sikh

PRATAP SINGH, MAHARAJA (1919-1995). Tall and handsome, His Highness Maharaja Sir Pratap Singh, Malvendra Bahadur, was the ruler of the princely state of Nabha. The state ceased to be in 1948 when a new and larger political unit called Patiala and East Punjab States Union, short PEPSU, came into existence. This new union comprised all of the Sikh states of the Punjab Patiala, Nabha, Jind, Kapurthala, Faridkot and KalsTa, and two others. Pratap Singh was born on 21 September 1919, the son of Maharaja Ripudaman Singh. He began his education in Mussoorie, close to Dehra Dun, the summer home of the family.

RAHIT DARPAN, lit. a mirror or code of conduct, is one of the thirty-seven rahitndmds written by various authors and collected by Bhagvan Singh under the title Bar Bimal Bibekbdrdhi, popularly known as Bibekbdrdhi,. Rahit Darpan, written in Punjabi verse, is the work of Bhagvan Singh himself, which he completed on Phagun sudi 7, 1957 Bk/Fcbruary 1901.

RAMRAIAS, originally a splinter sect of the Sikhs, now comprise an independent group more akin to the Udasis. The sect owes its origin to Baba Ram Rai, whose name it bears. Ram Rai, who was the elder son of Guru Har Rai (1630-61), the seventh Guru, and who had been anathematized for deliberately misreading in the court of Emperor Aurarigzib a line from one of Guru Nanak`s hymns in order to avoid his displeasure, had shifted to a sub Himalayan dun (valley) where he established his derd or abode in a.jdgiror fief granted to him by the feudatory chief of Garhval under the orders of the Mughal court.

SADHARAN, BHAI, a devoted Sikh of the time of Guru Nanak, was a resident of Pakkhoke, near Dera Baba Nanak. According to Bhai Santokh Singh, Sri Gur Pratap Suraj Granth, in serving the Guru, Sadharan was next only to Guru Angad. He waited on Guru Nanak during the latter`s last days. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Bhalla, Sarup Das, Mahima Prakash. Patiala, 1971 2. Santokh Singh, Bhai, Sri Gur Pratap Suraj Granth.

SAMADH BHAI, commonly called Bhai ki Samadh, a village 36 km south of Moga (30°48`.N, 75"10`.E) in Faridkot district, has a historical shrine dedicated to Guru Hargobind, who visited the place in the course of ajoumey across the Malva region. The Gurdwara is a large rectangular hall with the Guru Granth Sahib seated in a square sanctum inside it. Two storeys of square pavilions with a lotus dome on top rise above the sanctum.

SARDUL SINGH CAVEESHAR (1886-1963), politician, newspaper editor and author, was born at Amritsar in 1886, the son of Sardar Kirpal Singh. He studied up to M.A. level, but left college in 1909 without taking the degree. In 1913 he launched an English journal, Sikh Review, from Delhi. He came into prominence over the question of the restoration of a wall of Gurdwara Rikabgahj, which the government had demolished in 1913-14 as New Delhi was being built. Sikhs expressed strong resentment, but action was suspended owing to outbreak of World War I. After the War, Sardul Singh Caveeshar was among the leaders who resumed the agitation.

SHAM SINGH NIHANG (1854-1924) was born Harkesh, in 1854, to Chaudhari Jasvant Singh at the village of Muhammadpur, in Sultanpur district of Uttar Pradesh. As he grew up, he helped his father in the family`s profession of farming before migrating at the age of twenty. five to Hyderabad, in the Deccan, to do business. There, undergoing several sudden turns of fortune, he went through the rites of Khalsa initiation at Gurdwara Sri Hazur Sahib at Nanded, receiving the name of Sham Singh. 

SIKH COINS or NUMISMATICS. Sikh coins like coins anywhere else were both a commercial necessity and a symbol of sovereignty. Coin, derived from the Latin cuneus, a wedge, through Old French coing and cuigne, "is properly the term for a wedge  shaped die used for stamping money, and so transferred to the money so stamped : hence a piece of money." The Punjabi word for coin, sikka, is borrowed from Persian where it means both "a die for coining" and "rule, law, regulation" (implying sovereignty). Traditionally, coins struck under the orders of various sovereigns had embossed or inscribed on them the name and/or bust of the ruler and the year of that ruler`s reign.

SINGH SABHA MOVEMENT, a reform movement among the Sikhs which assuming a critical turn in the seventies of the nineteenth century, became a vitally rejuvenating force at a time when Sikhism was fast losing its distinctive identity. Following closely upon the two successive movements, Nirankari and Namdhari, it was an expression of impulse of the Sikh community to rid itself of the base adulterations and accretions which had been draining away its energy, and to rediscover the sources of its original inspiration. It was, however, quite different from its precursors in source, content and outcome.

SRINAGAR (34"5`N, 74(50`E), the capital of Jammu and Kashmir state situated on the banks of the River Jehlum at an elevation of 5250 feet above sea level, has a historical Sikh shrine, Gurdwara Chhevin Patshahi, located near Kathi Gate of Hari Parbat Fort in the northern part of the city. The Gurdwara marks the site of the house where Mat Bhagbhari, an old lady converted to Sikhism during the time of Guru Aijan, lived with her son, Seva Das, who too was a devout Sikh.