ALIM, a Muslim poet, enjoyed the patronage of Guru Gobind Singh. Formerly in the employ of Prince Mu\'azzam (later Emperor Bahadur Shah), he probably came to Guru Gobind Singh sometime during the period 1687-94 when the prince, having fallen from the favour of his father, Aurangzib, was under internment.

AMRIT RAI, son of Chhail Rai, a Bhatt of Lahore, and pupil of Chatar Das, a noted poet, had completed his Ras Ratnakar and Chitra Bilas ( the latter in 1679) before he came under the patronage of Guru Gobind Singh at Anandpur. What is left of his compositions

ASTPADI, from Sanskrit astapada, astapad or astapadf, is a poetic composition comprising ast or eight padas or stanzas. No specific rhyme scheme, measure or burden is prescribed for it, but all the eight stanzas must be in the same metre and measure. Lines in each stanza are generally rhymed.

BAVAN AKHARI, a poem constructed upon 52 (bavan) letters (akhar) of the alphabet. In this form of poetry each verse begins serially with a letter of the alphabet. The origin of the genre is traced to ancient Sanskrit literature. Since the Devanagari alphabet, employed in Sanskrit, comprises fifty-two (bavan, in

Bara Maha Majh (Song of Twelve Months in Majh Raga) is a composition of Guru Arjan Dev,the fifth in the line of the ten Gurus or prophet-teachers of the Sikh faith. Guru Arjan Dev\'s poetry has the imprint of chaste classical culture, despite its limitation today, being in a

CHATTHIAN DI VAR is a Punjabi ballad describing the battle between Mahan Singh, father of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, and Ghulam Muhammad Chattha, a Muslim chieftain of the Chattha clan of the Jatts. The poet is some Pir Muhammad, whose name appears in some verses of the poem. The Var was

GATHA, title of Guru Arjan`s composition comprising twenty-four verses included in the Guru Granth Sahib. In Sanskrit writings, gdthd stands for a religious verse of non Vedic origin, a stanza or a song. In Prakrit and Buddhist traditions, the term signifies averse, a line of poetry, song, stanza or aphorism.

JAITSAIILMAHALA 5 VARSLOKANNALI, by GuruArjan, is one of the twenty-two Vdrs, i.e. compositions in this folk form but moulded to a spiritual theme, included in the Guru Granth Sahib. It has been named Jaitsari because of the musical measure it belongs to. While the philosophical standpoint in the entire

JANGNAMA GURU GOBIND SINGH is a Punjabi ballad by Bir Singh Bal of the village of Sathiala in Amritsar district of the Punjab. Bir Singh was the author of a number of works in Braj Bhasa and. Punjabi which he wrote in the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth

Var Patshahl Dasvin Ki, ballad in Punjabi by an unknown poet who describes, Guru Gobind Singh\'s battle against the combinded forces of hill rajas and the Mughal faujdar Rustam Khan. The poet has not mentioned where and when the action took place the names of the Mughal commander Rustam Khan