Nowadays
the birth time of Guru Nanak Dev is celebrated at the Full Moon of Kartik, in
October or November (and there is even a regrettable move afoot to move to a
solar rather than lunar date.)But from
the evidence of the earliest birth records, the authentic rather than
adulterated janam sakhis, and of the immediate descendants of the Guru, and the
commentaries of careful scholars, it is fully apparent that the autumn date is
a later alteration and the Guru's true date of birth is in April of 1469. Of
course, the weight of tradition has rolled over the historical facts, and there
is no going back now; can you imagine trying to change the celebration of the
birth of Jesus the Christ to September, although factual records point to his
true birth time then?
The obscuration
of Baba Nanak's true birth time is a fascinating story, as explained in the
introduction to The Sikh Religion, Its
Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authors [i], by Max Arthur Macauliffe, the definitive work, published in
1909, by a British scholar and Sikh convert who served in the India Civil
Service as Commissioner for the Punjab and as a judge. In that work Macauliffe lamented the
likely dying out and passing away of the religion he had come to admire and
love, and whose learned elders like Pratap Singh Gyani contributed to his
writing the history of the Sikhs and his translation of the Siri Guru Granth Sahib.Today it is estimated there are 25
million Sikhs in the world.
(For excerpts from
Macauliffe explaining the true birth time and why it was changed, see the
appendix to this article)
Guru Nanak was born in a dark era of tyranny and
religious intolerance.The
Mohammedan conquests of India in the Middle Ages had accompanied a highly
repressive treatment of Hindus, with a "carnage of...men carried on until...the
earth grew weary of the monotony."[ii] Nanak's exalted Sun is accompanied by
debilitated Saturn.The brightest
light is challenged by the deepest dark.
Into times of the greatest pain the Akal
Purkh, Undying Consciousness, sends the Guru who can give abundant instruction
to all whose ears are open for it.Every planet in such a being's horoscope has a special relation to the
goal of the incarnation shown in the tenth, the house of the heavens highest in
the sky.But these men of the
divine also have to take on the guise of ordinary mortals and travel the route
of karmas shuttling back and forth over the axis of the nodes and transforming
the darkness of one of these states of mind to the vision of the other.The Guru's chart has a Kala Amrita
yoga, where all planets are locked on one side of the axis of the lunar nodes
that mark the eclipses.
From the abyss between the totalitarian
monotheism of the contemporary Islam and the disenfranchised, dispersed and
overly priest-ridden Hinduism of the Middle Ages sprang the nativity of Guru
Nanak, with its duality-reconciling Pisces lagna and the dazzling Mahapurush
yoga of Venus the mediator within it.Blooming between the crags of Mars in Aquarius on the one side and the
extremist yoga of Sun/Saturn on the other, which perform an exchange of signs, such
a Lagna brings new color, music and light into a harsh world.Exalted Venus in Lagna is the sign
ruler of exalted Moon.Exalted
Moon, the planet representing the soul because it is the atma karaka, is the
sign lord of exalted Jupiter, the Lagna lord.Exalted Jupiter is the sign lord of exalted Venus.How powerful is this atma karaka Moon
when we consider the combinations it contains from all lagnas:Lord of 5th from Lagna, it
also disposits Lagna lord; it is conjoined Mercury, lord of 5th from
itself, Chandra Lagna AND Karaka Lagna.It is dispositor of Ketu, lord of Arudha Lagna, and of Jupiter, lord of 5th from Arudha Lagna.Thus it is full of the power of Maharaja yoga. Such a Moon, in seventh from the Arudha
lagna determining one's image in the world, gives fame that spreads about in
space and over time without end. The chart has a phenomenal Kalpa Druma Yoga,
the wish-fulfilling tree, formed when all the Lagna dispositors are exalted or
in trines, and the Navamsa dispositor of Venus is also exalted Mars joined to
Ketu in the Navamsa, whose link to exalted Sun we see in the Rasi chart: this
shows the terrible pain of the early years that transmutes into the status of
Guruship.Rasi 9th Lord
Mars in Capricorn Navamsa is a mark of a great Guru of the Kali Yuga.
Guru Nanak's Vedic Natal Charts
Nanak stood for the One and could be
all things to all men.He traveled
far and wide beyond the confines of the Indian peninsula, from Sri Lanka to
Kashmir and Tibet, was reported to have met with Sri Chaitanya, to the Tibetans
was known as one of their Guru Rimpoches, and at his death Muslim and Hindu
groups of followers disputed over how his last rites should be said, but found
nothing but a pile of flowers when they came to pay respects.His atma karaka is Moon in the third
house of upadesa, delivering the word of the guru, a house of movement, and the
Moon is lord of the Pranapada, the point where a person's rhythm of breath and
of life is fixed--- showing a life of constant travel and change and music.The delivering of the Gurubani, the
hymns of enlightenment, to the farthest corners of the known world was his
mission, as seen by AK Moon also conjoining the 10th lord Mercury,
showing the mission.
For one whose message to humanity was the
oneness of God and Guru, and who founded a line of ten enlightened Gurus who
were seen as one uninterrupted being, and who finally said there would be no
further human representative of their line but only the Word of the Guru
contained in the sound current of the Gurus, the Siri Guru Granth Sahib, the astrological model must feature the
highest possible dignity and glory for the planet Jupiter, which of course,
represents Guru among the grahas.On the third day of the light half of Baisakh, in the early morning in
1469, Jupiter is in the nakshatra of Brihaspati, another name for the Guru, a
star of spiritual blossoming represented by the lotus, and where Jupiter is at
its highest exaltation. [On the altered date of Full Moon of Kartik, Jupiter is
in Leo, further on its way toward its debilitation, and in Purva Phalguni
nakshatra, a nakshatra associated with marriage and procreation rather than
with spirituality.]
But if exalted
Jupiter must be Nanak's lagna lord, then what about the Kala Sarpa yoga, the
axis of the lunar nodes Rahu and Ketu, walling off this Jupiter and all the
other planets on one restricted half of the chart?When the node leading the band of planets around the
zodiac is Ketu, the dispassionate giver of enlightenment, Kala Sarpa ("Serpent
of Time") yoga is termed Kala Amrita ("Nectar of Immortality") yoga.Especially when a benefic such as
Jupiter sits at the leading end of the axis of the nodes, the formation shows a
great paradigm shift as Kala Sarpa yoga transmutes into Kala Amrita yoga.One commentator objected that even such
a transmutation could hardly portray the horoscope of a transcendent Guru:"In case of both Kala Sarpa and Kala
Amrita yoga one sees lots of suffering and pain (Kala). The difference is what
follows after the suffering in case of Kala Amrita is Amrita. That is, good
time would start. People with Maha Padma Yoga [(Jupiter conjunct Ketu)],.... can
have the power to uplift others. But then Kala itself means suffering (since
all suffering is because of Karma of previous births)-- can we expect this yoga
in the horoscope of a saint like Guru Nanak Dev ji? Saints like him are way
beyond suffering, happiness and sadness." [iii]
Kala is time;
Nanak's father's name was Kalu; the Buddha's first Noble Truth is that time
entails suffering.The Sarpa is
the axis of Rahu and Ketu, which in ordinary humans has Rahu in the lowest
chakra and Ketu in the highest, but which through the Guru's light reverses so
that the craving is directed toward the highest, and the dispassionate
compassion resides in the lowest point.Kala Sarpa or Kala Amrita yoga is a feature of the birth charts of those
born to answer the demands of the times, like a Jawaharlal Nehru or a Margaret
Thatcher.Nanak's yoga is higher
because of the leadership of Ketu and the exaltation of Jupiter.Even so, he did go through progressions
of states of agony as a youth before emerging as the avatar with the Maha Padma
("Great Lotus") yoga.Nanak
as a child came up against the opposition of a harsh father, the strangling weight
of orthodox expectations, and a crushing imperialist society, all of which
aroused his inner demons.A
biographer titled the story of Nanak's emergence even before his teens as a
preacher and teacher, "Agony and Ecstasy."[iv]
..."Like
an artist passing through an agonising period, just before a violent outburst
of creative energy, Nanak passed through an intense period of his inner life. .... 'the school of suffering.'...While his soul felt the inflowing of God's
divinity his vivid...vision saw humanity passing through..crisis;...tyranny, hypocrisy...pained
his soul."This was the
period of severe beatings from his father, who thought him insane because of
Nanak's lack of practical sense and his habit of giving away earnings from
horse trading to religious mendicants....[H]e ate little, slept little, and talked to no one.He either went to the forest...or he
sat at home in a room brooding over some inner agony in pensive silence. ....[H]is heart and soul, which had
identified itself with the whole world, was silently suffering at the sight of
exploitation of the poor, the hypocrisy of the religious people, the
injustice... [H]e would compose a song to immortalize his agony which no one
understood....Everyone saw that
Nanak was not only sad...but was sick and ailing.They advised his father to consult a good physician...Haridas
examined Nanak's pulse, his face, and eyes, and asked him whether he had any
fever or pain.Guru Nanak's ...
reply has been preserved...
They have
called the physician, He holds my arm and feels the pulse; The physician, a simpleton, knows not, The agony is within my heart. Nanak:
Rag Malar
"And what may I ask is
the agony in the heart?" asked the physician. Nanak replied..."The world
is steeped in sorrow and suffering.It weighs heavily on my heart. Can you cure the pain of this sorrow?"
All of this began during Nanak's
Sun Ashtottari dasa (age 7 to 13) and continued into Nanak's Moon Ashtottari
dasha.Moon is the chara
atmakaraka, the representative of God and of the soul and the burgeoning
encounter with the Absolute, which ran from age 13 to age 28.Moon must act like those planets for
whom it is sign dispositor; they are Jupiter, the Lagna lord, and Ketu, which
is exalted for spiritual matters in the nakshatra Aslesha.
Let us look
more closely at Ketu, the severed tail of the serpent of time, because it is
associating with Jupiter, the lagna lord, which tells of the intellectual
brilliance of the horoscope native.Ketu's many strands of connection to the Guru's life and legend stand
out.Ketu is called "Sikhi", the
student or chela, and so Nanak founded the Sikh Dharma.Ketu has a unique glyph, and this very glyph is actually inscribed by Nature on
the hood of a flaring cobra. [v]Nanak's Ketu occupies Aslesha;Aslesha is the nakshatra whose devata is the cobra opening
its hood, also known as the "twin-fanged serpent," and Aslesha is a nakshatra
in which only Ketu among the grahas is said to confer blesssings, as long as
Aslesha is aspected by Jupiter.[vi] One of the early stories in the
legend of Nanak is this, retold by Trilochan Singh:"[After some other amazing incidents], when Rai Bular
[Muslim chief of the fief] again passed through the pasture [where the
eleven-year-old was supposed to be watching cows] he found Nanak having his
siesta under a tree.Through the
thick branches of the tree some rays of the hot sun fell on the tender face of
Nanak.A large hooded snake was
trying to shield the boy's face from the burning rays.When Rai Bular saw the snake raising
his head over Nanak's face, who was lying motionless, he thought he was dead....
As he went nearer, aiming his arrow at the deadly cobra, it disappeared.Nanak got up and greeted Rai Bular, who
was more than a more than a father to him...From that day on Rai Bular was convinced that Nanak was a messenger of God." [vii]
This incident occurred
in Sun Ashtottari.Sun's
mana, or nakshatra dispositor in the Ashtottari scheme, is Rahu, the severed
head of the demonic dragon of maya.So Sun's psychic preoccupation as per the nakshatra scheme is with Rahu,
the head of the Kala Sarpa axis which in Nanak's chart trails at the tail end
of the band of planets which starts with Ketu.Indeed he would be manifesting a turnabout of normal natural
procedures.
All this is befitting
astrologically, especially when we remember that Maharshi Jaimini states that
the insignia of liberation include the association of Ketu with factors
representing the self.Jupiter is
lagna lord.Another sign is having
the sign of Pisces, especially when beneficially occupied, in the twelfth from
the karaka of Soul.Sun is the
natural Atmakaraka, and Nanak has Pisces with exalted Venus in twelfth from the
Sun.
Another sign of the yogic
overcoming of earthly orientation is the reversal of the nodes to their
opposite sign from rashi to navamsa, so that if Rahu is in Cancer instead of
Capricorn in navamsa and Ketu in Capricorn instead of Cancer, we can very
simply see the process of karma changing to dharma.Rahu's craving has moved from the lower chakras to the
higher, and Ketu's dispassion has oriented towards the mundane instead of
toward the unknown.This is the
case in Nanak's navamsa.Moreover,
if one reads the degrees within vargas, regarding the vargas as fractal worlds,
complete small kundalis within the rasi kundali, Rahu sits in Aslesha in
navamsa, a precise counterweight to Ketu in Aslesha in rasi.Ketu in the varga is in Dhanishta,
realm of the Vasus, who in the Vedas are representatives of high association, a
group of divine beings presiding over the material and worldly splendors at the
summit of the gods, befitting a Guru whose successors claim oneness with his
light, as a band of mighty peers
In the rasi
chart, all the markers which Jyotish uses to show guruship are in the trines
meaning they are flowing as blessings from past life credit.Venus is the guru of Ashtottari dasa,
and it sits in the lagna exalted and dispositing the indicator of divinity, the
chara atmakaraka.Jupiter is the
naisargik (natural) karaka of the guru and it is in a trine, owning the lagna
and dispositing Venus.The ninth
from the naisargik karaka shows the particular guru of the chart; since the
karaka is in an even sign, the nine signs can be counted anti-zodiacally.This is in accordance with Jaimini's
sutras I.1.25-26, which tell us to count backwards from lagnas or other points
of importance that are in even signs. Counting backwards from Jupiter we reach
Scorpio, where the Arudha Lagna sits, the indicator of one's status in the
world.Scorpio's ruler is Ketu,
which is with Jupiter.If we read
all the houses of the even-sign chart anti-zodiacally, Jupiter and Ketu are in
the ninth house from lagna.Both
the Mantrapada (reflection of the fifth house) and Gurupada (reflection of the
ninth house) are in the lagna, whichever way we count.These padas relating to holiness
occupying the house of the personal identity also are ninth (guruship) from the
Arudha Lagna (identity in the world's eye) counting reverse.Again, if we take the name Nanak in its
katapayadi varga equivalent, like so:
NNK
001
and
reverse the numbers:001 'a
100
and
divide by 12:100/12 =96, Remainder 4
and
take the sign designated by the remainder, Cancer, and the house, (counting
anti-zodiacally from even lagna), Sagittarius, we get a quintessence of the
horoscope, and this quintessence is the sign Cancer containing the already
described guruship factors of Jupiter-Ketu, which is how the horoscope is
experienced by others, and the house, Sagittarius, of the mission as
experienced by the native, which is ruled by Jupiter.Cancer, which is also the Navamsa Lagna sign, is the sign of the bij mantra accounting for the exaltation of Jupiter [viii]: Om is the transcendent form "nirgun", without attributes, and Ongkar is the immanent form, "sirgun", with
attributes.Cancer sign, with the
Jupiter conjoined Ketu, is the key sign for Nanak's original approach to the
relation of man to Guru to God.EK
ONGKAR is the root for the Mul Mantra which begins Japji.
With such a
horoscope, how could Nanak follow the tradition of bowing to a personal guru,
who would be his guide and intercessor along the path to God?"Nanak's Guru was God." [ix] This is the key point of Nanak's theology and distinguishes
Nanak's place in the pantheon of saints in the land of saints and sages.Nanak, with his Lagna lord in Parampara
Yoga, the conjoining of Jupiter to Ketu, broke from all paramparas, or lineages
descending from particular masters. Nanak's message after his enlightenment,
after his disappearance beneath the waters of the river, pronounced repeatedly
after a pregnant silence, was:"There is no Hindu and no Musulman."Nanak dressed himself "in a strange motley of Hindu and
Muhammadan religious habiliments.He put on a mango-coloured jacket, over which he threw a
white...sheet.On his head he
carried the hat of a [Muslim Qalandar or monk], while he wore a necklace of
bones, and imprinted a saffron mark on his forehead in the style of
Hindus."This was an earnest of his
desire to found a religion which should be acceptable both to Hindus and
[Muslims] without conforming to either faith. [x] Paradoxically, he founded his own parampara, and yet the
Khalsa Panth is more than a parampara, as the teaching of these teachers is
that the Formless One is the Guru.
What kind of
learning was to be found in the nativity of one who could shake off tradition,
create a new alphabet and generate a river of sacred scipture? Even in his earliest Narayana dasa, the
dasa of Pisces from birth to age 9, Nanak's brilliant intellect revealed
itself.Shortly after learning his letters for the first time the child
Guru produced an acrostic on his wooden slate for his schoolmaster, written in
couplets of simple Punjabi dialect:
Sasa:The
one Lord who created the world is the Lord of all.Fortunate is their advent into the world, whose hearts
remain attached to Guru's service....
Nana:He who
knows divine knowledge is the learned pandit.He who knows the one God in all creatures would never say, "I exist by myself."..............
--Rag Asa, Guru Nanak [xi]
Nanak quickly outgrew the
village schoolmaster and at age ten was sent to learn Persian and Arabic with a
view by the adults of grooming him for some post under the provincial
governor.Again he astonished his
Persian teacher with his acrostics and poetry, and he became a Persian scholar,
versed in the Koran and other Arabic classics.He was in the Cancer dasa of his brilliant 5th
house and of the siddhamsa Lagna.
Moon, lord of Cancer
is in the third house conjoined Mercury karaka of languages.The desire to honor his village roots
and write in his native dialect, which henceforth became the germ of a new,
simpler, vernacular sacred language, Gurumukhi, rather than to compose his
copious inspired works in learned but hermetic strains of Sanskrit, is
illustrated by this conjunction, as well as by the union of democratic Saturn
with Sun in the second house of voice.Nanak's concern was for the common folk and creating bani or sacred
utterances that did not require special schooling to comprehend or remember.
During Cancer dasa Nanak
spent his free time consorting with the pious and learned people in his
surroundings, including Sufis, Buddhists, Jains, yogis, and Brahmans."The names of the men with whom Nanak
associated in the forest and who sang to him the songs of the Lord are all
lost, and their excellences merged as by a process of nirvan in the religious
splendor of the founder of the Sikh religion.But more perhaps than learning from the lips of religious
masters were his own undisturbed communings with nature, with his own soul, and
with his Creator.The voice that
had spoken to many a seer again became vocal in that wilderness, and raised
Nanak's thoughts to the summit of religious exaltation. ...The Name henceforth became the object of his continual worship and meditation
and indeed one of the distinctive features of his creed." [xii]
Given this inner
imperative, it is not surprising that Nanak's conduct at the ceremony of
initiation into the code of Hindu conduct and reception of the sacred thread
was considered scandalous.Elaborate arrangements had been made to entertain all types of
people.Nanak, then aged nine, had
specified that food should also be served to low-caste guests as well as fakirs
and sadhus.The village priest,
the same Hardyal who at Nanak's birth had worshipped with clasped hands and
foretold that the child would "wear the umbrella, the symbol of regal or
prophetic dignity," [xiii] , had placed the saligrama and
made preparations to impart the Gayatri mantra and perform other sacred
rites.As the ceremony began,
Hardyal "asked Nanak to sit opposite him for the initiation ceremony.Nanak sat there and asked the priest
what he was supposed to do.'First
pay homage to the deity, the saligrama, and be prepared to receive the mantra
from me.I will be your guru, and
you will be my disciple from this day onward.''Why should I bow to this little stone?' asked Nanak.'Because,' explained the priest, 'this
is the manifest image of God.'....'What do you think God is?A mountain or a pile of stones?....You who wish to initiate me into the
mystery of spiritual life, are you yourself enlightened...Is it the sacred thread
which makes a Brahmin or Kshatriya perfect in his dharma, or are his acts and
deeds responsible for it?".......The priest was dumbfounded....The radiant face of
Nanak glowed with the wisdom of a sage....[He began reciting his own Gurubani]:
Out of the cotton of compassion
Spin the thread of contentment;
Tie the knot of continence,
Give it the twist of truthfulness;
Make such a sacred thread
Oh Pundit for your inner self.
Such a thread will not break,
Nor get soiled, be burnt, or lost;
Blessed is the man O Nanak
Who makes it part of his life....
Asa-di-Var 15, Guru Nanak [xiv]
Thus Nanak declined his own entry into the
privileged ranks of Hindu society.
Cancer dasa
also brought Nanak's meeting with a village minstrel and poet, a converted
Muslim who begged and played for his living.Nanak renamed Dana Mardana and engaged him to set to ragas
the compositions which were pouring forth from the Guru.Moon and Mercury are in Nanak's
third/eleventh house of friends who provide the needed assistance, and their
dispositor is Venus or music. Together they make the Yanavanta yoga. Mardana
and Nanak's other friend Bala began to accompany Nanak everywhere his later
wanderings took him, providing the muscial accompaniment to his message.Mardana (Mercury) also provided some of
the comic relief in the Guru's life, as his stomach often played a leading role
on the stage of his life.
Cancer's lord Moon
also joins Mercury the dispositor of Upapada, and so this dasa, running along with
Moon Ashtottari dasa, brought more important people into Nanak's life: a wife.
Moon rapidly brought about Nanak's betrothal, at the behest of his parents, and
marriage.He was engaged to
Sulakhni, daughter of the patwari of Batala, and the marriage was happened
during his seventeenth year.Nanak's
sons were born in Scorpio dasa, the Arudha Lagna in the 9th of
fatherhood whose lord is Ketu with Jupiter in the 5th of progeny.Nanak became father of these sons in
Ashtottari Moon dasa.The first
son was the formidable Siri Chand, founder of the Udasi sect of ascetic
yogis.Nanak's own blood
descendants were not destined to occupy the spiritual throne of the Guruship.
This reverberates with the presence of
the Kala Amrita yoga in Nanak's fifth house of children. Jupiter with Ketu
shows a break from filial succession, and the later reversal presaged by the
combination of the nodes with a great benefic and the bestower of successors
Jupiter was seen later when the succession of the Gurus after Ram Das until
Guru Gobind Singh did become hereditary.
Sagittarius dasa brought the
disappearance beneath the River Bain, the transfiguration, and the emergence as
the poet of Japji and the beginning of his mission of spreading Gurubani in
four great journeys to distant points of the compass. In
1916 a tablet with the following inscription was uncovered in Baghdad: "In
memory of the Guru, the holy Baba Nanak, King of holy men, this monument has
been raised anew with the help of the seven saints." The date on the
tablet, 927 Hijri, corresponds to A.D. 1520-1521, in his Leo dasa.All in all the Guru and Mardana
undertook five major journeys throughout the Middle East.
In 1532, returned from his journeys,
back with his wife and sons and working the fields in Kartarpur, Nanak, now in
Capricorn dasa, met a devotee who earned approval as his successor.This was Lehna, who became Guru Angad
Dev.Lehna was a devotee of Durga
(Rahu).Rahu is at the tail end of
the Kala Amrita yoga, while joined to atma karaka Moon in Navamsa Lagna, and
represents the craving for continuing rebirth, in this case rebirth of the
Guruship in successor after successor.Nanak told Lehna, Lehna a name meaning "debt" in Punjabi, "I must pay
your debt."Over
time he became Guru Nanak's most ardent disciple. Guru Nanak put his followers
to many tests to see who was the most faithful. Once while accompanied by Lehna
and his two sons Guru Nanak came across what looked like a corpse covered with
a sheet. "Who would eat it?" asked Guru Nanak unexpectedly (Again,
Rahu--cannibalism). His sons refused, thinking that their father was not in his
senses. Lehna though agreed and as he removed the cover he found that it was a
tray of sacred food. Lehna first offered it to Guru Nanak and his sons and then
partook of the leftovers himself. Guru Nanak on seeing this said, "Lehna,
you were blessed with the sacred food because you could share it with others.
If people use the wealth bestowed on them by God for themselves alone or for
treasuring it, it is like a corpse. But if they decide to share it with others,
it becomes sacred food. You have known the secret. You are my image."
After thus
establishing the succession through Guru Angad (Limb of my limb), Guru Nanak on
September 22, 1539, early in the morning experienced his jyoti jot.It was Taurus dasa, with the atma
karaka, as Jupiter returned exactly to its natal position and on that day Moon
opposed it.
Here are excerpts from Macauliffe's
introduction, explaining Guru Nanak's birth time and why it was changed:"The oldest authentic account of
the Guru was written by Bhai Gur Das... He was Guru Arjan's amanuensis, and wrote
out from his dictation the Adi Granth.....He next wrote [the] Vars or religious
cantos...The first Var...ends with a brief account of Guru Nanak........Gur Das
wrote his own work not much more than sixty years after the demise of Guru
Nanak, when some of his contemporaries were still alive, and....retained the
vigour of his intellectual faculties.....
"After [the
tenth and last Guru's death, his devoted Sikh] Bhai Mani Singh remained as
Granthi, or reader of the Granth, in the [Golden Temple] in Amritsar. The Sikhs
commissioned him, while so employed, to write them a life of Guru Nanak. They
represented that the Minas, or descendants of Prithi Chand [a traitorous son of
Guru Ram Das], had interpolated much incorrect matter in the biography of the
Guru, whereby doubts were produced in the minds of orthodox Sikhs; and they
commissioned Mani Singh to discriminate the true from the false, and compile a
trustworthy life of the founder of their religion. He accordingly [expanded
the] Vars into a life of Guru Nanak. It is called the Gyan Ratanavali [and includes the Vaisakh tritiya birthtiime for the Guru.]
[The same Bhai Mani
Singh] in 1738 met a martyr's death at the hands the Muslim Viceroy of
Lahore.Mani Singh requested
permission for the Sikhs to hold a religious festival in Amritsar at the time
of Diwali in the fall.The Viceroy
agreed if a stipulated tax on each Sikh attending would be paid.But because the Viceroy also sent
troops to oversee the gathering, the gathering did not take place.Mani Singh was still held accountable
for the stipulated tax and was unable to pay. "Upon this he was taken to Lahore
for punishment. Zakaria Khan asked his Qazi what the punishment should be. The
Qazi replied that Mani Singh must either accept Islam or suffer disjointment of
his body. Mani Singh heroically accepted the latter alternative. The Viceroy
adjudged this barbarous punishment, nominally on account of his victim's
non-payment of the tax, but in reality on account of his influence as a learned
and holy man in maintaining the Sikh religion. Mani Singh manifested no pain on
the occasion of his execution. He continued to his last breath to recite the
Japji of Guru Nanak....."
[Macauliffe then
discusses the various Janam Sakhis, early and late accounts of Guru Nanak's
birth, the later of which mix in very contradictory details and contain much
that is miraculous and supernatural.] "These compositions were obviously
written at very different epochs after the demise of the Guru, and give very
different and contradictory details of his life.... The question of these Janamsakhis
is of such supreme importance, as showing the extent to which pious fiction can
proceed in fabricating details of the lives of religious teachers...."In a
note the author adds: "Compare the manner in which Janamsakhis or gospels
were multiplied in the early Christian Church.'Vast numbers of spurious writings bearing the names of
apostles and their followers, and claiming more or less direct apostolic
authority, were in circulation in the early Church--Gospels according to Peter,
to Thomas, to James, to Judas, ....to Barnabas, to Matthias, to
Nicodemus,&c.; and ecclesiastical writers bear abundant testimony to the
early and rapid growth of apocryphal literature.....' It may be incidentally
mentioned that it was the Gospel according to Barnabas which Muhammad used in
the composition of the Quran."
[Yet the earliest
Janamsakhis were unanimous in their giving of the Guru's natal month as at the third
lunar day of the month of Vaisakh or Baisakh in the spring. The author now goes
on to explain how the date was changed.]
"There
were three great schisms of the Sikh religion which led to the falsification of
old, or the composition of new, Janamsakhis. The schismatics were known as the
Udasis, the Minas, and the Handalis. The first schism of the Sikhs began
immediately after the demise of Guru Nanak. (Author's Note: There are now
several sects of the religion of Guru Nanak. It appears from the testimony of
St. Paul that the early Christian Church was similarly divided.....Schisms
appear to be the law of all religions. They began in Islam after the death of
the Prophet's companions. Islam, it is said, now numbers 73 different sects.)
[The Udasis] adopted Siri Chand, [Nanak's] elder son, as his successor, and
repudiated the nomination of Guru Angad....
"The
second schismatical body of the Sikhs were the Minas. Ram Das, the fourth Guru,
had three sons....Prithi Chand proved unfilial and disobedient.,,Prithi Chand
he stigmatized as Mina or deceitful [Prithi Chand had stolen the volumes of the
Adi Granth]. Prithi Chand, however, succeeded in obtaining a following....
Miharban, the son of Prithi Chand, wrote a Janamsakhi of Guru Nanak in which he
glorified his own father. Here there was ample opportunity for the manipulation
of details.....
"The Handalis,
the third schismatic sect of the Sikhs, were the followers of Handal, a Jat of
the Manjha. Bidhi Chand, a descendant of Handal, ... devised a religion of his
own, and compiled a Granth and a Janamsakhi to correspond. In both he sought to
exalt to the rank of chief apostle his father Handal, and degrade Guru Nanak...
For this purpose creative fancy was largely employed.....
Such were the
fictitious narratives introduced into the Janamsakhis, and, the reins of fancy
having once been let loose, it was difficult for the Handalis to know at what goal to pause. The result was a
total transformation of the biographies of Guru Nanak which they had found in
existence.This occurred about the
year 1640....
"In the present age,
accustomed as we are to the use and multiplication of printed books, it is not
at once easy to realize how records of every description could have been
forged, altered, and destroyed in an age when manuscripts only existed.It must be remembered that books then
were few, and that combinations among their possessors, especially if supported
by political power or religious fanaticism, could easily be effected.The Handalis apparently had sufficient
influence to destroy nearly all the older accounts of the life of Guru Nanak....."
"....[Also] there was a
great destruction of Sikh manuscripts during the persecution of the Sikh faith
by the Muhammadan authorities.Sikh works or treatises preserved in shrines became special objects of
attack.Their existence was known
and could not be denied by the Sikh priests, and systematic raids were
organized to take possession of them.It was only copies preserved by private individuals, living at a
distance from the scenes of persecution, which had any chance of escape from
the fury of the Muslims." (Author's
note:This finds a parallel in the
destruction of Christian writings by fanatical Romans prior to the time of the
Emperor Constantine.....)
"All the Handali and modern Janamsakhis give Kartik as the month in
which Baba Nanak was born.In Mani
Singh's and all the old Janamsakis the Guru's natal month is given as
Baisakh.The following is the
manner in which Kartik began to be considered as the Guru's natal Month:[emphasis supplied]
"There lived in the time of Maharaja Ranjit Singh [ca.
1801-1839], at Amritsar, Bhai Sant Singh Gyani, who was held in high estimation
by that monarch.Some five miles
from Amritsar is an ancient tank called the Ram Tirath....At that place a Hindu fair was and is
still held at the time of the full moon in the month of Kartik.The spot is essentially Hindu, and it
had the further demerit in the eyes of the Bhai of having been repaired by.....the
prime minister of Zakaria Khan Bahadur, the inhuman persecutor of the
Sikhs.Bhai Sant Singh desired to
establish an opposition fair in Amritsar on the same date, and thus prevent the
Sikhs from making the Hindu pilgrimage to Ram Tirath.He gravely adopted the Handali date of Guru Nanak's birth,
and proclaimed that his new fair at Amritsar at the full moon in the month of
Kartik was in honour of the nativity of the founder of his religion."
"There is no doubt
that Guru Nanak was born in Baisakh.All the older Janamsakhis give that as Guru Nanak's natal month.As late as the Sambat year 1872 it was
in Baisakh that the anniversary fair of Guru Nanak's birth was always
celebrated at Nankana [his birthplace in current day Pakistan].And finally the Nanak Parkash, which gives the full moon in Kartik, Sambat 1526, as
the time of Guru Nanak's birth and the tenth of the dark half of Assu, Sambat
1596, as the date of his death, states with strange inconsistency that he lived
seventy years five months and seven days, a total which is irreconcilable with
these dates, but it is very nearly reconcilable with the date of the Guru's
birth given in the old Janamsakhi."
(Author's note:The usually
accepted horoscopes and ages of the Gurus are given in a work called the Gur Parnali .)
"How the month of Kartik was subsequently ratified by
orthodox Sikhs as the month of Guru Nanak's nativity is also a curious instance
of the manner in which religious anniversaries and observances can be
prescribed and adopted.Bhai
Harbhagat Singh, of Shahid Ganj in Lahore, was a Sikh of high
consideration.He long debated in
his own mind whether he would accept Baisakh or Kartik as the month of Guru
Nanak's nativity.At last he
submitted the matter to the arbitrament of chance.He wrote the word Baisakh on one slip of paper and Kartik on
the other, placed both papers in front of the Granth Sahib, and sent an
unlettered boy, who had previously performed religious ablution in the sacred
tank, to take up one of them.The
boy selected the one on which Kartik had been written.
"Other reasons, too,
for the alterations of the date can easily be imagined.In the beginning of the month of
Baisakh there have been large Hindu fairs held from time immemorial to
celebrate the advent of spring.These fairs were visited by the early Sikhs as well as by their Hindu
countrymen; and it would on many accounts have been very inconvenient to make
the birth of Guru Nanak synchronize with them.The comparatively small number of Sikh visitors at a special
Sikh fair in the early days of the Sikh religion would have compared
unfavourably with the large number of Hindu pilgrims at the Baisakhi fair, and
furthermore, the selection of the month of October, when few Hindu fairs are
held, and when the weather is more suitable for the distant journey to Nankana,
would probably lead to a large gathering of Hindus at a Sikh shrine.
"One difference of opinion among the
victims of priestcraft is apt to produce many.When the month of Kartik was adopted by the Handalis as Guru
Nanak's birth time, a discussion arose as to whether it was the lunar or the
solar Kartik.... (Author's note:The
late Bhai Gurumukh Singh, who first gave the author these details, afterwards
put himself at the head of a deputation to move the Government of the Panjab to
declare the fictitious anniversary of Guru Nanak's birth a public holiday.That Government accordingly added a
second Sikh holiday to the already long list of Christian, Hindu, and
Muhammadan holidays sanctioned in its calendar.)"
As regards the hour of birth,
Macauliffe comments it was "the early morning" of April 15,
1469.One of the earliest Janam
Sakhis has been translated with commentary by W.H. McLeod, a professor who
spent nine years in Punjab researching Sikh history.The B40 Janam Sakhi, published by Guru Nanak Dev
University 1980, was completed Friday, 31st August, A.D. 1733, the third day of
the light half of Bhadon, by Daya Ram Abrol in the region between Kartarpur and
Dehra Baba Nanak.Here it says,
p.4. "He was born on the third day [tritiya tithi] of Vaisakh, on a
moonlit night during that fragrant hour ('amrit velai') which is the last watch
of the night."
[i]The introduction and first chapter of
Macauliffe's Volume 1 is available online at http://www.sacred-texts.com/skh/tsr1/tsr103.htm
[ii]The Sikh Religion, by Max Arthur Macauliffe, Low Price
Publications, Delhi, 1909, 1990, p. xliii.
