ZAFARNAMAH, Guru Gobind Singh\'s letter in Persian verse addressed to Emperor Aurangzib included in the Dasam Granth. The word zafarnamah is a compound of Arabic zafar, meaning victory, and Persian namah, meaning letter. Zafarnamah thus means a letter or epistle of victory. Pressed by a prolonged siege, Guru Gobind

AKAL USTATI (In Praise of the Timeless Being) is a poetical composition by Guru Gobind Singh in the Dasam Granth. This is the only major composition in the Tenth Master\'s Book which is without a title. The title by which it is known is made up of its first

ASTPADI, from Sanskrit astapada, astapad or astapadf, is a poetic composition comprising ast or eight padas or stanzas. No specific rhyme scheme, measure or burden is prescribed for it, but all the eight stanzas must be in the same metre and measure. Lines in each stanza are generally rhymed.

BANI BIRDH PRATAP is a collection of religious and devotional poetry in a mixture of Braj and Punjabi, written in Gurmukhi script by Baba Ram Das, a Divana sadhu. The volume is preserved with reverence due to a religious scripture in the dera or monastery of the Divana sect established

Aris Daya Singh (1894 - 1946) was popular writer of devotional and didactic verses. He belonged to a backard rural family of farm labourers called Mazhabi Sikhs. Having been thrased by his poor father, Santa Singh, because of his pursuit of learning, left home and started living as a

GATHA, title of Guru Arjan`s composition comprising twenty-four verses included in the Guru Granth Sahib. In Sanskrit writings, gdthd stands for a religious verse of non Vedic origin, a stanza or a song. In Prakrit and Buddhist traditions, the term signifies averse, a line of poetry, song, stanza or aphorism.

GURMAT SUDHAKAR (lit. Sikh principles explained and illustrated : Sudhdkar= the moon, i.e. the illuminator) is an anthology by Bhai Kahn Singh, of Nabha, of excerpts from old Sikh historical texts and manuals of stipulated conduct. The work, first published in 1899, is divided into sixteen chapters. The opening chapter

HIKAYAT is the title given to the eleven tales, in Persian verse but in Gurmukhi letters, in the Dasam Granth, immediately after the Zafamamah. The title `Hikayat` does not occur in the actual text, but most of the tales have a verse, coming after two or three invocational lines

NIHAL SINGH, SANT, also known as Pandit Nihal Singh, a Sanskrit scholar well versed in Vedanta as well as in gurbdm, lived in Sikh times in the village of Thoha Khalsa, in district Rawalpindi, now in Pakistan. Pandit Nihal Singh is famous for his Sanskrit commentary on Japu, {hefapugudhdrthadipakd

PHUNHK, plural of phunha, a word derived from the Sanskrit punha meaning `again`, is the name of a poetic metre in which a particular term or phrase occurs repeatedly in each chhand or may be in each verse of a poem; in the Guru Granth Sahib it is the title

SADHU JAN, a Punjabi poet of the seventeenth century who wrote verses on mythical and spiritual themes. His identity is not clearly established. While Gurbilas Chhevin Patshahi (1718) identifies him as Bhai Sadhu who married in 1629 Bibi Viro, daughter of Guru Hargobind, Sarup Das Bhalla, Mahima Prakash, part

SALOP SAHASKRITI, title of a composition comprising seventy-one verses incorporated in the Guru Granth Sahib. The term `Sahaskriti` denotes the language form, a mixture of Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit, in which these slokas have been written. `Gatha` is another word used for `Sahaskriti`. Of the seventy-one verses collected under