ਗੁਰਮਤਿ ਮਾਰਤੰਡਗੁਰਮਤਿ ਮਾਰਤੰਡ

About the book

Gurmat Martand is a two-volume glossary of Sikh theology and belief by Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha, first published in 1938, the year of the author's death. It defines and explains the key terms of Sikh thought, from the nature of God to the practices of daily Sikh life, and it supports each explanation with quotations from Sikh scripture. More than eighty years on, it is still one of the standard reference works on Sikh doctrine.

The book belongs to the last phase of Nabha's long scholarly life. By the time he compiled it he had already written the two works it builds on, Gurmat Prabhakar (1898) and Gurmat Sudhakar (1899), and the great Mahan Kosh encyclopedia (1930). Gurmat Martand gathers that earlier material and adds much more explanatory writing, so that it stands as a companion to the Mahan Kosh: where the encyclopedia covers everything, this book concentrates on belief and practice.

The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee brought out another edition in 1962, which kept the book in print and in use. It remains in the libraries of gurdwaras, colleges and Sikh study circles, and scholars still cite it when a term of Sikh theology needs a careful, sourced definition.

What does Gurmat Martand mean?

Gurmat is the wisdom and teaching of the Gurus, the word formed from guru, the teacher, and mat, teaching or counsel. Martand is the sun. The title therefore means "the sun of Gurmat", a light that makes Sikh doctrine clear. The name states the book's purpose: to shine light on terms that readers had misunderstood or used loosely, and to settle their meaning with evidence from the scriptures themselves.

What it covers

The book's entries cover the full range of Sikh religion, theology and belief. It treats the great doctrinal terms, Ik Onkar, the oneness of God, shabad, the Word, and naam simran, meditative remembrance of the divine Name, alongside the practical ethics of Sikh life such as kirat karni, honest earning, and the institutions and rituals of the community. It also explains terms drawn from Sikh history and mythology, and entries on subjects such as "Khalse de Bole", the distinctive vocabulary of the Khalsa, need no scriptural elucidation at all.

The entries are arranged both topically and alphabetically, so a reader can look up a single term or read through a whole subject. Each subject title is first explained briefly with regard to its meaning and usage, and the explanation is then supported by quotations from the Guru Granth Sahib and other Sikh canonical literature. Where a term carries a historical or mythological allusion, Nabha adds a detailed footnote to explain it. An alphabetical index at the end helps the reader find terms across both volumes.

Much of the material comes from Nabha's own earlier books. Gurmat Martand incorporates Gurmat Prabhakar and Gurmat Sudhakar, and also draws on Gur Gira Kasauti, an unpublished work from 1899 in which he answered his pupil Tikka Ripudaman Singh's questions about the meanings of hymns in the Guru Granth Sahib. The result is not a reprint but a fuller work, with the older entries expanded and supplied with more textual references.

Why Nabha wrote it

Nabha wrote the book to correct misunderstandings. In his view, misconceptions about Sikh theological doctrines had crept in through the ignorance of some chroniclers and through the general inability of Sikhs to comprehend the canonical texts clearly and correctly. The glossary was his answer: define each term carefully, show how it is used in the scriptures, and let the evidence speak.

The book also belongs to the reforming scholarship of the Singh Sabha era, the movement in which Nabha was a leading figure. Like his earlier Ham Hindu Nahin, which argued for Sikhism as a distinct religion, Gurmat Martand defends a clear, scriptural understanding of the faith against loose or borrowed interpretations. It is scholarship with a purpose: to give ordinary Sikhs and their teachers a reliable guide to what their own tradition says.

ਲੇਖਕ

Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha (1861-1938) was the leading Sikh scholar of his generation. Born on 30 August 1861 at Sabaz Banera, near Nabha in what was then Patiala State, he had no formal schooling but studied Sanskrit, Persian, Hindi and Braj Bhasha with pandits and maulvis, and music with Mahant Gajja Singh. By the age of ten he could recite freely from the Guru Granth Sahib and the Dasam Granth.

In 1887 he became tutor to Tikka Ripudaman Singh, the heir apparent of Nabha State, and served the state in several posts, from private secretary to the Maharaja to judge of the High Court. In 1885 he met the British scholar Max Arthur Macauliffe, and the two became lifelong friends; Macauliffe depended heavily on his advice while writing The Sikh Religion, and assigned him the copyright of the six-volume work.

His books include Ham Hindu Nahin (1898), Gurmat Prabhakar (1898), Gurmat Sudhakar (1899), and the Mahan Kosh (1930), the first encyclopedia in Punjabi, with 64,263 entries compiled over fourteen years. Gurmat Martand, published in the year of his death, was his last major work. He died at Nabha in November 1938.

Reception and legacy

Gurmat Martand has never gone out of use. Scholars, teachers and students of Sikhism cite it as an authoritative source, and its clear expositions have shaped religious education in Sikh institutions. Its influence extends beyond scholarship: the definitions it fixed have informed how practitioners across the world understand and discuss their faith.

The book's standing rests on its method. Nabha never asks the reader to take a definition on trust: every entry is argued from the texts, with quotations that the reader can check. That combination of definition, exegesis and proof text is why the work is still consulted whenever a question of Sikh doctrine arises, and why it remains, alongside the Mahan Kosh, the most durable monument of its author's scholarship.