Sri Gur Sobha
Sri Gur Sobha, also known as Sri Gur Sobha Granth, is a poetic literary work written by the court-poet Sainapati that covers the life of Guru Gobind Singh and the establishment of the Khalsa order. It is one of the Gurbilases. The overarching motif of the work consists of praise of the tenth guru.
Description
The title of the text translates to "radiance of the guru". It was the first text of the Gurbilas genre and it narrates the life of Guru Gobind Singh and the establishment of the Khalsa order. The text was written in Gurmukhi in a language that is described as a mixture of Braj and eastern Punjabi that is Sanskritized. Its content has been described as partly eulogizing and partly historical. According to Sikh scholar J. S. Grewal, the Sri Gur Sobha is based "partly on personal observation and partly on hearsay and poetic imagination." Within the work, certain historical events are described through poetry, such as specific battles that the Sikhs fought, Mughal in-fighting, diplomacy between the Sikhs and the Mughals, and the assassination attempt on the guru's life at Nanded in the Deccan. Thus, the work has historiographical significance. The work contains references to particular terms, such as misl, which it uses to describe a military unit, which helps our understanding of the meaning particular vocabulary held at the time.Chapters
The work is divided into twenty chapters or cantos. Six out of twenty of the cantos directly eulogizes the Sikh guru or the Khalsa, with many of the rest of the cantos also containing laudatory lines. The name of each chapter and its general contents being as follows:- Panth Pragās Barnan – opens with introductory stanzas, gives a list of the ten Sikh gurus, and states that the reason Guru Gobind Singh established the Khalsa Panth was based upon a divine order.
- Teg Pragās – describes the Battle of Bhangani.
- Rājan Het Saṅgrām – describes the Battle of Nadaun.
- battles with Khanzada and Hussain Khan
- Bachan Pragās – end of the masand system and establishment of the Khalsa order.
- Bachan Bichār – describing the paragon Khalsa.
- Rahit Pragās – explaining the modus vivendi of the Khalsa, known as rehat.
- First battle of Anandpur
- Battle of Nirmohgarh
- Battles of Basoli and Kalmot
- Second battle of Anandpur
- battle of Chamkaur
- Kalā Pragās – covering the Guru Gobind Singh Marg, when the tenth guru escaped from Chamkaur and is travelling through the Malwa region, containing the battle of Muktsar and the Zafarnama epistle.
- Kīchak Mār – journey toward the south and the battle of Baghaur.
- Zikr Bādshāhī – Mughal war of succession (1707–1709)
- Mulāqāt Bādshāh Kī – meeting with Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah.
- Sāhibzādā kā Judh ar Zikr Rāh Kā – travels through Rajasthan and a skirmish at Chittorgarh.
- Jotī Jot Samāvaṇā – death of Guru Gobind Singh
- Agam Pragās – author's opinion on the future of the Khalsa
- Sarb Upamā – obeisance to the all-pervading divine
History
This text was completed by the court poet Sainapati in 1711. Sainapati was a patron poet of the Sikh guru. Whilst the author does not give his actual name or his pen-name in the work, the author can be identified through comparative analysis with works such as Chanakya Niti and Sri Sain Sukh, which were written by Sainapati.Two manuscripts of the work were kept in the collection of the Sikh Reference Library at the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar but were lost in the events of Operation Blue Star in 1984.