Jot Bikasਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ

Jot Bikas, also spelled Joti Bigas, is the shared title of two short poems by Bhai Nand Lal Goya (about 1633 to 1713), the Persian poet and devoted Sikh of Guru Gobind Singh Ji. One poem is in Punjabi and the other in Persian. Both praise the Ten Gurus as a single divine light, one jot shining through ten bodies, and both are counted among the approved Sikh canon, verses that may be recited at religious gatherings alongside the hymns of the Gurus.

What does Jot Bikas mean?

The title holds the whole teaching. Jot means divine light, and bikas means blossoming or shining forth. The scholar Louis Fenech renders the title as The Divine Light Effulgent, the light of God bursting into view. The poems say that the light which shone in Guru Nanak passed unchanged from one Guru to the next, so that all ten were one light in ten bodies, one voice speaking through ten mouths.

This was not a new idea that Bhai Nand Lal invented. The hymns of the Gurus themselves teach that the jot passed from Guru Nanak to his successors, and the Sikh tradition has always held that the ten human Gurus shared one spirit. What Jot Bikas does is gather that teaching into a single short poem, in two languages, so that a listener can hold it whole. That is why the work is read as scripture, not only as literature.

Who was Bhai Nand Lal Goya?

Bhai Nand Lal Ji was born about 1633, most accounts say at Ghazni in Afghanistan, into a Khatri family. His father, Munshi Chhajju Mall, served in the Mughal court, and Nand Lal himself rose to high office, becoming the Mir Munshi, or chief secretary, at Multan. He was a scholar of Persian and Arabic, and he wrote poetry from a young age under the pen names Goya, meaning the speaker, and Lal, meaning ruby.

His wife came from a Sikh family of Multan. She recited Gurbani every day, and through her he learned Gurmukhi and began to sing the hymns of the Gurus. In the 1680s he left the Mughal court and reached Anandpur, where Guru Gobind Singh Ji received him into his court. He became the Guru's Persian poet, one of the fifty two court poets, and he stayed with the Guru until Anandpur was evacuated in the winter of 1705. He then returned to Multan, where he taught Persian and Arabic and preached the Guru's word until his death in 1713.

His other works include Zindginama, the Book of Life, Ganjnama, the Treasury Book, and Divan-e-Goya, a collection of ghazals. Of all his writings, Jot Bikas is the one that speaks most directly to ordinary Sikhs, because its message can be held in a single sentence: the Gurus were one.

The Punjabi poem: 43 couplets, one light

The Punjabi poem has 43 couplets, though some editions count 44 verses. Its first twenty six couplets praise the eternal Satguru: the Guru who saves the good, who is everlasting, who removes all fear, who fulfils all desires and grants liberation, who is perfect and the very image of God. The next five couplets name Guru Nanak and his nine successors, proclaiming them all to be one. The closing stanzas tell how the 330 million gods and goddesses, and innumerable bhaktas, siddhas, yogis and prophets, all seek shelter at the feet of such a Guru, and how the poet has attached himself to those feet.

The Punjabi poem is devoted above all to explaining Guru Arjan Ji's Jaitsri ki Var, a composition in which the fifth Guru sets out the oneness of the Gurus. Its most quoted passage is the chain of succession, in the translation of Pritpal Singh Bindra: Nanak passed on the Guruship to Angad, then Amar Das served Hari, the Almighty. Then Ram Das to Arjun, and then Hargobind worshipped the Almighty. So the Almighty blessed Har Rai, who made Har Krishna, infinite and inaccessible. Then Tegh Bahadur, the epitome of veracity, was blessed, as was Guru Gobind Singh, the embodiment of Hari. All are one and one into all, and there exists no distinction among them.

One honest note about the language. The poem is usually described as Punjabi, and that is how SikhiWiki lists it. But it carries a great deal of Braj Bhasha colour, and some catalogues describe the 43 couplets as Hindi or Braj rather than Punjabi. The Goya project, which publishes the text, calls it the Punjabi Joti Bigas while noting the Braj influence. Readers meeting it for the first time should know that the two labels describe the same poem, not two different works.

The Persian poem: 175 couplets in praise of the Gurus

The Persian poem has 175 couplets, though some editions count 179. It is a masnavi, a long poem in rhyming couplets, written in the high flown style of the qasida, the Persian ode of praise. It opens with Guru Nanak, in the first twenty two couplets: the highest of the high, the emperor of both worlds, the embodiment of all virtues, before whom innumerable gods and goddesses bow. The next five couplets, 23 to 27, name his nine successors, different in body but sharing the same light. The remaining couplets, 28 to 175, are a long praise of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, who fulfils the desires of all, who keeps both worlds in order, who roars like a lion in battle, and who is the jewel in the ring of justice.

How the two poems relate to each other is a genuine question, and scholars answer it differently. A manuscript held at Punjabi University, Patiala, number 332164, titles the Persian poem Tarjumah Joti Bigas, meaning an interpretation of Joti Bigas. Fenech reads the Punjabi title as a sign that the Persian poem was written to expand upon the 43 Punjabi couplets. SikhiWiki, by contrast, treats the Punjabi poem as an entirely independent work, not an exposition of the Persian one. What is certain is that the two share one theme and one famous chain of verses, and that both were composed in the court of Guru Gobind Singh Ji at Anandpur.

What does Jot Bikas teach?

First, the oneness of the Gurus. The ten Gurus were not ten different teachers with ten different messages. They were one light, one jot, passed from body to body. To honour one Guru is to honour them all, and to follow one is to follow them all. This is the doctrine the poem exists to teach, and it states it in the plainest possible words: all are one and one into all.

Second, the greatness of the Guru. The Persian poem calls Guru Nanak the prophet of both worlds, chosen before all other prophets, before whom thousands of Brahmas, kings, emperors and suns and moons bow down. The Punjabi poem praises the Guru in both his forms: the nirgun form, beyond all limits and beyond time, and the sargun form, the manifest Guru who spreads truth and courage. The poem lists the gods and heroes of the old stories, Ram and Krishna, yogis and siddhs, and places them all under the Guru's protection, seeking shelter at his feet.

Third, refuge. The poet does not stand outside his subject and admire it. He ends by placing himself at the Guru's feet and asking to stay there. That is the tone of the whole work: not argument, but devotion. It is a poem to be sung and heard, not only studied.

How is Jot Bikas read today?

Jot Bikas is read and sung at Sikh divans, where verses from Bhai Nand Lal Ji's works are recited alongside the hymns of the Gurus. The full Persian text, with an English translation verse by verse, is published online by iGurbani, and the Punjabi text is published by the Goya project with notes on its language and structure. Printed collections of Bhai Nand Lal Ji's works carry both poems, usually beside Zindginama, Ganjnama and the Divan-e-Goya.

For a reader new to Sikh literature, Jot Bikas is a good place to begin. It is short, it is direct, and it carries the central teaching of the tradition in a form that can be learned by heart. For a scholar, it is a window into the court of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, where Persian poetry and Sikh devotion met, and where a poet from Ghazni wrote, in two languages, that the light of Nanak had never gone out.