Guru Gobind Singh's Death at Nanded Examination of - Vidhia.com

30 AN EXAMINATION OF SUCCESSION THEORIES
in the rose and Ganga water. [X, 653, Appendix VI.]
Kesar Singh makes no mention of any heavenly recep^
tion or anything else of the kind.
In the fourteenth chapter, the author reaffirms that
Guru Gobind Singh had formally proclaimed and installed
Granth Sahib on the gaddi of Guruship and that no one else
was to be recognized as Guru (verses 220-21). He also says
that "at present Granth Sjhib is our Guru," and "without the
Granth, accept no one else as Guru". [Verses 300, 307; also
see 297, Appendix VI.]
Bhai Sukha Singh, the author of the Gur-bilds, completed
in 1854 Bikrami, 1797 A.D., is more of a poet than a
narrator of events in any chronological or historical order.
According to him, Emperor Bahadur Shah moved away from
Nanded soon after the arrival of the Guru there, while the
latter stayed on at Nanded. But actually the Emperor stayed
there for some six weeks and crossed the river Godavri to
the south on October 7, 1708, soon after the death of the
Guru. He was present at Nanded on the left bank of the
river throughout the last days of the Guru. He was there
when, according to the Amar Namah, the Hindus of Nanded
complained to him on September 3, 1708, against the Sikhs
having killed goats and cooked meat on the sacred day of
sun-eclipse. It was on that day that the Guru had visited the
hermitage of Bairagi Madho Das and had baptized him as
Banda Singh, who became the first liberator of the Panjab
from under the Mughal yoke. The Emperor was still at
Nanded when he sent his own surgeon, a European (Ferrangi),
Call or Cole by name, when the Guru was stabbed.
At this stage, Sukha Singh has added a new miraculous
story. When the Guru's wound, says Sukha Singh, burst
open on account of his bending a stiff foreign bow and shooting
a number of arrows therefrom, he selected the site of a
grave for his cremation. When the local Muslims objected
to a part of the graveyard being cleared for it, the Guru is
said to have claimed it as his own place from ancient days.
The grave was then dug up under official orders and, to the
GURU GOBIND SINGH'S DEATH AT NANDED
surprise of all present, no bones were found there. Instead of
them, a chauki (a low wooden-stool), a poud (a wooden shoe)
and a dhup-dani (a censer) were unearthed from the bottom
of the grave. •
The foreign origin of the bow and the shooting of
arrows therefrom have been added to the old story by Sukha
Singh from his own imagination. He also brings into the
narrative a Active Sadhu with the difference that he appears
not on the fourth day of the Guru's cremation as mentioned
by Koer Singh but on the very first morning following the
cremation.
About the last message of the Guru, Sukha Singh says
that the Guru entrusted the Khalsa to the care of God and
enjoined upon them to read the Bdnl of the Ten Gurus, that
is, the Guru Granth Sahib — Das mehldn kl parhiye bant
[XXX, 27]. At the same time he lays great emphasis on the
practice of arms to be able to fight (against the oppression of)
the Turks (the Mughal government). This shows how the
eighteenth century Sikhs were reacting to the high-handedness
of the Mughals and Afghans under whom they had suffered.
Sukha Singh then continues the usual story saying that
nothing at all was found in the ashes of the Guru's pyre—
not even the dagger mentioned by Koer Singh. The year of
the death of the Guru given by him (1750, corresponding to
1693 A.D.) is also incorrect.
In the closing lines of this chapter XXX, devoted to
the death of the Guru, he gives the colophon saying in the
chaupai 105 that with it all the chapters of the Gur-bilds have
been completed—bhaye dhydye pure sabhai sach jdno. Having
completed the book proper, he adds another chapter calling
it afzoon or a superfluous appendant, meaning faltoo in
Panjabi. In this after-addition he gives the story of two
professional robbers, Bala Rai and Rustam Rai, both brothers,
of the village of Janwara near Bidar. They had been captured
by Shahu (Chahatrpati) and imprisoned in the fort of Satara.
In vain had they prayed to many a Hindu god and
Muslim pir but nobody had come to their rescue. One day
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