Gurbilas Patshahi Dasvinਗੁਰਬਿਲਾਸ ਪਾਤਸ਼ਾਹੀ ਦਸਵੀਂ

Gurbilas Patshahi Dasvin is Koer Singh's 1751 poetic life of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, the first full biography of the tenth Guru. Written in Braj Bhasha verse from stories told by Bhai Mani Singh Ji, it covers the Guru's whole life, from his early years to the creation of the Khalsa and his last days at Nanded.

What is Gurbilas Patshahi Dasvin?

The title means the splendour of the tenth reign. Gur-bilas is a genre of its own: poetic lives of the Gurus, written in Braj Bhasha in the Gurmukhi script. Koer Singh's book is the tenth-patshahi entry in that line, the life of Guru Gobind Singh Ji alone. It was completed in 1751, forty-three years after the Guru's death at Nanded in 1708, and until it was printed in 1968 only four manuscript copies were known to exist.

The book is written almost entirely in verse: 2,938 stanzas, of which 2,901 are in Braj Bhasha and 37 in Punjabi, in many verse forms, with a few prose passages. Koer Singh drew on two earlier works, the Guru's own Bachitra Natak and Sainapati's Sri Gur Sobha, and on what Bhai Mani Singh Ji told him in person. The Bachitra Natak ends in 1696; Koer Singh's Gurbilas covers the Guru's whole life.

What sets the book apart is its claim to closeness. Bhai Mani Singh Ji was a childhood companion of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, and Koer Singh says he is mostly summarising the discourses he heard from him, except on the creation of the Khalsa, which he repeats in detail. That closeness is why scholars call it the first comprehensive written life of the tenth Guru.

The author: Koer Singh Kalal

Koer Singh was born Bishan Chand into a Kalal family. The Kalals, wine distillers, were counted among the lowest castes of the time. He was at first a firm follower of Vaishnavism, and he came to Sikhism under the influence of Bhai Mani Singh Ji. He took the Sikh baptism late in life, and he confesses frankly in the book that he was a Sikh only in name. He began writing after losing his service, and at the end of the book he calls himself Koer Singh Kalal.

He lived in Mohalla Kamboan, a neighbourhood of a city he does not name, which scholars think may have been Lahore. He used two pen names, Bisan Hari, also written Visanu Hari, and Sri Kant Hari. He probably took the name Bishan Singh, of which Bisan Hari is a synonym, at his Khalsa baptism. He was a learned man, trained in Braj Bhasha verse and Puranic legend.

What the book covers

The Gurbilas follows Guru Gobind Singh Ji from his early years through the battles of Anandpur, the creation of the Khalsa, the siege of Anandpur, the march from Chamkaur to Talwandi Sabo, the meeting with Emperor Bahadur Shah, and the Guru's last days at Nanded. It is the first work to record the Guru's early years, the Sis Bhet episode at the creation of the Khalsa, when the Guru asked for a head, and that march from Chamkaur to Talwandi Sabo.

The Khalsa creation chapter is the heart of the book. Koer Singh gives the intimate details of the first amrit ceremony, and he is anxious to establish their authenticity: he says he is not withholding anything, and that the account comes from Bhai Mani Singh Ji. He describes the abolition of the corrupt masand system as the first step, the Guru first setting his house in order. The ceremony itself, he says, ended personal Guruship in the Khalsa Panth and declared that a true Sikh is equal to the Guru. He also records the caste make-up of the first initiates.

The book also touches the Guru's writings. It confirms that Guru Gobind Singh Ji composed the Bachitra Natak, Jaap Sahib, the Hikayats, Chobis Avtar, Chandi da Var and Akal Ustat, all part of the Dasam Granth, and that the Hikayats stand at the end of the Zafarnama, the Guru's letter to the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. The book also records the passing of spiritual succession to the Guru Granth Sahib, which was to be the Guru after him.

Why historians value it

The Gurbilas is valued first because it is early and close to its subject. Completed in 1751, it is the first work to cover the whole span of Guru Gobind Singh Ji's life, where the Bachitra Natak stops in 1696. Much of it, in Gurtej Singh's reading, is eyewitness account drawn from Koer Singh's years among the Khalsa.

Its most notable contribution is the evidence it gives about the martyrdom of Bhai Mani Singh Ji and his companions, which the Sikh Encyclopedia dates to 1734. Koer Singh seems to have been an eyewitness, and he names some of the Sikhs executed with Bhai Mani Singh Ji. No other contemporary source contains this information.

The book also matters for what it says about the Khalsa itself. Koer Singh stresses the casteless brotherhood of the new order: Hindus and Muslims alike could take amrit if they gave up their old beliefs, and the sacred thread was abandoned at initiation. And he reads the Guru's mission in plain political terms: the end of tyrannical Mughal rule and an autonomous Khalsa raj.

Where the book needs care

The first caution is the dates. The Sikh Encyclopedia warns that the book's dates are often wrong: it gives 1689 instead of 1699 for the creation of the Khalsa, and 1709 instead of 1708 for the Guru's death at Nanded. Its battle figures are grossly exaggerated. It divides the battles of Anandpur into two rounds, in an order that is historically incorrect. And it interrupts the Guru's journey south with Bahadur Shah with long visits to Patna, Kashi and Ayodhya, which did not happen.

The second caution is the author's own outlook. Koer Singh accepts the Gurus as incarnations of God, and he records at least half a dozen miracles, treating the power to work them as proof of the Gurus' divine status. Yet the Gurus themselves firmly deny miraculous powers: Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, asked to show a miracle, calls it a grossly vulgar display by the excessively proud, and insists that only God has such powers. Gurtej Singh reads this as political purpose: a divine Guru would inspire believers and demoralise enemies. These passages should be read as Koer Singh's views, not as Sikh teaching, which holds the Gurus claimed neither divinity nor miraculous powers.

The third caution is the book's politics. Gurtej Singh calls the Gurbilas primarily a work of political history. Koer Singh wrote at a turning point, when the Sikhs were moving towards power, and he hoped his book would help that rise and challenge the legitimacy of Muslim rule. Readers should not confuse this book with a later work of the same title: Sukha Singh's Gurbilas Dasvin Patshahi, completed in 1797, is a different book, by a different author, from a later generation.

How the book reached print

For more than two centuries the Gurbilas lived only in manuscript: until 1968 only four copies were known, and few outside specialist circles had heard of it. The printed edition was prepared by Shamsher Singh Ashok and published in December 1968 by the Publication Bureau of Punjabi University, Patiala.

Two manuscripts behind that edition can still be named: manuscript 605 held at Khalsa College in Amritsar, and manuscript 469 held at the Bhasha Vibhag in Patiala. A 2023 paper has begun to ask what Ashok's edition left out. The book is still read in Punjabi, and there is no full English translation, so English readers meet it through the scholars who study it, above all Gurtej Singh.

Gurbilas Patshahi Dasvin and the books around it

It helps to keep the early histories apart. The Guru's own Bachitra Natak, which comes down to 1696, is the first account. Sri Gur Sobha, written in 1711 by Sainapati, a court poet of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, is a praise of the Khalsa in verse that takes up the story broadly. The janamsakhis tell the life of Guru Nanak Dev Ji. Koer Singh's Gurbilas, of 1751, is the first full life of the tenth Guru alone, built on both.

Eighteen years later came the Bansavalinama (1769), Kesar Singh Chhibber's verse history of all ten Gurus. Guru Kian Sakhian (1790) told the five latter Gurus in prose. Sukha Singh's Gurbilas (1797) retold the tenth Guru's life a generation later. Prachin Panth Prakash, written in the early 1810s, carried the story past the Gurus into the 18th-century Khalsa, Baba Banda Singh Bahadur, and the misls. Suraj Parkash, completed in 1843, retold the Gurus' lives at far greater length, and Gian Singh's Panth Parkash (1880) reworked Bhangu's history. Koer Singh's book stands near the start of that line, the earliest full life of Guru Gobind Singh Ji we have.