Bhai Gurdas Jiਭਾਈ ਗੁਰਦਾਸ ਜੀ

Early life

Gurdas Bhalla was born in 1551 at Basarke Gillan, a village near Amritsar in Punjab. He was the only child of Bhai Ishar Das and Mata Jivani, and the nephew of Guru Amar Das, the third Sikh Guru. Gurdas lost his mother when he was about three years old and his father when he was twelve; the orphaned boy was taken in and raised by Guru Amar Das himself.

Under the Guru's care, Gurdas received an unusually wide education for his time. He studied Punjabi, Sanskrit, Braj Bhasha and Persian at Sultanpur Lodhi, listened to the scholars and holy men who passed through Goindwal on the Delhi-Lahore road, and later travelled to Varanasi to study Sanskrit and the Hindu scriptures. After Guru Amar Das passed away, Guru Ram Das sent the young scholar to Agra as a Sikh missionary.

Scribe of the Adi Granth

Bhai Gurdas Ji formed his closest bond with Guru Arjan, the fifth Guru, who treated him with deep respect and regarded him as his maternal uncle, his mama. When Guru Arjan undertook the great project of gathering the hymns of the Gurus and the saint-poets into a single volume, he chose Bhai Gurdas as his amanuensis.

Working under the Guru's direction, Bhai Gurdas wrote out the entire Adi Granth, the scripture later enthroned as the Guru Granth Sahib. The task took nearly nineteen years and was completed in 1604. He also supervised four other scribes who assisted with related scriptural writings. Such was his humility that, although Guru Arjan invited him to include his own compositions, Bhai Gurdas declined, unwilling to place his own poetry beside the Guru's word.

Some years earlier, around 1597, Bhai Gurdas had recited the new hymns before Emperor Akbar at Kartarpur. The emperor had wondered whether the scripture contained anything hostile to Islam; after hearing the recitation he went away satisfied that it carried no anti-Muslim message.

First Jathedar of the Akal Takht

In 1577 Bhai Gurdas had joined the Sikh congregation in digging the sacred pool at Amritsar. Three decades later he helped raise another landmark: when Guru Hargobind revealed the Akal Takht in 1606, its structure was completed by Baba Buddha and Bhai Gurdas, with no mason or outsider allowed to take part in the work.

When Guru Hargobind was imprisoned at Gwalior Fort in 1612, he entrusted the Takht to Bhai Gurdas, naming him its first Jathedar. Bhai Gurdas led a group of Sikhs to Gwalior in support of the Guru during his captivity, and after the Guru's release he was sent to preach in Kabul, Kashmir, Rajputana and Varanasi, carrying the Guru's message as far as Sri Lanka. He held the office of Jathedar until his death.

Varan Bhai Gurdas and the Kabit Sawaiye

Bhai Gurdas's literary legacy rests on two great works. The first is the Varan Bhai Gurdas, also called the Varan Gyan Ratnavali: forty long Vars, or ballads, in Punjabi, made up of 912 Pauris. Written at Guru Arjan's request, the Vars explain Sikh theology and ethics in plain language, opening up ideas such as sangat, haumai, Naam, and the difference between the Gurmukh and the Manmukh. The opening Var narrates the life of Guru Nanak, and Bhai Mani Singh later treated it as the only fully trustworthy janamsakhi tradition.

The second work is the Kabit Sawaiye: 675 stanzas in Brij Bhasha, philosophical poems on spiritual discipline that are still sung in congregations alongside Gurbani. He also composed six Chhands of eight verses each in Sanskrit.

Why are Bhai Gurdas's writings called the key to the Guru Granth Sahib?

Guru Arjan himself is reported to have designated the Vars as the key to the scripture: read Bhai Gurdas first, and the Guru's own hymns open up. Later generations of Sikhs took the saying to heart, and the Vars came to be known as the kunji, the key, to the Guru Granth Sahib. Their standing is unique: apart from the Guru Granth Sahib and the Dasam Granth, the writings of Bhai Gurdas, along with those of Bhai Nand Lal, are the only non-scriptural works permitted to be recited in Sikh worship. For anyone approaching the scripture for the first time, the Vars remain the classic doorway in.

Legacy

Bhai Gurdas never married, devoting his scholarship, his poetry and his labour entirely to the Sikh cause under four Gurus, from Guru Amar Das to Guru Hargobind. He died on 25 August 1636 at Goindwal, at about eighty-five, and Guru Hargobind personally performed his funeral rites.

More than three and a half centuries later, his influence is undiminished. The Adi Granth he inscribed by hand became the eternal Guru of the Sikhs, and his Vars are still read, sung and studied wherever Punjabi is spoken. Few figures in Sikh history combined the scribe's hand, the scholar's mind and the preacher's voice as completely as Bhai Gurdas did.