CHALI MUKTE, lit. forty (chalf) liberated ones (mukte), is how a band of 40 brave Sikhs who laid down their lives fighting near the dhab or lake of Khidrana, also called Isharsar, on 29 December 1705 against a Mughal force in chase of Guru Gobind Singh are remembered in Sikh history and daily in the Sikh ardas or supplicatory prayer offered individually or at gatherings at the end of all religious services. Guru Gobind Singh, who had watched the battle from a nearby mound praised the martyrs` valour and blessed them as Chali Mukte, the Forty Immortals. After them Khidrana became Muktsar the Pool of Liberation.
CUNNINGHAM, JOSEPH DAVEY (1812-1851), the first British historian of the Sikhs (his A History of the Sikhs was published in London in 1849), was the eldest of the five sons of Allan Cunningham, a noted poet and playwright. Born at Lambeth on 9 June 1812, Joseph had his early education in private schools in London where he showed such a marked aptitude for mathematics that his father was advised to send him to Cambridge. But as the young boy was more keen on becoming a soldier, a cadetship in the East India Company`s service was procured him through the good offices of Sir Walter Scott.
GIAN (Skt.jnana), knowledge, understanding or consciousness, is what differentiates human beings from the animal world and establishes the superiority of homo sapiens over the other species. Nature has not only provided man with a qualitatively superior brain but has also endowed human mind with a dynamic inner stimulus called jagiasa (Skt. jijnasa}, desire to know, inquisitiveness. Perhaps it is on account of this urge for knowledge and the consequent exercise that human brain or mind (psyche or soul for the ancients) gradually developed over the millenia.
GURMAT MARTAND, by Bhai Kahn Singh, is a glossary in two volumes of terms bearing on different aspects of Sikh religion, theology and belief. The author undertook this work, arranged topically as well as alphabetically, with a view to rectifying some of the misconceptions about certain Sikh theological and conceptual doctrines and notions which had crept in as a result of ignorance of some chroniclers and the general inability of Sikhs to comprehend clearly and correctly the meaning of the canonical texts.