MAHADEV, BABA (1560-1605), the second son of Guru Ram Das (1534-81) and Mata Bhani, was born on 1 June 1560 at Goindval, in present-day Amritsar district of the Punjab. As he grew up, he displayed little interest in worldly affairs and remained occupied in meditation. According to Bhai Gurdas,

MIHAN, BHAI, founder of the Mihanshahi or Mihansahibi sect of Udasi sadhus, was a Sikh contemporary of the eighth, ninth and the tenth Gurus. His real name was Ramdev. His father, Nand Lal Sohna, had been a disciple of two Muslim devotees of Guru Hargobind, Khwaja and Jani, and

NANU MALL (d. 1791), minister and army general in Patiala state, was born at Sunam, in Sarigrur district. He came of a mercantile Aggarval family and became known as a highly capable administrator and a brave general. He acquired proficiency in classical languages Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian, and served in

PAN SAU SAKHI, a collection of five hundred anecdotes (panj = five; sau = hundred; sdkhi = anecdote), attributed to Bhai Ram Kuir (1672-1761), a descendant of Bhai Buddha, renamed Bhai Gurbakhsh Singh as he received the rites of the Khalsa at the hands of Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708). It

RUP KAUR, BIBI, commonly believed to be the adopted daughter of Guru Har Rai, was, according to Bhatt Vahi Talauda, his real daughter born to Mata Sulakkhani on 8 April 1649. She was married, on 3 December 1662, to Khem Karan, son of Bhai Per Mall, a Dhussa Khatri

SANGAT SINGH (d. 1705), one of the forty Sikhs who were besieged with Guru Gobind Singh in an improvised fortress at Chamkaur, bore a close resemblance to the Guru in physical appearance. Both Kuir Singh and Sukkha Singh in their poetical biographies of Guru Gobind Singh refer to him as

SIRHIND (30°37`N, 7623E), pronounced Sarhind, an ancient town lying along the Grand Trunk Road (now renamed Sher Shah Suri Marg) midway between Ludhiana and Ambala, derives its name probably from Sairindhas, a tribe that according to Varahamihira (AD 50587), Brihat Samhita, once inhabited this part of the country. According

TANSUKH LAHAURl, a devoted Sikh of Lahore who later lived at Ranthambore in Rajasthan. Tansukh had two of his sons living at Anandpur under the patronage of Guru Gobind Singh. They sent a copy of a translation of Hitopadesa, made by one of the Guru`s poets, Lakkhan Rai, to

VARYAM SINGH. BHAI (1870-1921), one of the Nankana Sahib martyrs, was the second of the four sons of Bhai Bhag Singh and Mai Chand Kaur, Kamboj landowners of Nizampur village, about 8 km east of Amritsar. The family later migrated to Nizampur Chelevala in Sheikh upura district (now in Pakistan).

AKAL, BHAI, a carpenter resident of Vadda Ghar in present day Fandkot district of the Punjab and, according to Gurbilas Chhevin Patshahi, maternal grandfather of the celebrated Bhai Rup Chand, became a devotee of Guru Ram Das. He also served Guru Arjan and Guru Hargobind. He was a man

ATAL RAI, BABA (1619-1628), son of Guru Hargobind (1595-1644), was born to Mata Nanaki at Amritsar on 23 October 1619. He died at the tender age of nine years. The circumstances of his death, as narrated in Gurbilas Chhevin Patshahi, were most extraordinary. Atal Rai had a playmate, Mohan,