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76 / Bhai Vir Singh
faith atthehands ofGuru Gobind Singh himself. BhaiVir Singh
edited the manuscript and published in 1912.
He also edited and published for the first time the
celebrated Prachin Panth Prakash. It was the work of Rattan
Singh Bhangu, grandson of Bhai Mahtab Singh of Mirankot
who had earned renown by his deeds of daring and eventual
martyrdom inthe troubled decades ofthe eighteenth century.
RattanSinghwasengagedbyCapt. Murray, theBritishPolitical
Agent at Ludhiana, on the Sikh frontier, to narrate to him the
origin and history of the Sikhs. What he narrated to the
Englishman, obviously through interpreters, he recorded at
home insimple Punjabi verse. The outcome was a manuscript
of much historical importance. After a fragmentary and
somewhat hurried sketch of the Guru period, Rattan Singh
gave a detailed account of the cataclysmic days of the
eighteenthcenturywhentheSikhs bytheirdoggedresistance
laid the foundation of their rule in the Punjab. Born in a family
of warriors and martyrs who had given a new direction to the
course of history, he had access to reliable oral tradition about
manyof the events. He was himselfwitness to several ofthem
and he had an inborn sense of history. Bhai Vir Singh
compliments him especially on the accuracy of almost all of
his dates which, according to him, are supported by
contemporary Muslim accounts. 1
For the first edition, which was brought out in 1914, Bhai
Vir Singh had only one manuscript of this rare work. Later he
wasableto locate anothercopyandpublisheda secondedition
bycollating the two texts. In editingthe manuscript, he gave a
briefaccountofits origin, basedontheauthor'sowntestimony
inthebook, referredto textualvariations, suppliedexplanatory
headings and provided, in footnotes, glosses of words and
lines needing elucidation. Owingto Bhai Vir Singh'shistorical
1. See Bhai Vir Singh, ed. Prachin Panth Prakash, Khalsa Samachar,
Amritsar, 1962, IntrOduction to the first edition,
p.2.
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