BIR GURU, by Rabindranath Tagore, is a life sketch in Bengali of Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708), the last of the Ten Gurus of the Sikh faith, emphasizing especially how he had prepared Sikhs to stand up to oppression and injustice. This is Tagore`s first writing on Guru Gobind Singh published

JANG SINGHAN TEFIRANGIAN, by Matak, is a versified account, in Punjabi, of the first Anglo Sikh war (1845-46) by a contemporary or near contemporary poet about whom no biographical details are available. The poem, in its present incomplete form, is included in Panjabdian Varan (Amritsar, 1946) edited by Dr

PARCHIBHAI KANHAIYA, i.e. parchi (from Sanskrit prichaya or introduction here used in the sense of a life or biography) of Bhai Kanhaiya, a Sikh of the time of Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708) and founder of the Sevapanthi sect. Written in Bhakha sometimes between 1728 and 1740 when its author

SRIJASSA SINGH BINOD, manuscript dealing with the career of Sardar Jassa Singh Ahluvalia (1718-83), a prominent Sikh warrior of the eighteenth century and founder of the erstwhile state of Kapurthala in the Punjab, was written by Ram Sukh Rao at the instance of Sardar Fateh Singh, ruler of Kapurthala from

VAR AMAR SINGH KI is a versified account of a battle fought in AD 1774 between Raja Amar Singh, the ruler of Patiala and the neighbouring Bhatti Rajput chiefs. The writer is Kavi (poet) Kesho Das, a Brahman bard at the court of the Raja of Patiala. He was

BROUGHTON PAPERS are official and private papers of Sir John Cam Hobhouse (Lord Broughton) in numerous bound volumes in the British Library. Lord Broughton, British administrator, who served as President of the Board of Control of the East India Company from 1835-41 and again from 1846-52, was responsible for

Shah Mohmmad is rightly acclaimed as the national poet of the Punjab in the nineteenth century at least. Though he is said to have composed a kissa, i.e. a narrative poem of love as well, he is best known for his celebrated composition: Jangnama Singhan te Frangian. With the

PRARTHANATITADAN, poem in Bengali by Rabindranath Tagore on the Sikh martyr Bhai Taru Singh. Written on 2 Agrahayan, 1306 BS/1819 November 1899 and included in Kathd, a collection of Tagore`s poems published in October-November 1899, the poem refers to Bhai Taru Singh`s arrest along with some other Sikhs "who had

TAHMASNAMAH, variously known as Tahmaspnamah, TazkirahiTahmasp, Hikayat or Qissa Tahmas Miskin, is a Persian manuscript preserved in British Library, London (Or. 1918). In India, photostat copies are available in the Oriental Public (Khuda Bakhsh) Library, Patna, and in the Sikh History Research Department at Khalsa College, Amritsar (No. 1283);

VAR SHAH MUHAMMAD, also known as Jangnama Shah Muhammad or Hind Panjab da Jang, is a long poem in Punjabi in the traditional baint metre dealing with the events following the deaul of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, notably the Sikhs` warwiui the English in 1845-46. The author is a Muslim, Shah

CHAR BAGHIPANJAB by Ganesh Das Badhera, a history in Persian of the Punjab which, according to the author, then extended from the River Indus to the Sutlej. The work, completed in 1855, was published by Khalsa College, Amritsar, in 1965. The author served under the Lahore Darbar as a