Guru Kian Sakhianਗੁਰੂ ਕੀਆਂ ਸਾਖੀਆਂ

Guru Kian Sakhian is a prose history of the Sikh Gurus written in 1790 by Bhatt Sarup Singh Kaushish, a family bard from Bhadson near Thanesar. In 112 short stories, called sakhis, it tells the lives of the five latter Gurus, from Guru Hargobind to Guru Gobind Singh Ji, drawing on the genealogical records kept by the Bhatt bards.

What is Guru Kian Sakhian?

The name means the stories of the Gurus. A sakhi is a story or anecdote told to teach or to remember, and the book is made of 112 of them. It is a narrative in prose, not verse, which sets it apart from most early Sikh histories, which were written as poetry. Its language is a mixture of Punjabi and Hindi, with words from the Bhatts' own vocabulary, and it gives dates for its events, often to the very day.

The book covers only the five latter Gurus. It says nothing about Guru Nanak Dev Ji and the first four Gurus. It begins abruptly with the doings of Guru Hargobind at Kiratpur. Most of it, 79 of the 112 sakhis, concerns Guru Gobind Singh Ji, and three sakhis in the middle concern Dhir Mal, Ram Rai and Bhar Mal, figures from the Guru's own family circle.

The author and the Bhatt bards

The Bhatts were family bards. They visited their clients at the end of each season and wrote down births, deaths, marriages and other events in their vahis, genealogical record books. The first Guru to have Bhatts in attendance was Guru Arjan. Some of them became devout Sikhs, and their hymns in praise of Guru Arjan and his predecessors are preserved in the Guru Granth Sahib. Their descendants took part in Guru Hargobind's battles, and wrote down in their vahis events from the lives of the Gurus.

The author, Bhatt Sarup Singh Kaushish, came from Bhadson in the Thanesar parganah, in what is now Haryana. His name does not appear in the colophon at the end of the manuscript, so the authorship is attributed to him rather than proved. The colophon says the manuscript was completed in 1847 Bk, that is 1790, at Bhadson itself. He was a Bhatt, one of the priestly bards who lived by keeping their clients' genealogies.

His sources were the Bhatt Vahis kept by his ancestors, who had remained in attendance on Guru Gobind Singh and had seen most of the events of his court and camp. He also drew on other early works: Mehma Parkash by Sarup Das Bhalla, Parchian Sewa Das, and the Malwa Des Ratan Ki Sakhi Pothi.

What the book covers: five Gurus in 112 stories

The 112 sakhis divide as follows: four for Guru Hargobind, nine for Guru Har Rai, four for Guru Har Krishan, sixteen for Guru Tegh Bahadur, and seventy-nine for Guru Gobind Singh. The early sakhis tell of Guru Hargobind's doings around Kiratpur, Guru Har Rai's travels and his son Ram Rai's part after his expulsion from the Panth, and Guru Har Krishan.

Guru Tegh Bahadur's sixteen sakhis follow his travels, including journeys to Patna and Assam, and the coming of the Kashmiri Brahmins to Chak Nanki. The Guru Gobind Singh sakhis are the heart of the book: his battles, the abolition of the masands, the creation of the Khalsa, the code of conduct of the Khalsa in sakhis 59 and 60, and, in the last sakhi of all, number 112, the investing of the Adi Granth with the Guruship by Guru Gobind Singh before he passed away.

The book also records that Baba Banda Singh Bahadur received the rites of the Khalsa at the hands of Guru Gobind Singh. It is one of the few early sources to say so plainly, and that single claim has made it a much-quoted book in modern Sikh writing.

How the book reached us: lost originals and a 1986 printing

The book as we have it today is several steps removed from Kaushish's pen. He wrote it in Bhattachchhari, also called Bhattakhri, a form of Devanagari without vowel symbols, the script the Bhatts used for their records. It was transliterated into Gurmukhi by Chhajju Singh Kaushish, a descendant of the author, in 1868 or 1869. The sources differ by a year.

Neither the original in Bhattakhri nor the Gurmukhi version survives. The text in circulation today comes from a copy made by Giani Garja Singh from another copy that belonged to Sant Gurdit Singh of Dabwali Malko Ki, near Malout. Garja Singh's copy was revised and re-edited by Piara Singh Padam, and the book was published in that form at Patiala in 1986.

The Bhatt Vahis themselves only came to light in the 1960s, largely through Garja Singh's work. In 1978 the Department of Guru Nanak Studies at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, began a research project on the Bhatt and Panda Vahis. An English adaptation by Pritpal Singh Bindra, a Toronto-based educationist, was published by Singh Brothers in 2005, with an introduction and annotations by Pal Singh Purewal, who checked the dates in the text.

Can Guru Kian Sakhian be trusted as history?

The honest answer is that it must be used with care. Professional historians are still sceptical about its origin, and the book has never been put through the rigorous testing that would settle its authenticity. Pratibha Chawla noted in 2024 that the Bhatts did not keep their records for a scholarly purpose but to serve their role in the purohit and jajman system of patron and client, so their entries need to be treated carefully by scholars.

The dates are the biggest problem. The book gives the creation of the Khalsa as 1698 in sakhi 58, a year before the accepted date of 1699. It places Guru Gobind Singh's birth at Patna in December 1661, five years before the accepted 1666. It sends Guru Tegh Bahadur to Patna in 1656, before he had assumed the Guruship, and it describes Guru Har Rai travelling in Jammu and Kashmir and Guru Gobind Singh sojourning there and in Lakhi Jungle in 1692. None of these is corroborated by any other source.

The same weakness shows in the Bhat Vahi entry the book leans on. An entry in the Bhat Vahi Poorbi Dakhni gives Guru Gobind Singh's birth in 1661, yet calls Guru Tegh Bahadur the ninth Guru at a time when Guru Har Krishan held the Guruship, and describes Patna as standing on the banks of the Jamuna. Pal Singh Purewal, who checked the dates in the book, found internal conflicts between the elements of dates and judged that some of them were calculated or concocted rather than taken from a reliable record. A few English words also appear in the text, plainly anachronistic, which scholars explain as errors by copyists.

What makes it valuable despite the doubts

For all that, the book contains material found nowhere else. Its graphic account of the Khalsa code of conduct in sakhis 59 and 60, and of the Adi Granth being invested with the Guruship in sakhi 112, are not available in any other early source. Its account of the amrit ceremony is fuller than any contemporary account, and its basic elements accord with the Sikh Rehat Maryada approved in 1945.

The book is also a feast of dates: even where a date is wrong, it shows how the tradition remembered an event. Balwant Singh Dhillon, who appraised the book, concluded that judicious, cautious and selective use of it can fill gaps in the history of the Sikh Gurus, and modern historians are paying it increasing attention.

It is also one of the earliest prose accounts in Sikh literature. Parchian Sewa Das, dated 1708, is probably the earliest prose narration of episodes from Guru Gobind Singh's life, and Kaushish's book, written 82 years later, is among the first to follow it in prose, at a time when most Sikh histories were still written in verse.

Guru Kian Sakhian and the other early histories

The book is easily confused with its neighbours, so it helps to keep them apart. The janamsakhis are life stories of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, hagiographic in character and much earlier in spirit. Sri Gur Sobha, by Sainapati, was begun in 1701 and completed in 1711, a verse account by a poet of Guru Gobind Singh's court. The Bansavalinama of Kesar Singh Chhibber, completed in 1769, is a verse genealogy of the ten Gurus.

Prachin Panth Prakash, by Rattan Singh Bhangu Ji and finished in the early 1810s, is a verse history of the Khalsa in the 18th century, and Suraj Parkash, by Kavi Santokh Singh Ji and completed in 1843, is a verse life of the ten Gurus in more than 51,000 verses. Panth Parkash, by Giani Gian Singh, first published at Delhi in 1880, reworked Bhangu's book. Among all of these, Guru Kian Sakhian stands alone as the prose account built on the Bhatts' own records, and the only one that begins with Guru Hargobind.