PAKPATAN, a tahsil town in Sahiwal (Montgomery) district of Pakistan, is known for the tomb of the famous Sufi saint Shaikh Farid ud Din Shakarganj (1173-1266). Guru Nanak visited Pakpatan during his travels through that part of the country. At the time of that visit he fell into a discourse

RAJA RAM (d. 1644), a Rajput Sikh of the time of Guru Hargobind (1595-1644), was so deeply attached to the Guru that, according to Maubid Zulfiqar Ardastani, Dabistdni Mazdhib, he immolated himself on his funeral pyre. "Placing his [Guru Hargobind`s] body on firewood, as they," says Zulfiqar Ardastani, a

SAHOVAL, village 8 km southwest of Sialkot (32"30`N, 74"32`E) in Pakistan, is sacred to Guru Nanak (1469-1539) who once came here travelling from Sialkot and , according to local tradition, stayed under a ber tree (Ziziphus maiiritiana) near a pond for seven days. A gurdwara was later raised here and

SIALKOT (32030`N, 74°32`N), an ancient town now in Pakistan, was visited by Guru Nanak more than once during his travels across the country. According to Gian Ratanavali, better known as Janam SakhiBhai Mani Singh, supported by local tradition, as he once arrived here travelling from his native Talvandi, via Saidpur,

SUMER SINGH, BAVA (1847-1903), cleric and school man, was born on 17 August 1847 at Nizamabad, a small town in Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh. His family, originally from Goindval in the Punjab, traced its ancestry to Guru Amar Das, third in spiritual descent from Guru Nanak. Sumer Singh`s

VAIRAG, usually bairagor sometimes virag`in Punjabi, is derived from Sanskrit vairagya meaning "change or loss of colour, growing pale ; disgust, aversion, distaste for or loathing of ; freedom from all worldly desire, indifference to worldly objects or to life ; asceticism," or analysed as vi (prefix denoting disunion, separation,

AI PANTH, one of the twelve sects of yogis, whose adherents worship Ai Bhavani, a tribal female deity, believed to be an extension of Sakti. Siva in the form of ardhanarisvara is said to have two forms represented by his own halves. His right side is the male whose followers

ACROSTIC :At the age of seven Guru Nanak went to school and the schoolmaster wrote the alphabet on a wooden tablet for Nanak. After just one day Nanak copied the alphabet from memory and made an acrostic on the alphabet. The acrostic called the Patti or tablet in the

BEDI, a subcaste of the Khatris, Prakritized form of the Sanskrit kstriya which is one of the four caste groups into which the Hindu society is divided. The Khatris are mainly Hindus though there is among them a Sikh element which is small in number but important historically.There are no

BRAHMGIANI (Skt. brahmajnanin), lit. the knower of Brahman or one possessing the knowledge of Brahman. The knowledge (giana, jnana) of the Universal Spirit (Brahman) consists not in the mere recognition of His existence, but in a continuous consciousness about HimHis realization in the heart or rather the realization of

DAN (Skt. dana from the root da `to give`) means the act of giving or that which is given either as charity or alms or as offering, fee or reward for spiritual instruction received or for religious rite or ritual performed. The latter, however, is more appropriately called daksina.

EKADASI, from Sanskrit ekadasa; eka(one)+ dasa (ten) meaning eleven, is the eleventh day of the lunar fortnight, in both its dark and light halves. Among Vaisnavite Hindus, ehkadasi also harivasar (lit. Visnu`s day) is a day of fasting. Partaking of food in any form on this day is considered