Page 247 - Lohgarh

Bibliography

The present work is about the life and contribution of Banda Singh
Bahadur. Banda Singh Bahadur became the greatest hero of the history
of the Sikhs, the Punjab and South Asia through his unparalleled deeds
and sacrifices for eight years (1708 to 1716). Luckily, several Persian
sources have preserved valuable materials about this period. The
Gurmukhi and Punjabi sources too have useful information.
Among the Gurmukhi and Punjabi sources, the best ones are the
Bhatt Vahis (literally: registers of the Bhatts; the Bhatts used to record
the births, marriages, battles, deaths of their ‘clients’; hence, these are
a genealogical account of prominent Sikh clans, mostly Rajput and Khatri,
written by their family priests commonly called prophets; however, it is
not proper to call them priests; they were a sort of record-keepers). As
the Bhatt Vahis had been written by the priestly class, hence they had
presented the materials with exaggeration and might have concocted
some stories also. But, their preservation of the record of dates, names
of people and places is the most precious treasure of history of their
times. The next work is Gur Sobha. It was written by Sainapati in 1711.
This work covers the period between 1701 and 1709 only, hence no
reference to Banda Singh.
The second stage of sources is the Gurbilas literature (biographies
of the Gurus) which was composed in the second half of the eighteenth
century or in the first half of the nineteenth century. They are replete
with fiction and hagiographies materials besides several concocted
stories, thus distorting the history. Three such works are often quoted:
Gurbilas Patsahi 10 (1751) by Koer Singh, Gurbilas Patsahi Dasvin (1797)