Gur Bilas Patshahi 10 – Punjabi

Description

A poeticised account of Guru Gobind Singh’s life was completed in 1751, forty-three years after his death. Until it was published in 1968, there were only four manuscript copies of the work known to exist. Apart from specialists, very few had heard of it. The author of this work is Kuir Singh, a resident of Mohalla Kamboari of a city, which, in his book, remains unspecified, but which could possibly be Lahore. He entered the fold of the Khalsa under the influence of Bhai Mani Singh.

The battles of Anandpur are divided into two rounds, the first of which is described as preceding the attacks of Dilawar Khan, Husain Khan and Mirza Beg. Similarly, Guru Gobind Singh’s journey to the South with Emperor Bahadur Shah is unhistorically interrupted by long visits, lasting for years, to places like Patna, Kashi and Ayodhya. A notable feature of the work is the evidence it furnishes about the martyrdom of Bhai Mani Singh and his companions in 1734. Kuir Singh seems to have been an eyewitness and mentions the names of some of the Sikhs who were executed along with Bhai Mani Singh. No other contemporary source contains this information.