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

42 AN EXAMINATION OF SUCCESSION THEORIES
relevant sources. As the subject under our immediate study
here belongs to the prevalent beliefs of the Sikhs through the
centuries and is purely historical, their mention in the historical
works of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries carries special
weight with students of history and cannot be ignored by
serious scholars.
We have already referred to the contemporary accounts
of Mirza Muhammad Harisi's Ibrat Namah (1705-19 A.D.).
To almost the same period belongs Sayyad Muhammad Qasim
Husaini Lahauri's Ibrat Namah (1135 al-Hijri, 1722 A.D.) and
Ibrat Maqal (1144 A.H., 1731 A.D.) written within fourteen
and twenty-three years, respectively, of the death of Guru
Gobind Singh. Giving the usual account of the Guru having
died of the wound inflicted on him with a jamdhar—a dagger—
by a Pathan at Nanded, Muhammad Qasim tells us that the
Guru's body was cremated by his disciples with aloe and
sandalwood according to the necessary Sikh rites. [P. 36,,
Appendix XVIII, iii.]
Rai Chatarman, the author of the Chahar Gulshan
Akhbdr-un-Nawddir, also known as the Chatar Gulshan or
Khualast-un-Nawadir, compiled his work in 1759, soon after
the death of Mata Sundri about whom, and about Ajit Singh,
her adopted son, and Mata Sahib Devi, he seems to be well
informed. According to him, the Pathan's dagger put an end
to the Guru's life. "As declared by Guru Nanak," says he,
"there are Ten persons [to be recognized]. These Ten
khalifahs (Gurus) are called Das Mahal. Anyone else sitting
on the gaddi after them is not acceptable to them (the Sikhs).
Some recognize him", Ajit Singh, the adopted son of Mata
Sundri. He was later disowned by Mata Sundri. [Pp. 35-36,
Appendix XVIII, iv.]
In the Majma-ul-Akhbar (1214-20 A.H., 1799-1805
A.D.), its author Har Sukh Rai says about Guru Gobind
Singh that "He is the Tenth Mahal and is the last Zahur
(appearance or successor) of Guru Nanak". [p. 48.1,
Appendix XVIII, v.]
Muhammad Ali Khan Ansari has to his credit two very
GURU GOBIND SINGH'S DEATH AT NANDED 43
important historical works, the Tdrikh-i-Muzajfarl, (1225 A.H.,
1-810 A.D.) and the Tarlkh-i-Bahr-ul-Mawwaj, carrying the
history of the Mughals to the beginning of the reign of Akbar
Shah II (1806-37 A.D.). These works deal extensively with the
struggles of the Sikhs against the Mughals and Durranis and
are considered to be important sources on the history of the
Panjab during the eighteenth century. Before the end of Guru
Gobind Singh's account, Muhammad Ali Khan writes that
"after him (Guru Gobind Singh), according to the faith of
these people (the Sikhs), the descending of Guruship and of
internal spiritualism came to an end and the book, the Granth,
was established in place of the Guru. [Tdrikh-i-Muzaffari, p.
152; Bahr-ul-Mawwaj, p. 208, Appendix XVIII, vi.]
At the same time in 1810 A.D. (1225 A.H.) was completed
Ahmed bin Muhammad Ali's Mirat-ul-Ahwal-i-Jahan
Numd. According to it, "the sons of Guru Gobind had
been killed in the battle of Alamgir. After him there is no
khallfah (successor, Guru)." [Appendix XVIII, vii.]
This was the time when Maharaja Ranjit Singh had
been on the throne of Lahore for some eleven years. He
had occupied the traditional capital of the Panjab in 1799
A.D. and had fully established himself as the undisputed
Maharaja of the Land of the Five Rivers. He had not only
been accepted as such by a number of Muslim, Hindu and
Sikh chieftains but had also been recognized by the greatest
foreign power in India, the British East India Company, which
had entered into a political treaty with him. This attracted
the attention of a number of British and Indian scholars who
wrote historical works devoted exclusively to the Sikhs. A
few pamphlets, it is true, had also been written on the Sikhs
in the eighteenth century by men like Antoine L. H. Polier
"(1780), William Franklin (1798-1803), etc., but they were too
sketchy to contain any detailed account of the Sikh Gurus'.
George Forster alone has referred to the Gurus in his Letter
No. XI of 1783 in his A Journey from Bengal to England
and says:
Govind Sing was assassinated during this expedition [of