Denis Matringe (CNRS, Paris) A Sant-Sipāhī as in Himself :The Spiritual and Military Autobiography of Gurū Gobind, Jadavpur University Journal of History 29 (2013), p. 3-26. A Sant-Sipāhī by Himself: The Spiritual and Military Autobiography of Gurū Gobind Denis Matringe (CNRS, Paris) In the north of the Punjab, the Shivaliks, the first foothills of the Himalayas, form an arch some 1600 km in length and 10 to 50 km in breadth, stretching roughly from the Indus to the Brahmaputra, with hilltops between 900 and 1200 meters in height. Long ago, rival Rājpūt kingdoms flourished in these hills, as was evident in Rajasthan and Bundelkhand. With the Turko-Afghan dynastic conquests, most of these local states became vassals of the Delhi Sultanate and later of the Mughal empire. Under the Mughals, Rājpūt princes exercised a form of autonomy, ruling their province and commanding their army in the name of the emperor.i In the cultural sphere too, the Rājpūts affirmed their identity. Just as the Mughal emperors and their nobility patronised Persian literature and the paintings associated with it, the Rājpūt patronised poets and painters. The poets of their courts dealt mostly with mythological themes in Sanskrit or, even more, in Braj- bhasa. Usually referred to as Braj, the Hindi dialect of the cultural region of Braj, around the towns of Mathura and Vrindaban associated with the devotion to Kr̥ṣṇa, arose in the early sixteenth century as one of the major literary idioms of northern India.ii As for the painters of the Rājpūt courts, they were expected to represent, in manuscripts or on fort walls, episodes from the great texts of devotion to Devī, Rāma or Kr̥ṣṇa.iii That is how the so called Pahāṛī painting school developed in the Rājpūt kingdoms of the Shivaliks, in places like Kangra, Basohli or Guler. For the Rājpūts, a particular way of affirming their cultural identity in the context of Mughal domination was, in line with the old tradition of royal biographies and chronicles of ruling families (vaṃśavalī), to commission poets and write their genealogy, glorifying their divine origin, their heroic deeds, and the history of their lineage and of their kingdom.iv This self- assertiveness through literary patronage reaches a peak in the seventeenth century. At that time, the Rājpūts, though still warlords, and particularly so in the northern regions, made much of their aristocratic ethos in which art patronage played a key role in the quest for prestige.v 3 The present article is concerned with a particular specimen of royal poetry written in the Shivaliks: a seemingly autobiographical poem attributed to the tenth and last Gurū of the Sikhs, Gobind, born in 1666 ; he was the Gurū from 1675 to his death in 1708.vi The text I am going to examine is found in the second sacred book of the Sikhs, the Dasam Granth, and is entitled Bacitra Nāṭaka (The Wonderful Drama). Though it has recently been used by scholars engaged in new approaches of Sikh history, it has not been studied, so to speak, for itself, except by Robin Rinehart in her recent, illuminating survey of the Dasam Granth.vii After having presented the composition of the poem, I shall focus on the way in which the latter produces the portrait of a sipāhī, a king fighting for dharma, and how it proposes an origin myth of the Sikh Gurūs’ lineage. I shall finally touch upon the way in which, in the Bacitra Nāṭaka, Gobind appears also as a Sant advocating a renewed Sikh conception of God, virtue and sin, based on the guramati inherited from Nānak but showing awareness of the identity-assertions of the Rajputs from the Shivaliks. 1. The Bacitra Nāṭaka as a text General points The Dasam Granth, which is recognised as the second canonical scripture by the Sikhs (the primary one being the Ādi Granth), was compiled in the early 1730s.viii Whereas the language of the Ādi Granth, compiled in 1604, is the Sant-Bhasa, based on old Khaṛī Bolī, the Hindi of the Delhi region with words drawn from various languages such as old Panjabi, old Rajasthani and Persian, the Dasam Granth is mostly written in Braj. Its basic content consists of three types of texts. The first ones are poems which according to a section of Sikh scholars can be safely attributed to Gurū Gobind (though some specialists think they are the works of poets who followed him). The remaining bulk of the work is regarded as coming from Gurū Gobind’s entourage: lengthy verse retellings of the Rāma and Kr̥ṣṇa legends on the one hand, and, on the other hand, all sorts of anecdotes gathered in the longest section of the book, the Atha Pakhyāna Caritraix, most of which deal – in a way difficult to accept for many Sikhs today – with the manners of women. Because of its content, the Dasam Granth was submitted to sharp scrutiny by the Tat Khālsā reformers of the Siṅgh Sabhā movement in the last decades of the nineteenth century, and an authorised version of 1428 pages in the modern standard print was published in 1902. But the debate has continued. Certain scholarly versions exclude the Atha Pakhyāna Caritra; for instance, the Śabadāratha Dasama Grantha Sāhiba edited by Bhāī Raṇdhīr Siṅgh.x The Bacitra Nāṭaka is one of the texts which, according to 4 most Sikh scholars, can safely be attributed to Gurū Gobind.xiAnd whether it was actually written or commissioned by him, or written in his entourage, does not make much difference here:xii it quickly gained famed among the Sikhs as being an autobiographical writing of the Gurū. When he composed the Bacitra Nāṭaka or authorised its writing by one of the poets of his court, Gurū Gobind – then a young man just over thirty years old – ruled over Anandpur, on the edge of the Shivaliks.xiii He was the heir to a lineage of spiritual masters going back to Nānak (1469-1639), an exceptional character combining to the highest degree the qualities of a mystic, of an outstanding poet and of a great theologian, and associated with the so-called nir-guṇī bhakti whose main exponents are the Sants, wandering loving devotees of a God without attributes, without “qualities” (guṇa) such as form, legend, skin colour, etc.xiv After Nānak and around his successors at the head of the panth or ‘path’ he had initiated, Sikhism gradually developed as an autonomous religion with its own sacred book, the Ādi Granth, its pilgrimage places and its liturgical calendar. During the Seventeenth century, it was joined massively by Jāts, members of a caste of agriculturists dominating most villages of the Punjab, having retained martial traditions from their past as nomadic pastoralists, and engaged in regular conflict with the Mughal authorities over the payment of land-revenue taxes.xv By transferring the seat of the spiritual and temporal power of Sikhs in the Shivaliks, Gurū Gobind’s father, Gurū Tegh Bahādur, exposed his disciples to the worship of the Mother Goddess and tantrik forms of Buddhism; this is revealed in the Bacitra Nātaka as well as in the whole of Dasam Granth. Form and content Composed in literary Braj, the Bacitra Nātaka is divided into fourteen parts (bhāga) of uneven length and has a total of 1818 verses written in fourteen types of meter or stanzas.xvi The whole text bespeaks the great familiarity of its author with both heroic and devotional poetry, and it can only be the work of an accomplished poet. This does not exclude the possibility that it might have been written by Gurū Gobind, who is presented by the Sikh tradition as having received a comprehensive education, notably in the domain of languages and poetry; in this sense, he carried on the tradition of six of his predecessors at the head of the Panth, including his own father, whose compositions he is said to have introduced into the Ādi Granth. The question here, once more, is not to speculate on the actual author of the text, 5 but to try making out how the poem was meant to propagate among his disciples an image of the Gurū and of the way he affirmed his authority. The fourteen parts of the Bacitra Nāṭaka are organised in three clearly distinct sections. The first one, slightly over one-seventh of the text, is a long eulogy to God, who is glorified, notably, through a long list of grandiose qualifications and negative adjectives of the “endless” or “faultless” type, which often assumes an artificially sanskritised form through a masculine accusative ending; this was obviously destined at enhancing the status and prestige of the text by pretending to speak in something close to the solemn language of the orthodox Brahmins.xvii Here is an example of this attempt at Sanskritisation of a Sikh scripture: ajeyaṃ abheyaṃ anāmaṃ aṭhāmaṃ mahā joga jogaṃ mahā kāma kāmaṃxviii Invincible, fearless, nameless, placeless, He is the great Yogi among the yogis, the great Lover among the lovers. The second section – slightly over two-sevenths of the text – narrates Gurū Gobind’s genealogy since the creation of the world and the times of the first kings. Lastly, the third section relates the success of the Gurū in three wars for dharma; they were fought respectively in 1688, 1691 and 1696. It is to be noted here that since the Bacitra Nāṭaka does not even allude to the creation of the Khālsā in 1699, it was most likely written between 1696 and 1699, – and hence in Anandpur where Gurū Gobind resided after his stay in Pāoṇṭā from 1685 to 1688.xix 2. Gobind the sipāhī: a fighting king with a complex genealogy Gobind’s mission A pious devotee of God and a just king fighting for the preservation of dharma in the Kaliyuga (the last and most degenerate of the four world ages), a Sant and a Sipāhī: this is the portrait of Gurū Gobind painted respectively in the first and third sections of the Bacitra Nāṭaka. We shall first concentrate on the fighting king, who talks about his mission in words akin to the conceptions expressed in the Dharmaśastra, according to which the king is to be regarded as divinely ordained and is in charge of maintaining the dharma and protecting the kingdom: 6 hama iha kāja jagata mo āe dharama heta guradeva paṭhāe jahāṃ tahāṃ tuma dharama bithāro dusaṭa dokhīani pakari pachāro yāhī kāja dharā hampa janamaṃ samajha lehu sādhū sabha mana maṃ dharama calāvana santa ubārana dusaṭa sabhana ko mūla upāranaxx The reason why I came to this world Is that God the Guru sent me for the sake of the dharma. ‘Where ever you propagate the dharma, Crush the villains and the sinners.’ This is the reason why I was born, Sādhūs, understand this in your heart: In order to cause the dharma to rule, to save the Sants, To definitively eradicate all the villains. In the Bacitra Nāṭaka this eradication takes the form of three wars. The first one is the battle of Bhaṅgāṇī (1688), in which Gurū Gobind, still residing in Pāoṇṭā, is attacked by the Mughal Governor of Kashmīr Fateh Ṣāh.xxi In the second one, the battle of Nadauṇ (1691), Gurū Gobind, now established in Anandpur, comes forward to help Bhīm Cand, the Rājpūt rājā of Kalhūr attacked by Alif Khān, envoy of the Mughal officer Mīāṃ Khān who had come in the Jammū area to levy taxes. Alif Khān is finally put to flight.xxiiIn the third war, fought in 1696, Dilāvar Khān, the governor of Lahore whose troops led by his son have suffered a serious setback in an expedition against Gurū Gobind,xxiii sends his commander Ḥusain Khān, called Ḥusainī in the Bacitra Nāṭaka, to avenge the defeat. On his way, Ḥusainī attacks the rājā of Guler, Rājā Rāj Siṅgh, called Gopāl in the poem, who manages to escape. Ḥusainī chases him and, in the battle which engages, he is supported by Kirpāl, the Rājpūt rājā of Kaṭoc. But as Gurū Gobind’s Sikhs come to fight with Rājā Gopāl, Ḥusainī is defeated and slain, and so too his generals Himmat and Kimmat, and the rājā of Kaṭoc.xxiv Infuriated by these events, Dilāvar Khān despatches a cavalry party and troops under the commandment of a valiant Rājpūt officer, Jujhār Siṅgh, himself assisted by Candan Rāi. Jujhār Siṅgh manages to seise the town of Bhalān, but he is attacked by Gaj Siṅgh, rājā of Jasvār. Finally, though Jujhār is 7 helped by the rājā of Candel, he is surrounded and killed while rushing headlong into the army of his enemies.xxv All along, the Gurū presents himself as constantly protected and assisted by God in his dharma-yuddhas (wars for the dharma). In the battle of Bhaṇgāṇī, for instance, Hari Cand shoots three arrows towards him without causing him a wound.xxvi In the battle of Nadauṇ, where the Gurū shows himself using first a rifle and then a bow, it is God who puts an end to the war and gets the enemies driven out into the river.xxvii And when Dilāvar Khān sends his son with numerous ‘Khans’ against him, Gurū Gobind, having won without being hurt, says: prabha bala hamai na chui sakai bhājata bhae nidānaxxviii Thanks to the power of God, they could not touch me; they ran away ultimately. Lastly, regarding the wars the Gurū relates, a striking feature ought to be noted: all three are defensive, and this is in tune with a famous Persian couplet from the Zafara-nāmā, the above mentioned defiant letter addressed to Aurangzeb, whose authorship however remains a point of debatexxix: co kâr az hame ḥile dar gożaśt ḥalâl ast bordan be śamśir dastxxx When all means have failed, It is permissible by religion (Ar. ḥalāl) to take to the sword. A complex genealogy The defensive nature of these wars allows us to figure out which image of himself as a king, and as a sipāhī, Gurū Gobind wanted to project. These wars are the manifestation of the mission for which God has sent him on earth. As He told him: maiṃ apnā suta tohi nivājā pantha pracaru karabe kaha sājā jāhi tahāṃ tai dharamu calāi kabudhi karana te loka haṭāixxxi I have cherished you as My son, I have prepared you for the propagation of the Panth. 8 Hence go, and spread the dharma; Divert people from evil actions. It is in order to provide explanations of his beginnings that Gurū Gobind recounts his genealogy since the origin of the world, much in the style of the vaṃśavalīs.xxxii What is, in this respect, his argument? It is rather simple. Since God has created the world, he wanted dharma to prevail. To this end, he despatched the Gods, the Siddhs and the Sādhūs, the R̥ ṣis, Dutt (i. e. Aditya, the Sun), Gorakh Nāth, the great ninth to thirteenth century yogi, held to be an incarnation of Śiva, Rāmānanda, a late medieval Vaiṣṇava teacher and devotee of Rāma and Sītā, the Mahāpuruṣas,xxxiii and Mahādīn (Muḥammad). But each of them only thought of himself and of his own power. As for Gobind, he was in deep meditation, sitting on the mount Hema Kuṇṭa (Golden Peak, name of mythic chain of mountains, north of the Himalayas), also called Sapta Sriṇga (Seven Horns), where the Pāṇḍavas (major protagonists of the Mahābhārata) practised yoga. When God instructed him to go and spread dharma, he finally accepted: ṭhāḍha bhayo maiṃ jori kari bacana kahā sira nyāi pantha calai taba jagata mai jaba tuma karahu sahāixxxiv I stood up and, with folded hands, I said, bowing down my head: ‘The Panth will flourish in the world when You grant Your help’. He went preaching the salvaging values of meditation on the Name, the uselessness of the Koran and of the Hindu scriptures exemplified by the Purāṇas, and affirming to be only a man, but entrusted with a divinely enjoined mission: iha kārani prabha mohi paṭhāyo taba mai jagata janamu dhari āyo jima tina kahī inai tima kahihau aüra kisū te baira na gahihau jo hama ko parameśara ucari hai te sabha naraki kuṇḍa mahi pari hai mo ko dāsu tavan kā jāno yā maiṃ bhedu na rañca pachāno maiṃ ho parama purakha ko dāsā 9 dekhani āyo jagata tamāsā jo prabha jagati kahā so kahi ho mrita loka te moni na rahihoxxxv This the reason why the Lord sent me, And then I was born in the world. Whatever the Lord said is what I say, And I do not have enmity with anyone. Whoever calls me the Supreme Lord Will fall into hell. Know me as the servant of the One, From Whom, recognise it, I am not in the least separated. I am the servant of the Supreme Being; I have come to see the spectacle of the world. I say whatever the Lord of the world said; In this world of death, I shall not remain a silent ascetic. Gobind also locates himself in the lineage of the Sikh Gurūs, and by doing so, he endows it with an origin myth, which has proved long-lasting and which is linked to the story of Lava and Kuśa, the sons of Rāma – himself a king of the so called Solar Dynasty going back to Sūrya – and of Sītā.xxxvi Kuśa founds Kasūra, and Lava Lahuravā, today respectively Qasur and Lahore in West Punjab, Pakistan. But a descendant of Kuśa, Kālaketu, expels Kālarāi, a descendant of Lava, from Lahurāva. Kālarāi then settles in Sanaudha and marries the daughter of the local king. They have a son by the name of Soḍhī Rāi, whose descendants are called the Soḍhīs and are great kings. But their quarrels persist with the descendants of Lava, who finally defeat Kuśa’s descendants. Those who survive among the latter go to Kaśī to study the Vedas: that is why they are called the Bedīs: let us recall here that Gurū Nānak and his first two successors at the head of the Panth were born in the Bedī sub-caste of the Khatrīs, and that all the Sikh Gurūs from Gurū Rām Dās onwards belonged to the Soḍhī sub-caste of the Khatrīs.xxxvii To come back to the origin of the Gurūs, it so happens that the Soḍhī king of Maddra Desa (maddra-deśa, as the Punjab is still called in the text) sends letters to the Bedīs, asking them to forget their ancient enmity. The Bedīs then go to Maddra Desa and submit to the king, who causes them to recite the Vedas. The king is so highly pleased that he gives his kingdom to 10 the reciter, the Bedī Amrit Rāi, and he and the other Soḍhīs ‘go to the forest’ (bani gae).xxxviii However, before the latter leave, the new king makes the following prediction: jaba nānaka kali mai hama āna kahāi hai ho jagata pūja kari tohi paramapada pāi haixxxix When I shall come in the Iron Age and be called Nānak, You will be revered in the world and reach the Supreme Stage. Then, the Soḍhīs depart for the forest and the Bedīs rule over Maddra Desa. But quarrels appear, the world is in a very bad state, and the Bedīs lose their kingship. Only twenty villages are left with them and they become agriculturists. This is when Nānak is born among them. He gathers disciples, propagates dharma and puts the seekers on the path to Truth and salvation. Then, says Gurū Gobind, Nānak transforms himself into Aṅgad, a Trehaṇ by sub- caste, then into Amar Dās, a Bhallā by sub-caste, and then into Rām Dās, a Soḍhī: the prediction is thus realised, and the following incarnations of Nānak are all Soḍhīs, from father to son, until Gobind.xl One cannot help being struck, while reading this origin myth, by its Hindu character. This stems not only from a genealogy which makes the Sikh Gurūs direct descendants of Rāma and Sītā, and hence Rājpūts of the Solar Dynasty, but also from the emphasis placed on caste, a social division which the first five Gurūs, in their Ādi Granth poems, treated as an aberration due to mayā. In the Bacitra Nāṭaka, as we have seen, the Khatrīs become Kṣatriyas, and the emphasis is on the Bedī and Soḍhī sub-castes to which the Gurūs belong. The story of Gobind as a Rājpūt descendant of Rāma, the story of Gobind as an envoy of God and the story of Gobind as a reincarnation of Nānak are woven into a complex origin myth. Gobind is a Sipāhī through his distant kingly inheritance and a Sant as Nānak’s reincarnation, sent in this world by God to re-establish dharma. But which view of God does the Sant Gurū Gobind claims to have in the Bacitra Nāṭaka? A close scrutiny will show that some distance with Gurū Nānak had emerged. 11