ਬੰਸਾਵਲੀਨਾਮਾਬੰਸਾਵਲੀਨਾਮਾ

Bansavalinama is the 1769 verse history of the ten Sikh Gurus written by Kesar Singh Chhibber, a Sikh of the diwan families who had served the Gurus. In 2,564 stanzas across fourteen chapters it tells the Gurus' lives, then ਬਾਬਾ ਬੰਦਾ ਸਿੰਘ ਬਹਾਦਰ, and it is one of the earliest Sikh histories ever written.

What is Bansavalinama?

The name means a genealogy, a family tree. The full title is Bansavalinama Dasan Patshahian Ka, the genealogy of the ten sovereigns, and the text also uses the Persian word kursinama, which means the same. But the book is not really a family tree. It is a fast-moving account in early Punjabi verse of the ten Gurus, of Banda Singh Bahadur, and of other Sikhs of the early 18th century.

Chhibber finished it in 1769, writing in a dharamsala, a rest house for travellers, in Jammu. That makes it older than the better-known Sikh histories: about forty years older than Rattan Singh Bhangu's ਪ੍ਰਾਚੀਨ ਪੰਥ ਪ੍ਰਕਾਸ਼, and more than seventy years older than Kavi Santokh Singh Ji's ਸੂਰਜ ਪ੍ਰਕਾਸ਼. It belongs to the first generation of Sikh history writing, alongside the janamsakhis and the gur-bilas literature.

Its peculiar feature is the wealth of chronological detail it gives about the lives of the Gurus and the members of their families. That detail is also its warning: the dates Chhibber records are not established as reliable, and the book mixes historical events with mythological elements in places. It is a precious early witness, not a final authority.

The author: Kesar Singh Chhibber

Kesar Singh Chhibber came of a family who had served the Gurus as diwans, or ministers, for three generations. His grandfather, Dharam Chand, was in charge of the treasury of ਗੁਰੂ ਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ ਨੇ. Dharam Chand's father, Dargah Mall, had been diwan to Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji and his two predecessors. Dharam Chand's son, Gurbakhsh Singh, served Guru Gobind Singh Ji, and Kesar Singh was Gurbakhsh Singh's son.

Kesar Singh was too young at the time of Guru Gobind Singh Ji's passing in 1708 to have known the Guru himself. But he had the company of eminent Sikhs of his day, notably the scholar and martyr Bhai Mani Singh Ji. For many years he lived at Amritsar, and he also attended upon Mata Sundari Ji, the widow of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, in Delhi.

What the book covers: fourteen chapters

The book has 2,564 stanzas in fourteen chapters. The first ten deal with the ten Gurus, one chapter each. Then there is a chapter each on Banda Singh Bahadur, on Jit (Ajit) Singh, the adopted son of Mata Sundari Ji, and on Mata Sahib Devan Ji. The last chapter looks at the state of the Sikhs in the early decades of the 18th century: the persecution they suffered at the hands of the ruling authority, and their will to survive.

One point the book stresses is the bestowal of Guruship on the holy book by Guru Gobind Singh Ji before he passed away. Chhibber writes, in the words quoted by the Sikh Encyclopedia, that at this time the Guru Granth Sahib is our Guru, and that the Guru's true Sikh is the one who accepts as eternally true the word enshrined in the Granth. The book also gives prescriptions for Sikh conduct in the manner of the rahitnamas, the manuals of Sikh code.

The tenth chapter, on Guru Gobind Singh Ji, is the longest and most detailed. In it Chhibber tells how the Guru summoned the goddess Mata Devi and founded the Khalsa. The scholar Louis Fenech reads this chapter as presenting the Khalsa as raised to avenge the martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, and as foreshadowing the Khalsa of the early 18th century, the community Chhibber calls the liberated Sikhs.

Why historians value it

Bansavalinama is valued because it is early. The historian Dharam Singh lists it among the first historical chronicles of the Sikhs, with the janamsakhis, ਸ੍ਰੀ ਗੁਰ ਸੋਭਾ, the Mahima Prakash of 1776 and the gur-bilases. Later writers drew on it: Karam Singh cited Chhibber's manuscript in his work on Banda Singh Bahadur, and modern scholars from Ganda Singh to Louis Fenech have used it.

Its most striking claim to fame comes from Fenech's study of martyrdom in early Sikh sources. He calls the Bansavalinama the very first Sikh text to deal specifically with the death of Guru Arjan Dev Ji, the fifth Guru, who died in Mughal custody at Lahore in 1606. Chhibber says the Guru suffered hardship for a whole month, that burning sand was poured over his body, and that he was then bound and thrown into the Ravi river, where he died. He explains the death through the laws of karma and the scheming of the Guru's elder brother Prithi Chand and the Sahi Khatris of Lahore, and he notes bitterly that no Sikh could then exact vengeance for it.

The book also preserves traditions found nowhere else so early. It says ਗੁਰੂ ਨਾਨਕ ਦੇਵ ਜੀ was born on the full moon of Katak, a dating later writers repeated. And in its account of Guru Amardas Ji it records that on Vaisakhi and Diwali all the Sikhs would come to the Guru. Chhibber writes: Baisakhi Diwali no sikh sabh aavan, Guru darsan kar khushian pavan. In English: On Vaisakhi and Diwali, all the Sikhs would come. Having the Guru's darshan, they would experience joy. He wrote nearly two centuries after Guru Amardas Ji, so this is 18th-century memory rather than a contemporary record.

Where the book needs care

The first caution is the dates. The Sikh Encyclopedia warns plainly that the reliability of the dates Chhibber records is not established. His dates should be treated as his dates, and checked against other sources, above all for the early Gurus, where he was writing two centuries after the events.

The second caution is the author's own outlook. Some of his assertions are not in conformity with Sikh belief and teachings. He accepts the Gurus as incarnations of Vishnu, and he tries to prove the superiority of the Brahmans even among the Sikhs, which the Encyclopedia links to his own Brahman ancestry. Fenech notes the same puranic cosmology in the longer portions of the ਦਸਮ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ. The Gurus acknowledged no deity besides God, nor did they support the theory of incarnation, and Sikhism rejects caste. These passages should be read as Chhibber's views, not as Sikh teaching.

The third caution is the book's mixture of history and story. Historical events and mythological elements occasionally overlap in it, and its long tenth chapter weaves devotion, legend and politics together. The honest way to read Bansavalinama is alongside the other early sources: the janamsakhis for Guru Nanak, Sri Gur Sobha and the gur-bilases for the Khalsa, and the later ਪ੍ਰਾਚੀਨ ਪੰਥ ਪ੍ਰਕਾਸ਼ and ਸੂਰਜ ਪ੍ਰਕਾਸ਼ for the full story.

How the book reached print

For two centuries the Bansavalinama was available only in manuscript, copied by hand and passed between readers. It was edited by Dr Rattan Singh Jaggi and published in 1972, in Parakh, a research journal of the Panjab University, Chandigarh. The text Jaggi used was a manuscript in a private collection at Batala. No date is mentioned on that manuscript, but it could be about 150 years old.

Another manuscript is preserved in the Khalsa College Library at Amritsar. There was also one in the Sikh Reference Library at Amritsar until it perished in the Army attack on the Golden Temple complex in 1984. That loss makes the surviving manuscripts, and Jaggi's printed edition, all the more precious.

The book is still read in Punjabi. No full English translation has been published, so English readers meet it through the scholars who quote it, above all Fenech.

Bansavalinama and the books that came after

It helps to keep the early Sikh histories apart. Sri Gur Sobha, written in 1711 by Sainapati, a court poet of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, is a praise of the Khalsa in verse. The janamsakhis tell the life of Guru Nanak Dev Ji. Bansavalinama, of 1769, is the first verse history of all ten Gurus. ਪ੍ਰਾਚੀਨ ਪੰਥ ਪ੍ਰਕਾਸ਼, written in the early 1810s, carries the story past the Gurus into the 18th-century Khalsa, the ਦਲ ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ, the misls and Sikh rule. ਸੂਰਜ ਪ੍ਰਕਾਸ਼, completed in 1843, retells the Gurus' lives at far greater length, in more than 51,000 verses. Gian Singh's ਪੰਥ ਪ੍ਰਕਾਸ਼, first published at Delhi in 1880, reworked Bhangu's book a generation later.

Together these books show how Sikh history writing grew: from court praise and saints' lives, to Chhibber's genealogy of the Gurus, to full histories of the Panth. Bansavalinama stands at the start of that line, the oldest of the verse histories.