Guru Nanak (1469-1539) represents the highest point of Punjabi literature, it has reached so far. Not because he is the first preceptor of the; religion of the Sikhs who are to this day staunch champions of Punjabi literature, the excellence in its own right, though it is available to us as an influential part of the canon of the Guru Granth, the holy scripture of the Sikhs. Guru Nanak was born on 16 April 1469 that is the second of Baisakh, 1526 of the Vikrami era, in a village in those days called Talwandi Rai Boi, later called in the province of Lahore. Since the days of the ascendancy of the Sikhs, it has been known as Nankana Sahib which is now a major town in the district of Sheikhupura in Pakistan.
MANI SINGH JANAM SAKHI, also known as CYAN RATNAVALI and traditionally attributed to Bhai Mani Singh, a famous Sikh of the early eighteenth century martyred by the Mughal governor of Lahore, Zakariya Khan, in 1737, is a collection of 225 anecdotes related to the life of Guru Nanak and some exegetical and theological discourses. Two manuscripts held by Khalsa College, Amritsar, are dated 1891 Bk/ADl834, and 1895 Bk/AD 1838, respectively, and of the three others in a private collection at Patiala two are also dated 1883 Bk/AD 1826, and 1927 Bk/AD 1870, and although the third and the oldest one bears the date 1778 Bk/AD 1721, it is evident from its contents and the modern style of its language that its actual date must be much later.According to S.S. Ashok, Panjabi Hath likhatan di Suchi, four other undated manuscripts, two of them complete and two incomplete, also existed but they were probably destroyed during the army`s invasion of the Darbar Sahib complex in 1984.
PUNN, a concept in the Indian tradition carrying simultaneously ethical, spiritual and philosophical connotations. As an ethical concept it implies voluntary obedience to the moral rules of conduct which have the sanction of a system of reward and punishment. As spiritual attitude, it is the inclination of the self towards a virtuous and ascetic living. As a metaphysical concept, it implies purity, holiness and goodness.
ASCETICISM, derived from the Greek word askesis, connotes the `training` or `exercise` of the body and the mind. Asceticism or ascetic practices belong to the domain of religious culture, and fasts, pilgrimages, ablutions, purificatory rituals, vigils, abstinence from certain foods and drinks, primitive and strange dress, nudity, uncut hair, tonsure. shaving the head, circumcision, caved welling, silence, meditation, vegetarianism, celibacy, virginity, inflicting pain upon oneself by whips and chains, mutilation, begging alms, owning no wealth or possessions, forbearance and patience, equanimity or impartiality towards friends and foes, eradication of desires and passions, treating the body as something evil or treating human life as a means of achieving ultimate release or union with God all these are subsumed under ascetic practices.
COURT, CAROLINE FEZLI AZAMJOO (1821-1869), born as Fezli Azamjoo in Kashmir on 13 June 1821, married Claude Auguste Court, a general in the Sikh army, by 1836. They had three children by the time they left the Punjab in 1843. On 25 June 1844, Fezli and her children were baptized at Marseilles, and she was on the same day religiously married to General Court by the Bishop in the Cathedrale of Marseilles. A fourth child was born in Marseilles in 1845. Little else is known about Fezli Azamjoo`s life at Marseilles.