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78 / Bhai Vir Singh
finalized byhimwaspublishedin 1926underthetitle Puratan
Janamsakhi. Apartfrom deII!arcatingthewordsfrom eachother,
contrary to the style of old Gurmukhi calligraphy in which a
whole line formed a unit, supplying marks of punctuation and
comparing the quotations from Guru Nanak's compositions
againstthe authorizedversioninthe Guru Granthheprovided
explanations and annotation in footnotes. By a close textual
andlinguisticanalysis, heattemptedto fixthedateofthewriting
ofthisJanamsakhi. He mendedanachronisms, apparentlythe
result of copyists' error or distortion, andsingled out shabads,
or hymns, erroneously ascribed to Guru Nanak. Yet Bhai Vir
Singhwasfar from satisfied: till the lasthe remainedinsearch
of the manuscript which was the original text for copies then
incurrency. Nothing olderthanthe manuscripts heworked on
has so far come to hand and no one has advanced any further
his own researches onthis subject. The Puratan Janamsakhi,
as edited by Bhai Vir Singh, is to this day the most valuable
source material on the life of Guru Nanak.
The next work Bhai Vir Singh undertook for similar
treatmentwas Bhai Santokh Singh's GurPratap Suraj Granth,
commonly known to the people as Suraj Prakash. This was a
gigantic task. The volume, inclusive of Nanak Prakash,
containing lives in verse of the ten Sikh Gurus, was huge in
size. Written in Gurmukhi characters, its language was Braj
heavily overlaid with Sanskrit. Use was also made bythe poet
ofPunjabidialects suchasLehndi, Majhi, PothohariandPahari
and of Persian and Arabic words, which in Gurmukhi
transliteration or as employed by him became somewhat
corruptedinform. He wasvastlylearnedintheIndianclassical
lore andtheSikhtexts. Allusions to Indianmythology, Pauranic
stories and different systems of Indian thought, especially
Vedanta and Yoga, abounded in his verse. Likewise, his
knowledge of a varietyof things such as the flora and fauna of
the Punjab, birds and cattle, horses and elephants, weapons
of war and the strategy of battlefield was encyclopaedic. His
vocabulary came from manydifferent areas ofhumanthought
and activity. Above all was the massive flow of his poetry, the
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