Bachittar Natakਬਚਿਤ੍ਰ ਨਾਟਕ

Bachittar Natak is the autobiographical composition traditionally attributed to Guru Gobind Singh Ji, the tenth Sikh Guru, and a central part of the Dasam Granth. Its name means the wonderful play. Across fourteen chapters it tells the story of his family, his previous birth, his early life and the battles he fought up to 1696.

What is Bachittar Natak?

The name breaks into two words. Bachittar means wonderful or marvellous, and natak means a play or drama. Yet the work is no stage play. It is a life story told in verse, and readers have long called it by a second name, Apni Katha, which means my story.

It sits inside the Dasam Granth, the book of the tenth Guru, as its third composition. The Dasam Granth stands beside the Guru Granth Sahib Ji as the second scripture of the Sikhs, and Bachittar Natak is one of its best known parts. In the standard printed edition it runs from page 94 to page 175.

The composition has fourteen chapters and 471 verses, written in Braj Bhasha with some Apabhramsha influence and set down in Gurmukhi script. The name can cause confusion, because Bachittar Natak Granth is also used for a wider group of compositions in the Dasam Granth, including Chandi Charitra and Chaubis Avatar. This page is about the autobiographical composition itself, the Apni Katha, not the whole group.

The story it tells

The work opens with praise of Akal Purakh, the Timeless Being, and an invocation to Bhagauti, the sword understood as the divine principle of justice. Only then does the poet say he will relate his own story. The long opening that follows traces his family line back through the ages.

The genealogy runs from the Surya line through Raghu and Rama to Rama's sons Lava and Kusha, and from them to the Bedi and Sodhi clans. The first three Sikh Gurus were born in Bedi families and the later seven in Sodhi families, so the family history is also the early history of the Sikh Panth. The account pauses over the nine Gurus before Guru Gobind Singh Ji, from Guru Nanak Dev Ji to his father, Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, and reflects on his father's martyrdom for the sake of faith.

From the sixth chapter the voice turns personal. The poet says, in effect, now I relate my own story, and the narrative follows his birth in Patna, his childhood, his move to the Punjab, his years at Paonta Sahib and Anandpur Sahib, and the battles that filled those years.

The previous birth at Hemkunt

Before the story of this life begins, the poet tells of a previous birth. In that life he meditated in the Himalayan mountains at Hemkunt, in a place of seven peaks, until his spirit merged with the Divine. The figure in that earlier life is named Dusht Daman, the destroyer of the wicked.

Though he wished to remain absorbed at the feet of the Divine, he was called to take birth again in the Kali age, the present age of darkness, to show the world the path of truth, to rid it of superstition and to teach it to worship God alone. He accepted the charge humbly, saying that God's word would prevail with God's support.

He also warns his readers plainly. He says he is only a servant of the Supreme Being who has come to watch the spectacle of the world, and that those who call him God mistake the messenger for the one who sent him. The passage is one of the clearest statements in Sikh writing that the Guru points beyond himself to God.

Battles and the road to Anandpur Sahib

The later chapters read like a chronicle of war in the Punjab hills. Hostility from the neighbouring hill rajas pushed the young Guru first to Paonta Sahib, where he lived happily for a time and where the composition is thought to have begun in 1688. Then Fateh Shah, the Raja of Srinagar, attacked him without provocation, and the Guru defeated him and his allies at Bhangani in 1688.

At Nadaun he defeated Alif Khan, a Mughal commander sent to collect tribute from the hill chiefs, with the help of Bhim Chand of Bilaspur, once his enemy. Three expeditions sent by Dilawar Khan were also turned back. The first withdrew on hearing the Guru's forces approach. The other two, led by the commanders Hussain and Jujhar Singh, were drawn into fights with other hill chiefs and ended with the deaths of those commanders.

The narrative also records the arrival in the Punjab of Prince Muazzam, the Mughal prince who would later become emperor. The story ends abruptly in the fourteenth chapter, around 1696, with a closing prayer to the Lord, the destroyer of all. Scholars note that the text says nothing of the founding of the Khalsa Panth in 1699, which suggests the work was finished before that event, most likely about 1698.

Why is Bachittar Natak important?

The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism calls Bachittar Natak a clear and strong statement of God's role in history and of Guru Gobind Singh Ji's role within it, and that is why it holds a central place in the formation of Sikhism. It joins the teaching of the earlier Gurus, that God is one and creation is part of the Divine, to a new readiness to take up arms against tyranny.

The work also matters as literature. Its battle scenes are vivid and fast moving, written in quick, shifting metres, full of similes and the sights and sounds of war, from the clash of weapons to the shouts of warriors. One famous image shows Mahant Kirpal Das rising in his stirrups and striking down his enemy with a wooden staff. The poetry is meant to quicken the reader's spirit, not only to record events.

On authorship, the Sikh tradition attributes the composition to Guru Gobind Singh Ji himself, and eighteenth century sources such as Gur Sobha, Gurbilas and the Bansavalinama also name the Dasam Granth compositions as his. Modern scholars discuss how the wider Dasam Granth took shape and which parts came from the Guru's own hand and which from his court poets. This page follows the traditional attribution while noting that discussion, and treats the text with the respect Sikhs give it.

How can I read Bachittar Natak today?

The composition is read as part of the Dasam Granth, and the full text is available in print and online, including at srigranth.org, where it appears in Gurmukhi with translations. Translations in Punjabi, Hindi and English exist, so readers who do not follow Braj Bhasha can still follow the story.

A good way in is to read the first chapter slowly, then the sixth, where the personal story begins, and then the battle chapters that follow. Readers new to the text should remember what the name itself warns: this is a story of a life lived in God's service, not a drama invented for entertainment, and its battles are told to show how a small community stood its ground.

For anyone studying Guru Gobind Singh Ji, Bachittar Natak sits beside the Zafarnama and the history of Anandpur Sahib as one of the essential sources. It is the Guru's own account of who he was, where he came from and what he believed his life was for.