Bhai Kahn Singh Nabhaਭਾਈ ਕਾਨ੍ਹ ਸਿੰਘ ਨਾਭਾ

Early life

Kahn Singh was born on 30 August 1861 in the village of Sabaz Banera in what was then Patiala State, into the Sikh family of Narain Singh and Har Kaur. He was the eldest of four children. His father later took charge of Gurdwara Dera Baba Ajaypal Singh at Nabha, and the family became closely tied to the princely state of Nabha — the place from which Kahn Singh would take his lasting name.

A self-taught scholar

Kahn Singh never attended a school or college, yet few scholars of his generation matched his learning. By the age of ten he could quote freely from both the Guru Granth Sahib and the Dasam Granth. In Nabha he studied Sanskrit classics with local pandits and trained under the musicologist Mahant Gajja Singh; in Delhi he studied Persian with mawlawis. His command of Punjabi, Hindi, Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and English gave him access to an unusually wide range of texts, and it was this self-directed, multilingual education that made his later work possible.

In the service of Nabha

Kahn Singh served the princely state of Nabha for decades, rising through its ranks on merit. In 1887 he was appointed tutor to Ripudaman Singh, the heir apparent of Nabha. He went on to serve as Deputy Commissioner in 1896, as the personal secretary of Maharaja Hira Singh, as Foreign Minister in 1911, and as a judge of the High Court in 1912. Between 1915 and 1917 he also served the neighbouring Patiala State. His administrative career ran in parallel with his literary one, and the patronage of the princely states — especially Patiala — would prove decisive for his greatest work.

The Singh Sabha and Ham Hindu Nahin

In 1883 Kahn Singh assisted Gurmukh Singh, a leader of the Singh Sabha movement, in publishing the reformist journal Sudhararak. In 1885 he met the British civil servant and scholar Max Arthur Macauliffe, beginning a lifelong friendship and scholarly collaboration; Macauliffe relied heavily on Kahn Singh's guidance while researching his six-volume The Sikh Religion, and so admired him that he assigned him the copyright of the published work. In 1898 Kahn Singh published Ham Hindu Nahin (We Are Not Hindus), arguing that Sikhism and the Sikhs form a distinct religion and identity. The work was controversial — Maharaja Hira Singh briefly removed him from service after complaints — but he was soon restored, going on to serve as the state's envoy to the Political Agent for the Phulkian States and Bahawalpur. Kahn Singh is counted among the leading figures of the Tat Khalsa wing of the Singh Sabha movement.

The Mahan Kosh

Kahn Singh's magnum opus is the Gur Shabad Ratnakar Mahan Kosh, the Sikh encyclopedia. He began the work in 1912 and laboured over it for fourteen years, completing it in 1926. The princely state of Patiala published it in 1930, spending Rs. 51,000 on the undertaking. The finished work ran to 3,338 pages in four volumes and was priced at Rs. 110. Organised alphabetically in Gurmukhi, the Mahan Kosh gives the meaning, etymology, and scriptural usage of words from the Guru Granth Sahib, the Dasam Granth, and the works of Sikh saints and poets, alongside entries on Sikh theology, philosophy, history, geography, rituals, historical battles, martyrdoms, and biographical sketches of figures such as Banda Singh Bahadur and Bhai Mani Singh. It was the first encyclopedia of Sikh literature in Punjabi, and nearly a century later it remains the most reliable reference work for research on Sikh faith, history, and Punjabi culture — a resource that inspired generations of scholars after him.

Other works

Beyond the Mahan Kosh, Kahn Singh wrote prolifically. His Gurmat Prabhakar (1898) and Gurmat Sudhakar (1899) remain standard guides to understanding Sikhism, condemning superstition and grounding Sikh belief and practice in scriptural and historical evidence. Raj Dharam was his first book, published at government expense while he served Maharaja Hira Singh. He edited works including Roop Deep Pingal (1925), Anekarthak Kosh (1925), Gur Chhand Diwana (1924), and Gur Shabdalankar (1924), published the magazine Khalsa Gazette, and is regarded as one of the founders of the weekly Khalsa Akhbar. Gurmat Martand, a two-volume work codifying Sikh theological concepts, was published posthumously in 1962, while his Gur Mahima Sangraha — biographies of famous Punjabi and Hindi poets — remains unpublished.

Legacy

Kahn Singh died at Nabha on 23 November 1938, aged 77. Principal Teja Singh judged his knowledge of Sikh scripture and history to be profound and unrivalled, and the Mahan Kosh has been reprinted repeatedly in print and digital formats, consulted by universities, scholars, writers, and linguists across the world. At a time when Punjabi was struggling for recognition against Urdu and English, his work demonstrated the richness and sophistication of the Punjabi language and helped secure its scholarly standing. In Nabha, his name lives on in institutions such as the Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha Library, and in Sikh scholarship he is remembered as the encyclopedist who gave an entire tradition its reference work.