CHANDU SHAH, a wealthy banker and revenue official at the Mughal court at Lahore. He earned the annoyance of Sikhs by uttering disparaging words when his family priest proposed Guru Arjan`s son, Hargobind, for his daughter who was of marriageable age. Chandu Shah accepted the suggestion but with reluctance

DARGAHA, BHAI, a Bhandari Khatri, figures in Bhai Gurdas`s roster of prominent Sikhs of Guru Hargobind`s time, Varan, XI.28. According to Bhai Mani Singh, Sikhan di Bhagat Mala, Bhai Dargaha once complained to the Guru that some Sikhs when interpreting gurbanife into polemic. Guru Hargobind said that while reasoning

FARRUKH-SIYAR (1683-1719), Mughal emperor of India from 1713-19, was the second son of`Azim al-Shan, the third son of Bahadur Shah. Born at Aurangabad in the Deccan on 11 September 1683, he in his tenth year accompanied his father to Agra, and in 1697 to Bengal, when that province was added

GURMAT (gurmat, mat, Sanskrit mati, i.e. counsel or tenets of the Guru, more specifically the religious principles laid down by the Guru) is a term which may in its essential sense be taken to be synonymous with Sikhism itself. It covers doctrinal, prescriptive and directional aspects of Sikh faith and

JASSA SINGH AHLUVALTA (1718-1783), founder of the misi or chicf ship of the Ahluvalias, remnants of which lasted until recent years in the form of the princely state of Kapurthala, and commander of the Dal Khalsa, who proclaimed in 1761 the sovereignty of the Sikhs, was born the son

KARAM SINGH (d. 1784), a leading figure in the Shahid clan of Sandhu Jatts of the village of Marahka in Sheikhupura district, now in Pakistan. According to Sir Lcpel Griffin, he was a grandson of Baba Dip Singh, the martyr. In January 1764, at the conquest of the Sirhind

KHALSA DHARAM SHASTAR, the Sikh manual of conduct enunciating Sikhs` social and religious duties was prepared under the patronage of Sodhi Ram Narain Singh, a scion of the Sodhi family of Sri Anandpur Sahib and was published at Sri Gurmat Press, Amritsar, in the year Nanakshahl 445 (AD 1914).

LAKHPAT RAI (d. 1748), diwan or revenue minister at Lahore under two successive Mughal viceroys, Zakariya Khan (1726-45) and Yahiya Khan (1745-47). He came of a Hindu Khatri family of Kalanaur, in Gurdaspur district of the Punjab. In 1736 when Zakariya Khan organized a mobile column of 10,000 to scour

MANJI, derived from the Sanskrit mancha and manchaka meaning a stage, platform, raised seat, dais, throne, beadstead, or a couch, has a special connotation in Sikh tradition. Ordinarily, a manji, in Punjabi, means a cot, especially of the simple, stringed variety. Social manner in India requires that when more than

MUKTSAR (30°29`N, 74°31`E), a district town in the Punjab, commemorating the martyrdom of Forty Muktas, i.e. the Liberated Ones, is a famous pilgrimage centre for the Sikhs. The sacred pool which lends its name to the town was formerly known as Khidrana Dhab, a natural depression which fed by

PAHUL or amrit sanskdr, the name given in the Sikh tradition to the ceremony of initiation. The word pdhulor pahulis a derivative from a substantive, pahumeaning an agent which brightens, accelerates or sharpens the potentialities of a given object. In the history of the Sikh faith, the initiation ceremony has

PRITHI CHAND, BABA (1558-1618). the eldest son of Guru Ram Das (1534-81), and Mata Bhani, was born in 1558 at Goindval, in present day Amritsar district of the Punjab. He was by nature ambitious and haughty. Guru Ram Das chose his youngest son Arjan (1563-1606) as his successor to