a mere trickle, are still appearing, and older sakhis are commonly modified in accordance with contemporary needs and understanding. Perhaps the most striking example of the latter feature is provided by the story of the moving mtharab.' Most janam-sakhi versions set this anecdote in Mecca and relate how Baba Nanak, when he reached the city, lay down to sleep in a mosque with his feet in the direc- tion of the mosque’s mihardab.? An outraged qazi commanded him to point his feet away from the house of God. Nanak, in reply, invited him to lay his feet ‘in whatever direction the house of God is not’.’ Accepting the invitation the qazi dragged Nanak’s feet away from the direction of the miharab, whereupon the mihardb itself moved. Wherever the qazi laid Nanak’s feet, there the mzhardb also swung round. Confounded by this miracle the qizi fell at his feet.

For modern readers a wonder story of this kind raises obvious problems. Some have suggested that the mihardb only seemed to move, but a much more popular solution has been to terminate the sakhi at the point where Nanak invites the qazi to point the offending feet ‘in whatever direction the house of God is not’, omitting all that follows except for the qazi’s submission.4 This produces a neat anecdote, one which is entirely accept- able to the modern reader. The dwelling-place of God is everywhere! It is not, however, what the earlier janam-sakhis say. What it illustrates is the continuing process of change and development. Another example of the same process has recently been provided by a new tradition concerning a visit to Sikkim (an aetiological legend explaining the appearance of rice

1 See below, pp. 137-44.

® The niche which is aligned with the Ka‘ bah, thereby indicating the gibla.

3 Bqo, f. 5r1b.

4 Teja Singh and Ganda Singh, A Short History of the Sikhs, vol. i (Bombay, 1950), p. 11. This rationalized interpretation appears in John Malcolm’s Sketch of the Sikhs (Calcutta, 1810), p. 274.

62 ORIGINS AND GROWTH OF JANAM-SAKHI TRADITIONS

and banana cropping in North Sikkim).! In this instance the new develop- ment represents an expansion of the received tradition, not a rationalizing contraction.

The last chapter of this section deals with the various sources used by janam-sakhi compilers. All the extant janam-sakhis, regardless of the stage or stages to which they belong, include anecdotes drawn from a multi- plicity of sources. Oral tradition continued to provide much supple- mentary material, but in no instance does the compiler of an extant janam-sakhi appear to have relied solely upon oral sources. All had access to at least one earlier manuscript and sometimes more than one. Needless to say the compilers do not acknowledge their various sources and the task of distinguishing them can be highly complex. The analysis included in chapter 10 covers no more than a sample. Whereas the Bgo Janam-sakhi and the Adi Sakhis are treated in some detail, references to other janam- sakhi traditions are generally limited to points of close contact with the two primary examples. Although this limitation is necessary within the scope of a single volume it is regrettable, for it must involve many omissions. Two janam-sakhis which should produce interesting responses to the same variety of analysis are the Colebrooke and early Bald versions.

1 SLTGN(Eng), pp. 329-33.

6

CONSTITUENTS OF THE JANAM-SAKHIS

1. EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF NANAK

ALTHOUGH the mass of extant janam-sakhi material must be classified as legend there can be little doubt that the earliest constituent will have been actual observation and authentic memory. There can be no doubt what- soever concerning the broad outline of Nanak’s life, nor of the fact that a community of disciples gathered around him in the village of Kartarpur during the early decades of the sixteenth century. It is also clear that many of these disciples continued to live in their own villages and expressed their devotion to the Master through regular visits to Kartarpur rather than through permanent attendance upon his person. Under such circum- stances it was inevitable that anecdotes concerning the Master should have begun to circulate amongst his dispersed followers. These early tales will have been subjected to processes of expansion and embellishment even during the lifetime of the Guri, but the basis of many of them will have been episodes from his actual experience, or authentic utterances which he had in fact made.

The problem presented by the authentic elements in the extant janam- sakhis is that of recognition. Although their presence may be undoubted so too is the extreme difficulty involved in separating them from the quantity of supplementary material which now envelops them. The historian who is concerned to identify these elements can hope to achieve a certain limited success, but the analysis is arduous and the product scant.

Fortunately the solution of this particular problem is not vital for an understanding of the janam-sakhis, nor for an appreciation of their chief importance. The importance of the janam-sakhis concerns the myth which they express, and for this expression authentic history and legend can be equally serviceable. It is the quest of the historical Nanak which imposes a rigorous obligation to separate the two. For an understanding of the myth of Nanak the separation is always of interest and can occasionally be helpful, but it is not absolutely essential. At this point it is sufficient to note that authentic incidents from the life of Nanak form one of the several constituents which have contributed to the growth of the janam- sakhis. In terms of temporal priority these authentic elements are primary and must form the basis of some of the earliest sikhis. In terms of quantity they are of relatively minor significance. For the major constituents in terms of quantity we must turn to three other elements. The first is

64 CONSTITUENTS OF THE JANAM-SAKHIS

received tradition; the second is the corpus of Nanak’s own compositions; and the third is a miscellany of ascetic ideals current during the period of janam-sakhi growth.

2. RECEIVED TRADITION

Received tradition in the Pafijab of the janam-sakhi period consisted chiefly of an amalgam of Puranic lore, tales from the Ramdyana, the Mahabharata, and the Yoga-vasistha, Nath legend, and Sifi hagiography. Occasionally it is possible to trace a connection with the Buddhist Jataka, as in the popular story of how a tree’s shadow stood still in order to shelter the sleeping child Nanak from the rays of the sun.! This is one among several prominent Wandersagen elements appearing in the janam-sakhis, mediated by a variety of received tradition. Others include triumph over carnal temptations, the miraculous opening of springs, homilies on the curse of wealth, flight on magic prayer-mats, and shelter afforded by a cobra’s distended hood.

Although the various sources can often be distinguished, it is important to remember that for the rural Panjab of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they commonly constituted a single tangled tradition. This coalescence is particularly advanced in the relationship to Puranic and Nath elements. Sifi traditions, by reason of their connection with Muslim belief, maintain a somewhat clearer definition. The difference is, however, one of degree and it is not a marked one. It would be altogether misleading to suggest that the traditions associated with celebrated Siifis were immune from the influence of native Indian traditions, or that those native tradi- tions were screened from Sifi influence. There was, in fact, no real clarity of definition. Boundaries were always blurred and commonly crossed. Details, structures, and complete anecdotes might be associated with a Safi pir, a Nath Master, or a prominent bhakta. Villagers who worshipped with equal reverence at a Saivite temple or a Muslim tomb would not always distinguish between elements drawn from the Bhagavata Purana and those which derived from the Hadith.?

This amalgam is faithfully reflected in much of the janam-sakhi material, particularly in the anecdotes which narrate encounters with Naths. Needless to say, the point should not be laboured to the extent of suggest- ing that all janam-sakhi traditions necessarily manifest this composite character. In most cases of material derived from a received tradition it is possible to identify a dominant element and to label it Puranic, Epic, Nath, or Safi. The point which does deserve to be laboured is the possi- bility of incorporating these diverse elements within a single tradition. To this possibility the extant janam-sakhis bear ample witness.

One other misunderstanding which can easily arise from the composite

1 B40, f. 9a. E. B. Cowell (ed.), The ¥ataka, vol. vi, pp. 246-7.

§ The extent to which the exchange of ideas could be carried is well illustrated in the case of Naths and Siifis by the Rushd-ndma of Sheikh ‘Abd al-Quddfis (1456-1537). S. A. A. Rizvi and S. Zaidi, Alakh Bani (Aligarh, 1971).

CONSTITUENTS OF THE JANAM-SAKHIS 65

nature of the janam-sakhis is the assumption that the teachings of Guri Nanak (as opposed to the traditions concerning his life) must necessarily reflect the same variety of synthesis. This misunderstanding is expressed in terms of a claim that the works of Nanak represent a blend of ‘Hindu- ism’ and ‘Islam’. Although a diversity of influences can certainly be detected in Nanak’s thought the synthesis to which he gave expression is not to be identified with that of the janam-sakhis. Safi influence is much more pronounced in the janam-sakhis than in the works of Nanak himself. The antecedents of Nanak’s own thought are to be found primarily in the earlier Sant synthesis, and beyond this in the distinctive belief of Vaisnava bhakti and in the hatha-yoga of the Nath tradition and other related cults.? Muslim influence, Safi and otherwise, is of marginal importance as far as the basic components of his thought are concerned. The janam-sakhis, in contrast, show abundant evidence of the influence of Sifi traditions. Whereas Nanak had found little of importance in contemporary Sifi belief which was not already present in his Sant inheritance, his disciples found much in contemporary Safi hagiography to enrich their own narratives. It is partly to the Safi borrowings in the janam-sakhis that the persistent misunderstanding of Nanak’s own antecedents can be traced.

(a) The Epics and the Puranas

Puranic and Epic elements appear in the janam-sakhis both as illustrative material and as the substance of particular sakhis. The former application, which corresponds to Guri Nanak’s own usage of details from the Epics and the Puranas, is well illustrated by a passage which the B¢o compiler appends to an earlier narrative. The anecdote relates how Raja Sivanabh tested Baba Nanak by sending beautiful women to tempt him. To emphasize their comeliness the B40 compiler adds:

Their alluring appearance was like that of the Kamkandalis, the seductive sirens of Raja Indra; or like the four temptresses of Vaikunth. Whoever looked upon them—T[even such] supermen and sages [as] the sons of Brahma, [the generations of saintly heroes from] Janak onwards [or] ascetics and master ascetics such as Rsya Srhga—would have lost their heads.?

In this instance the passage appears to be an interpolation introduced because the anecdote following it so strongly suggested the popular Epic theme of the holy man tempted. Elsewhere complete stories from the Epics or the Puranas are given a distinctively janam-sakhi expression. One example is provided by the sakhi entitled ‘The Robbers and the Funeral- pyre’,? an anecdote which can be traced to the story of Ajamila in the Bhagavata Purdna.4 Another which can be connected with a narrative in

1 GNSR, p. 160.

2 B4o, ff. 146b~147a. Particular points occurring in the quotation are explained in the footnotes to the Bgo translation. See Bgo (Eng) p. 163. The Adi Sakhis compiler, following the same source, refers only to the supermen. AS, p. 65.

3 B4o, ff. 190b—193a. Pur JS, pp. 32-3.

4 Bhdgavata Purana, v1. 2. E. Burnouf, Le Bhdgavata Purdya, vol. ii, pp. 532-41. Purnendu Narayana Sinha, A Study of the Bhdgavata Purdna (Adyar, 1950), pp. 204-6,

66 CONSTITUENTS OF THE JANAM-SAKHIiS

the Bhdgavata Purana is ‘The Encounter with Kaliyug’.! This evidently derives its basic feature (notably the personification of the Kaltyuga or ‘Age of Strife’) from the episode concerning the chastisement of Kali by King Pariksit.2 Both of these traditions entered the janam-sakhis at an early date and acquired a considerable popularity. A later example appears in the Mahima Prakdaé story of how Gurié Angad, having misunderstood a command of Baba Nanak, remained rooted to the same spot for several years while ants gradually covered him with earth.? This tale can be traced to the Mahabharata story of Rsi Chyavana.4

The most prominent of all Puranic features to appear in the janam- sakhis is Mount Sumeru (Mount Meru), legendary centre and axis of the earth and the setting for one of the most popular of all janam-sakhi dis- courses.5 In this connection the ‘Discourse on Mount Sumeruw’ is of particular interest for two reasons. First, it illustrates not merely the influence of Puranic legend, but also the manner in which Nath and Puranic tradition are inextricably linked in the janam-sakhis. The inter- locutors in the discourse are Siddhs, which in this context plainly means Nath Masters.

The second point of interest concerns the Bala version of the discourse. Puranic influence is much more pronounced in the Bald janam-sakhis than in any of the others and at no point does this distinctive Bala characteristic appear with greater prominence than in the mountain-climbing episodes which reach a climax in Baba Nanak’s ascent of Mount Sumeru.® The later BGla janam-sakhis also introduce sakhis set in Govardhan, Mathura, and Vrindaban, and from the details which they incorporate it is at once clear that they have derived their extra material from the Bhdgavata Purana.’

(b) Nath tradition

The Nath sampradaya, or sect of Nath yogis, is a feature of medieval Indian society which has received only a fragment of the attention which it deserves. This neglect derives partly from the condition of the sect when first it became an object of interest to European observers. Monserrate, who accompanied Akbar on a visit to the Nath centre at Tilla, indicates the kind of impression which the sect made upon an observer during the late fifteenth century.

When they heard of the King’s approaching visit, a huge number of the members of that sect gathered at this place, many of whom, in order to show off their sanctity, betook themselves stark naked to certain caves which either nature or

1 Bao, ff. 44a-47a. Pur ¥S, pp. 37-8. AS, pp. 28-31.

8 Bhaégavata Purdua, 1.17.28-41. Cf. also ibid. 1.18.5-10. Kaliyug is also personified in the Mahabharata, 111.58-62, 72. For another example of a janam-sakhi borrowing from the Mahdab- hdrata see below, p. 162.

3 SLTGN(Eng), p. 83. SLTGN(Pbi), p. 44. 4 Mahabharata, 111.122.

5 Bao, ff. 86a-93a. AS, pp. 36-42. Pur JS, pp. 94-7. Mih ZS 1.384-416.

® Bala 7S, pp. 200 ff. 7 Expanded 1871 edition, sakhis 251-2

CONSTITUENTS OF THE JANAM-SAKHIS 67

the art of man has made there. Many people did reverence to these naked ascetics and proclaimed their sanctity abroad. They are however extremely greedy of money: All their trickery and pretended sanctity is aimed at the acquisition of gain.

Monserrate does, however, indicate more than mere knavery. The description which he gives of the Tilla establishment is, by his standards, a lengthy one? and implies that during this period Tilla must have commanded a considerable interest. Indeed, his report that Akbar stayed four days and while there paid homage suggests that the sect commanded not just interest but positive respect. This need occasion no surprise. The ignorant and arrogant charlatans described by Monserrate and later European observers have never constituted the entire sect, and their reputation obscures the importance of their antecedents. The antecedents and the later reputation are both necessary aspects of any attempt to understand either the thought of Nanak or the content of the janam-sakhis.

The word ‘sect’ is, as always, a misleading term to use as a translation of panth or sampradaya. There were in fact several sects of Nath yogis. They are regarded as a single panth because they share a common allegiance to Gorakhnath, a common adherence to the hatha-yoga technique, and the common observance of a particular custom. This is the practice of wearing large ear-rings (mudrd), a custom which has earned them the name of Kanphat (or ‘split-ear’) yogis.®

The antecedents of the Kanphat yogis can be traced to the ancient tradition of esoteric Tantrism. This much is clear, but it does not in fact tell us much about the actual origins of the cult for it merely leads us into one of the most obscure areas of early Indian tradition. Little is known of Tantrism apart from its later expressions and it is only by inference from these later expressions that its origins and its earlier development can be described. Many of these influences relate to the geographical location of the earliest developments. It was along the northern perimeter of Aryan culture, from the Afghan highlands along the Himalayas to Assam, that . tantric beliefs evolved and flourished. This indicates alien antecedents, and the incorporation of these exotic elements within a Hindu tradition has suggested that Tantrism must represent an assimilation of the kind which enabled Hindu culture to extend into regions on its periphery. A secondary centre of Tantrism in the Dravidian country supports this theory.4

Tantrism emerges in two streams, one Buddhist and the other Hindu. The former represents an obscure blend of tantric traditions and Mahayana Buddhism; and the latter an equally obscure blend of tantric and Saivite

1 The Commentary of Father Monserrate, S.¥., trans. J. S. Hoyland (London, 1922), p. 115. For a note on Tilla see Bgo(Eng), p. 193.

2 Ibid., pp. 113-16.

3 For a description of Nath custom and belief see G. W. Briggs, Gorakhndth and the Kaénphajta Yogis (Calcutta, 1938), passim; and Shashibhusan Dasgupta, Obscure Religious Cults (Calcutta, 1962), pp. 191-255. For an account of a Nath establishment still surviving in the Pafijib see B. N. Goswamy and J. S. Grewal, The Mughals and the Jogis of Jakhbar (Simla, 1967).

4 Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (London, 1958), pp. 201-2.

68 CONSTITUENTS OF THE JANAM-SAKHIS

beliefs. Neither stream can be easily distinguished from the other, and later developments flowing from these earlier antecedents share their lack of clear definition. One important line seems to descend from Vajrayana Buddhism (the classic Buddhist form of Tantrism) through Sahajiya . Buddhism to a Vaisnava version of the Sahajiya cult and thence through the Sant tradition of Northern India to Nanak himself.1 Although the lines are by no means plain there can be no doubt concerning the Sant debt to a refined Tantrism. This is clear from the common denunciation of external forms of religion, from a common insistence upon an interior discipline, and from certain key terms which the Sants can only have derived from Sahajiya usage.

The Naths of Nanak’s day and of the period following belonged to a different lineage. Once again it is impossible to trace the line of develop- ment with any clarity, but both the tantric origins and the radical distinc- tion from the Sants are clear. The Nath Masters are commonly called Siddhs, a feature which indicates a connection with the legendary Siddh- acharyas of the Buddhist Sahajiya cult?. From this source the yogic beliefs and practices of the Naths have evidently descended without being affected by the devotional concepts of the Vaisnavas. It was bhakti belief which transformed the Sahajiya cult in its Vaignava expression. Un- affected by this deviant development the Naths continued the distinctively hatha-yoga version of the Sahajiya kadya-sddhana (‘culture of the body’). A particular prominence was accorded to belief in the nine Naths, -the legendary Masters who had achieved immortality through perfection in hatha-yoga and who dwelt eternally in the further recesses of the Himalayas. Various lists of names are given for the nine Nath Masters, all of them including the celebrated Gorakhnath. Some lists name Mahadeva (Siva) as one of the nine distinct from Gorakhnath, whereas others merge the two.®

By the sixteenth century the various Nath sects had achieved a con- siderable diffusion over Northern India, with two major centres in the Pafijab and Nepal. They were by this time in decline, but still commanded awe and a certain grudging respect for their extreme asceticism and their reputation as wonder-workers. The extent of their influence in the Pafijab is plainly indicated by the number of compositions which Nanak addresses to Nath yogis. The same compositions also demonstrate the vigorous nature of Nanak’s opposition to their teachings and their practices.

The reputation of the Naths continued into the janam-sakhi period and its influence upon the evolving janam-sakhi traditions is patently clear. The attitude of the janam-sakhi narrators is ambivalent. On the one hand they naturally accept the case made by Nanak, and in both discourse and magical contest the Naths are always worsted. On the other hand they give expression toa genuine respect forthe person of Gorakhnath. Although long since dead at the time when the janam-saékhis were developing Gorakhnath is a prominent choice as interlocutor for Nanak’s discourses, and the pattern

1 Shashibhusan Dasgupta, op. cit., pp. 51-2, 164-5, 345-6. GNSR, pp. 151-8, 191-2, 224-5.

® Shashibhusan Dasgupta, op. cit., p. 202. 3 [bid., pp. 191-7, 202-9.

CONSTITUENTS OF THE JANAM-SAKHIS 69

which these discourses follow is generally one of accord between the two participants rather than the customary defeat.! It is Gorakhnath who indicates a choice of succession to Baba Nanak? and in the Mahima Praka§ tradition it is he who first recognizes Nanak’s greatness.®

One of the most prominent of the Nath discourses, “The Discourse on Mount Sumeru’, has already been noted as an example of the manner in which the janam-sakhis combine Nath and Puranic legend in a single tradition. In this respect they merely reflect the Naths’ own understanding and that of sixteenth-century Pafijab. The actual origin of this particular discourse is a series of shaloks by Guru Nanak which refer to several of the Nath Masters by name.4 To the names given by Nanak and the questions implied by his verses the janam-sakhis have added the Puranic setting and many of the details needed in order to sustain the narrative. The chosen setting indicates that the legend concerning the immortal Masters was implicitly accepted by the janam-sakhi narrators and their audiences. It also illustrates the common confusion of the nine immortal Naths with the eighty-four immortal Siddhs. Whereas the names of the interlocutors are those of Nath Masters, Bhai Gurdas and all his successors refer to them as representatives of the eighty-four Siddhs.5

A sakhi which owes rather more to the current reputation of the Naths is the Achal discourse. Like the Mount Sumeru discourse this sakhi derives in part from Nath-oriented compositions by Nanak, but it deals with yogis rather than immortal Masters and accords a particular promin- ence to their reputed power as wonder-workers. In the Purdtan janam- sikhis the wonder-working material is incorporated in a sakhi set in Gor-khatri, a Nath centre in Peshawar.? Other discourse settings are Tilla,® Gorakh-mata,® Setu-bandha,?° and ‘in the midst of the ocean’.!!

Most of the discourses are, like the Mount Sumeru sakhi, only partially derived from Nath legend. The basis is generally provided by a shabad or series of shaloks from the works of Gurii Nanak, almost always a com- position which by terminology or actual name indicates a Nath audience. Nath legend serves to supplement this basis with appropriate settings, details, and occasionally a sub-sakhi. It is an important supplement, one which bears eloquent testimony to the continuing influence of Nath yogis upon rural Pafijab. The same influence emerges even more promin- ently in the apocryphal Pradn Sangali, a work attributed to Nanak but expressing Nath concepts of precisely the kind rebutted by the Gurii in his authentic compositions. The Prdy Sazigali, having penetrated the Sikh community or evolved within it, was soon appropriated by janam-sakhi

1 Cf. Bgo saikhis 23, 27b, and 53, ff. 86a-93b, 106b—110a, 208a—2092.

2 Bao, f. 93a. 3 SLTGN(Eng), pp. 59-60. GNM, pp. 7-8.

4 Var Ramhkali, 12:2-7, AG, pp. 952-3. GNSR, p. 11.

5 BG 1:28. B4o, f. 86a.

6 Bago, ff. 117a-122a. See below, pp. 146-58.

7 Pur JS, pp. 104-6. GNSR, p. 49. The janam-sakhis call the place Gorakh-hatari. See below, pp. 146-51.

® Bgo, f. 182a. Mth JS 1.469. Bala JS, pp. 308-11.

» GR, p. 203. Pur JS, pp. 27-8. 10 Bala JS, pp. 282-7. 11 Pur JS, p. 84.

70 CONSTITUENTS OF THE JANAM-SAKHIS

compilers.! Other apocryphal works used as sources for the janam-sakhis provide further evidence of Nath influence in certain sections of the post- Nanak community. An example is the B4o sakhi ‘Discourse with Kabir’.?

One anecdote which can be traced directly to a Nath source appears in the sakhi entitled ‘The Country ruled by Women’.? This anecdote has enjoyed a notable popularity amongst the compilers of janam-sakhis and varying versions are to be found in all collections except the Miharban Janam-sakhi. The source of the anecdote is plainly the Nath legend which relates the seduction of Machhendranath (Matsyendranath, or Minanath). According to this legend Machhendraniath, while in the womb of a fish, overheard Siva expounding the secret of the universe to his consort Gauri. Machhendranath subsequently made slighting remarks concerning Gauri and as a result of her curse was transformed into a sheep by the women of Kadali. From this sorry fate he was rescued by Gorakhnath.4 In spite of its more grotesque elements the janam-sakhis’ version of the anecdote has enjoyed a continuing popularity because two of them set it in an area variously called Kaurt or Kari. This obviously indicates Kamrip, long regarded as the home of Tantrism and the darker magical crafts. Modern biographers have assumed that the Kamrip setting indicates a visit by Guri Nanak to Assam.5

(c) Sufi tradition

In the use which they make of Nath contacts the janam-sakhi compilers were, in large measure, following a pattern which had earlier been developed in Safi hagiography. A recent study of this aspect of Sifi tradition enumerates three varieties of anecdote concerning encounters between yogis and Siifi pirs.

Three classes of anecdotes regarding Jogis in the Sifi literature of the Dehli

Sultanate can be arranged in a series of progressive elaboracy viz:—

(1) Plain anecdotes of the voluntary conversion of Jogis followed by their attain- ment of a high ‘station’ on the Sifi ‘path’.

(2) Anecdotes of magic contests leading to the subjugation and conversion of the Jogi, again usually followed by his attainment of a high Sifi station.

(3) Anecdotes of magic contest and conversion which have a regional significance, in that the Jogi is displaced as the locum tenens of a sacred or otherwise desirable site by the Sifi Shaykh. Professing Islam and attaining a Sifi ‘station’, the Jogi is accommodated in a subordinate capacity on the same holy site, or as an esteemed member of the Shaykh’s entourage.®

This list indicates a striking but altogether natural similarity of Safi and janam-sakhi styles. The only significant difference is the extensive use

1 See below, pp. 103-4. 3 B4o, ff. 136a-138a, 3 Bago, ff. 83a-8sb. Pur JS, pp. 33-7. AS, pp. 26-8. « Shashibhusan Dasgupta, op. cit., pp. 201-2, 244, 368n. 5 GNSR, pp. 110-12.

8 S. Digby, unpublished paper, ‘Encounters with Jogis in Indian Sufi Hagiography’. For a discussion of the influence of Nath doctrine upon Indian SOfis see S. A. A. Rizvi, ‘Sufis and Natha Yogis in Mediaeval Northern India (XII-XVI Centuries)’, Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia, vol. vii, nos. 1 and 2, pp. 119-33.

CONSTITUENTS OF THE JANAM-SAKHIS 71

made by the janam-sakhi narrators of passages from the works of Nanak.

The close resemblance at this particular point indicates one of the janam-sakhi affinities with Sufi hagiography. Other debts of an even more obvious nature can be observed throughout the janam-sakhi collections. Just as the Nath discourses bear witness to a continuing Nath influence in the Pafijab of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so in like manner do the numerous encounters with Sifi pirs testify to the extent of Sifi influence. It must, however, be stressed that the influence derived from the hagiography of the Sifis and the personal fame of some of the more prominent pirs. It did not derive from any extensive understanding of Muslim doctrine. Knowledge of the doctrines of Islam and the contents of the Qur’an is conspicuously absent from the janam-sakhis. The insistent interest of the janam-sakhi narrators in folklore traditions and their general ignorance of Muslim doctrines are both well illustrated by the following extract from the Bald account of Baba Nanak’s visit to Mecca.

It is written in the gibla that one day a dervish named Nanak will come and that water will spring in the well of Mecca.!

Once again there emerges a contrast between the understanding of the janam-sakhis and that of Nanak himself. Gura Nanak, though relatively little influenced by Muslim doctrine, certainly possessed an extensive knowledge of it and commonly made use of its terminology.

In some instances janam-sakhi narrators have incorporated distinctively Safi features in anecdotes concerning Baba Nanak. Many of these are easily recognized, particularly those which use a demonstrably Muslim context for stories involving miraculous locomotion, levitation, or tai-t-safar (instantaneous transportation achieved by the mere closing of the eyes). The B4o story of the moving mosque of Kabul illustrates this variety of miraculous locomotion,? and Bhai Gurdas provides an example of levitation in his account of how Baba Nanak ascended into the air during his visit to Baghdad. The tai-i-safar tradition has been of occasional use to janam-sakhi compilers who have not followed chronological patterns in their order of sakhis. When confronted by an evident need to explain how Baba Nanak could traverse hundreds of miles in an instant they commonly found their solution in recourse to the example of Safi hagiographers.4

One specific application by the Siifis of their belief in miraculous move- ment of objects as a proof of spiritual power is the tradition that the Ka‘bah may revolve around a pir of the most exalted status. Ordinarily the Muslim circumambulates the Ka‘bah, but in cases of supreme spiritual achievement the roles are reversed. It seems clear that one of the key elements in the janam-sakhi story of the moving mihardb should be traced

1 Bala ¥S, p. 184. The Purdtan janam-sakhis give kitdbdn instead of gibla. Pur JS, p. 99.

3 Byo, f. 154b.

3 BG 1:36. GNSR, p. 35.

4 This is a common feature in the chronologically disorganized Bala janam-sakhis. Cf. also B4o, ff. 123b, 133b, 157a, 178a.

72 CONSTITUENTS OF THE JANAM-SAKHIS

to this tradition.! Although the earliest version of the sakhi appears to have been given a setting away from Mecca? the movement of a mtharadb amounts to the same thing as movement of the Ka‘bah. The mtharab marks the gibla (the direction of the Ka‘bah), and a mobile mitharadb can only mean a corresponding movement of the Ka‘bah.

In all of these Sifi instances the janam-sakhi anecdote has been consti- tuted by a combining of recognizably Sifi elements with other material. This is the characteristic form of janam-saékhi borrowing. Occasionally, however, two other forms of direct borrowing may be noted. The first is the narration of a Sifi anecdote in a manner which retains its earlier connection with a Safi pir, but which sets the entire episode in the context of an encounter with Baba Nanak. An example of this form is the Purdtan story of a meeting with Sheikh Farid in the legendary land of Asa. One of the three anecdotes included in this sakhi describes Farid’s attempt to maintain a rigorous ascetic discipline by carrying a wooden loaf (chapati). This he did in order to provide an excuse for refusing proffered food. The anecdote, which properly belongs to the traditions concerning Farid, retains this connection in the Purdtan janam-sakhis. The difference is that the meeting with Baba Nanak convinces Farid of the dangerous hypocrisy involved in the stratagem, as a result of which he abandons the wooden chapdati.®

Elsewhere a complete, or substantially complete, anecdote borrowed from Safi hagiography has been deprived of its Safi context and attached directly to the person of Baba Nanak. The most striking example is Bhai Gurdias’s story of Nanak’s encounter with the pirs of Multin.* This anecdote, which is discussed below as an example of a Wandersage,> has obviously been taken directly from Sifi traditions centring on Multan. Another example, also derived from a Multan source, is the Sifi tradition concerning the manner in which Sheikh Baha’ al-Din Zakariyya died.®

In addition to the direct borrowings, Safi influence is also evident in the choice of interlocutors for several of the janam-sakhi discourses. Safi pirs commanded a considerable respect in the Panjab of the janam-sakhi period and it was of vital importance to the purpose of the janam-sakhis that their reputations should be eclipsed by that of Baba Nanak. The fact that the more impressive of Sifi reputations were attached to pirs long since dead did not affect the need to involve such men in discourses with Nanak and to demonstrate the superiority of the latter. There is no suggestion of conscious deceit at this point. Neither the janam-sakhi narrators nor their audiences were historians. History and legend could both serve their purpose and, as we have already observed, a consciousness of sharp distinctions between the two should never be expected in the janam-sakhis. The discourses held with Sifi pirs of earlier centuries must be regarded as illustrations of the Nanak myth of the janam-sakhis rather than as examples of their narrators’ credulity.

1 Bgo, f. stb. 2 See below, p. 140. 3 Pur JS, p. 45. GNSR, pp. 42, 80. 4 BG 1:44. GNSR, pp. 35, 142. 5 See below, pp. 118-20. ® See below, p. 119n.

CONSTITUENTS OF THE JANAM-SAKHis 73

As a result of this need to contest the hold of Sifi tradition the janam- sikhi compilers have sprinkled a series of appropriate discourses through their collections. In the B4o ¥anam-sakhi Baba Nanak is said to have encountered, at various times, Rukn al-Din, Rattan Haji, Ibrahim Farid Sani, and Sharaf al-Din.1 Of these only Sheikh Ibrahim could have been a contemporary of Gura Nanak. With the exception of Rattan Haji all appear in the Purdtan janam-sakhis, where they are joined by Farid al-Din Mas‘iid Ganj-i-Shakar and Baha’ al-Din Zakariyya,? both of whom had long predeceased the birth of Nanak. Other janam-sakhis add more names. Bhai Gurdas and the Miharban Janam-sakhi both describe encounters with ‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani;? the Mahima Prakd§ Varatak introduces Sakhi Sarvar Sultén;4 and eventually Santokh Singh finds a place for the celebrated Shams al-Din Tabrizi, Pir of Multan and preceptor of Rimi.® The same figure does not always appear in the same setting. Sheikh Sharaf is variously located in Panipat, Baghdad, Bidar, and Mecca; Rukn al-Din is to be found in Mecca and Multan; and Jilani in Baghdad and Kartarpur. Inconsistencies of this kind are, however, of no more import- ance than the fact that all three pirs were long since dead. It is the pirs’ function which is important.

3. THE WORKS OF GURU NANAK

A second major constituent in the formation of the janam-sakhi traditions was provided by references in Nanak’s own works. One important example of this feature has already been noted. In Var Ramkali, shaloks 2-7 of pauri 12, Gura Nanak refers by name to Igar, Gorakh, Gopichand, Charapat, and Bharathari, all of whom figure prominently in lists of the seven legendary Nath Masters.® Whereas Guri Nanak’s own intention was clearly the expression of an imaginary dialogue, the janam-sakhi narrators quickly assumed an actual encounter. Elements from Puranic and Nath legend were added and the result was the ever-popular ‘Discourse on Mount Sumeru’. Other compositions employing Nath names and termino- logy prompted similar discourses, and in like manner works which made prominent use of Muslim tradition or imagery soon found their way into sakhis describing encounters with Safi pirs. Works of this kind rarely indicate a specifically Safi audience, but Sifis were, like Nath yogis, prominent in seventeenth-century Pafijab and it is natural that the janam- sakhis should reflect this prominence.

1 Bgo, ff. 53a, 56a, 57b, 2002. ® Pur JS, pp. 22, 40, §2, 82, 100, 104, 108.

3 BG 1:35-6. Mth JS 11.179. Bhai Gurdis refers to him as Dastgir, one of the many names applied to Jilani. GNSR, p. 126.

4 SLTGN(Eng), p. 72. For notes on Sakhi Sarvar see W. Crooke, The Popular Religion and Fotk- lore of Northern India, vol. ii (London, 1896), pp. 208-11; R. C. Temple, The Legends of the Panjab, vol. i (Bombay and London, 1884), p. 66; and GTC i, p. 566.

5 NPr 11.37(4). See Bgo (Eng), p. 59n. See also R. C. Temple, op. cit., vol. iii, pp, go-1. R. A. Nicholson, Rumi: Poet and Mystic (London, 1950), p. 19. ASI 1872-73, p. 135. Alexander Burnes, Travels into Bokhara, vol. iii (London, 1839), pp. 116-17.

® AG, pp. 952-3. See above, p. 69 and below, p. 148.

74 CONSTITUENTS OF THE JANAM-SAKHIS

In such cases a complete shabad would normally be responsible for the discourse or anecdote. Elsewhere a brief reference or even a single word might be sufficient to spark the imagination. The words Jalo in Tilang 5, sajjan in Sahi 3, and mila in Surplus Shaloks 21 have all been interpreted as proper names and as such have served as starting-points for prominent anecdotes.

Sakhis which have been developed out of compositions by Gurii Nanak are a common feature of all janam-sakhis. When, as in most instances, the resultant sakhi takes the form of a discourse the process is generally as follows. Gurii Nanak’s own words, as expressed in a suggestive shabad or shalok, provide, as a nucleus for the discourse, answers to an interlocutor’s questions. A suitable person is chosen to serve as interlocutor (one to whom Nanak’s words might appropriately have been directed), and the questions or comments to be uttered by him are framed in accordance with the known answer. This provides the basic pattern. The interlocutor’s question or comment is followed by a shalok or by the first stanza of a shabad. Another question or comment is followed by the second stanza or another shalok, and so the discourse proceeds until the shabad has been completed or the supply of suitable shaloks is exhausted. A setting is provided in order to introduce the discourse and in a brief conclusion the interlocutor submits to the Guri.

This is the standard procedure. It is, however, by no means invariable. A narrator’s imagination was not limited to the images suggested by the text of Guri: Nanak’s actual compositions and commonly it would range much more widely. This was particularly the case when the starting-point for a sakhi was provided by a single word or reference. It was, for example, inevitable that Nanak’s references to Babur and, in a less explicit way, to the Mughal invasions should attract attention. The resultant sakhis do not, however, follow the pattern indicated by any of the shabads which include these references, for in no case are they well suited to discourse purposes. Instead the narrators utilize traditions concerning Babur (notably the belief that he was a clandestine qalandar) and authentic memories relating to the Mughal conquest of the Pafijab. The shabads evidently prompt the anecdotes and in this sense constitute their origin, but make only a small contribution to the substance of the narrative.?

The imagination of the narrator finds further expression during the