DERA, a word of Persian extraction, has several connotations. The original Persian word derah or dirah means a tent, camp, abode, house or habitation. In current usage in rural Punjab, a farmhouse or a group of farmhouses built away from the village proper is called dera. Even after such an

DHARAMSALA or dharamsala from Sanskrit dharmasala, lit. court of justice, tribunal, charitable asylum, religious asylum, stands in Punjabi for a place of worship or the village hospice. Dharamsala as a Sikh institution is the precursor of gurdwara (q.v.). According to janam sakhis, accounts of the life of Guru Nanak (1469-1539).

DHUAN, Punjabi for smoke, is a term which is particularly used for seats of certain monkish orders where a fire is perennially kept alive. In the Sikh context it is employed for the four branches of Udasi Sikhs established by Baba Gurditta (1613-38), on whom the headship of the sect

DAUDHAR DERA, a school for training Sikh musicians popularly known as Vadda Dera, was established in 1859 by Sant Suddh Singh (d. 1882) at Daudhar, village 22 km southeast of Moga (30° 48`N, 75° 10`E), in Faridkot district of the Punjab. Suddh Singh was a disciple of Thakur Didar Singh,

GANGUSHAHIS, a Sikh missionary order which owed its origin to Gangu Shah. Gangu Shah, also known as Ganga Das, was born in a Basi Khatri family of Garh shankar, in Hoshiarpur district of the Punjab, and was a disciple of Guru Amar Das, the third Guru or prophet preceptor of

GIANI SAMPRADAI is one of three major schools of Sikhs theologians and expositors of the Sikh scripture, the other two being the Udasis and the Nirmalas. Giani, the Punjabi form of Sanskrit jndni from the rootjnd (to know), originally meant a scholar of high learning. In Sikh tradition, a gidmis

JAGIASI, also Jagiasu orJijnasu is a religious sect cognate with the UdasT section of the NanakpanthTs of Sindh. The word jagidsd is derived from Sanskrit jijndsd (desire to know), jagidsi denoting one desirous of knowledge, of spiritual insight. T`.ic members of the Jagiasi sect are mostly sahajdhdns i.e. gradualists, believing

MAHANT, originally the superior of a math or any other similar religious establishment. In the Punjab of early Sikhism, its characteristic usage referred to the leaders of Nath deras. The term acquired a distinctive Sikh application during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, period during which many Sikh gurdwaras passed into

MELI, lit. attached or companion, appears in the Sikh Scripture in different connotations usually as a verb form, past indefinite of melana (to attach, join, bring together), in the feminine form (GG, 54, 63, 90, 243, 379, 389, 584 et al.); as an adjective meaning loving, attached (GG, 4243); and

NIRMAL PANCHAITI AKHARA is a seminary of the Nirmala sect of the Sikhs established in 1862 at Patiala. Akhdrd, lit. arena, signifies a monastery or seminary with facilities for board, lodging and education of sadhus of a particular sect or cult. Sannyasi and Bairagi sadhus had their respective akhdrds, also