BENI, BHAGAT is one of the fifteen saints and sufis some of whose compositions have been incorporated in the Guru Granth Sahib. Very little is known about his personal life except that he spent most of his time in prayer and contemplation. Nabhaji`s Bhagatmal, which includes him in its

SHABAD (SABAD) HAJARE, also called Hajare de Sabad, is a collection of seven hymns taken from the Guru Granth Sahib and grouped together for the purpose of daily recitation. The title Shabad Hajare occurs nowhere in the Guru Granth Sahib, though it has found its way into breviaries (gutkas)

BHERA SRI GOBIND SINGH JI KA, also known as Var Bhere ki Patshahi Das, is an anonymous account, in Punjabi verse, of the battles of Anandgarh, Nirmohgarh and Chamkaur (1762 Bk/AD 1705). BAera from bher in Punjabi means a headon clash between two rival forces. A manuscript of this work

SODARU or SO DARU, lit. That Door, implying the entrance to the Lord`s presence, is a hymn by Guru Nanak figuring with slight orthographical variations, at three different places in the Guru Granth Sahib ; it forms part of the Japu (paun27), the morning prayer, and of the Rahrasi,

COSMIC EGG (HIRANYAGARBHA) The True Lord created the world with his own hands. He broke the Cosmic Egg into two parts. He united the ends of both the parts, and separated them from each other from the middle. (The middle portion became the space). In this way he made

SURDAS, one of the medieval Indian bhakta poets whose verses have been incorporated in the Guru Granth Sahib. Surdas, whose original name was Madan Mohan, is said to have been born in 1529, in a high-ranking Brahman family. As he grew up, he gained proficiency in the arts of

DHANNA, BHAGAT (b. 1415?), one of the medieval saints whose bani has been incorporated in the Guru Granth Sahib, describes himself in a hymn, in Raga Asa, as an ignorant Jatt and explains how he was attracted to the worship of God by the examples of Namdev (a calicoprinter),

TRILOCHAN, one of the three Maharashtrian saint poets whose compositions are included in the Guru Granth Sahib, the other two being Namdev and Parmanand. Trilochan is said to have been born in AD 1267 of a Vaisya family. There is no unanimity among scholars regarding the place of his

DINRAIN, lit. (din + rain) day and night, is the title (dinraini) of a single 4stanza hymn by Guru Arjan Dev in the Majh measure (GG, 13637). The composition evidently follows the prosodic vogue of inscribing verses to kalkrama (process of time) embracing forms such as baramaha (twelve months

VAK, from Sanskrit vaka (sounding, speaking ; a text, recitation or formula) or vakya (speech, saying, statement, declaration, a sentence or period), has a special connotation in the Sikh system. In Sikh terminology, Vak means the command or lesson read from the Guru Granth Sahib. Vak laina or hukam laina

KATHA is the noun form of the Sanskrit word kath, meaning to speak, describe, narrate or interpret. In religious terminology, kathd stands for exposition, analysis and discussion of a passage from a scripture. It involves a full length discourse on a given text, with a proper enunciation of it and

MUNDAVANI (lit. a seal or riddle), the concluding hymn of the Guru Granth Sahib composed by Guru Arjan as an epilogue to the Scripture which he had himself compiled and the first copy of which was transcribed under his guidance. The hymn comprises two parts; in the first part,