TARA CHAND, BHAJ

TARA CHAND, BHAJ, was a masand or a batch leader of the Sikhs in Kabul. He once led a sarigat of those parts to the presence of Guru Hargobind. Travelling through Lahore, Amritsar and Khadur, they reached Kangar, now in Bathinda district of the Punjab, where the Guru then happened to be. Tara Chand was asked by the Guru to relate his experiences of the long journey. While doing so, Bhai Tara Chand especially praised two horses he had seen at Lahore in a royal procession.

He had been so fascinated by them that he had even enquired their names and quoted these to the Guru as Dilbagh and Gulbagh. These beauties, he said, deserved to be in the Guru`s stables. The horses had, as the tradition goes, been in fact brought for presentation to Guru Hargobind by a Sikh horse dealer, Karori by name, but had been seized on the way by the governor of Lahore. Bhai Bidhi Chand, a daring Sikh, later recovered the animals.

References :

1. Santokh Singh, Bhai, Sri Gur Pratap Suraj Granth. Amritsar, 1927-35
2. Gian Singh, Giani, Twarikh Guru Khalsa [Reprint]. Patiala, 1970
3. Macauliffe, Max Arthur, The Sikh Religion `: Its Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authons. Oxford, 1909