BAZIGARS or acrobats, a counterpart of nats outside the Punjab, are a nomadic people travelling from one place to the other, using camels and donkeys as pack animals. Earlier they had been an occupational group performing bazi, i.e. acrobatic feats, in the form of various types of jumps and other

BELA, pronounced bella, means, in Punjabi usage, a jungle of tall grasses, reeds and assorted shrubbery along the banks of rivers and streams. The word also received a different connotation when an Udasi saint and preacher, Banakhandi, established in AD 1818 a preaching centre on an Island in the River

BHALLA, a subdivision of Khatri (Prakrit form kstriya) caste, one of the four castes into which the Hindu society is divided. Khatris are further divided into four subgroups. i.e. Bahri, Khukhrain, Bunjahi and Sarin; the Bhallas belong to the Sarin subgroup. According to a legend, once `Ala udDin Khiiji, the

KAHN SINGH, a Kuka leader, was born in 1840 at the village of Hazro in Rawalpindi district, now in Pakistan. His father`s name was Bhai Manna Singh. He was a nephew of Baba Balak Singh, founder of the Kuka faith, after whose death he came to be acknowledged as

KHALSA DIWAN AMRITSAR, established at Amritsar on 11 April 1883 to oversee and provide direction to the work of the Singh Sabha. This reform movement had originated in Amritsar with the formation of the first Singh Sabha on 1 October 1873. Singh Sabhas began springing up in other places,

PREM SINGH, commandant in the Sikh forces demobilized after the first AngloSikh war, joined Bhai Maharaj singh (d. 1856) in a bid to raise the standard of revolt against the British. After Sikhs` defeat in the second AngloSikh war early in 1849, he along with Maharaj Singh escaped to

SVAPAN NATAK, lit. dream play, is an allegorical poem in Braj, comprising 133 stanzas, by Giani Ditt Singh, a leading figure in the Lahore Singh Sabha. Published in the supplement to the issue, dated 16 April 1887, of the Khalsa Akhbar, a Punjabi newspaper of which Giani Ditt Singh himself

TREHAN, a sub caste of Khatris. It belongs to the Sarin group, one of the four subgroups into which the Khatris are divided. They are categorized in two main divisions the higher and the lower. The Trehans belong to the higher group. The etymology of the word trehan is

TURK, a word standing in Sikh tradition usually for a Muslim, is really the name of a race of people which orginating probably in Central Asia established itself in Asia Minor and southeastern Europe in the west and in India in the east. The earliest references to Turks connect them

THARA SAHIB, an half-a-metre high and 5-metre square marble-paved platform stands in the open space in front of Damdama Sahib. It was here that Guru Tegh Bahadur received the group of Kashmiri Pandits who called on him in 1675.