Person · tenth Sikh Guru
Guru Gobind Singh
Also known as Gobind Singh, Guru Gobind Rai, Gobind Rai
Tenth and last human Guru: born at Patna, founded the Khalsa at Anandpur in 1699, lost his four sons and his mother in the wars with the Mughals and the hill rajas, dictated the final recension of the Granth at Damdamā, and at Nanded in 1708 ended the line by conferring guruship on the book.
- Date
- 1666 – 1708
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Tradition
- Dasam Granth; Zafarnama; Sikh tradition
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
At the first Khalsa initiation he took amrit himself from the five he had just initiated, making the Guru a member of the order he had created. The Zafarnāmā, his verse letter to Aurangzeb after losing everything, is written in Persian and is not a capitulation.
Connections (5)
- Monastic foundationAnandpur Sāhib
The Khalsa was instituted at Anandpur on Baisākhi 1699. Gobind Singh asked for five who would give their heads, took them one at a time into a tent, and brought them out alive; then he took initiation from the five he had made, which is the move nothing in the Indian tradition prepares you for.
- Canonised by textDamdamā Sāhib, Talwandi Sabo
At Damdamā in 1705 Gobind Singh dictated the Granth's final recension to Bhai Mani Singh, adding Tegh Bahadur's hymns and none of his own. Closing the book without putting himself in it is what made it possible to give it the guruship three years later. Damdamā is called the Gurū kī Kāshī and taught Gurmukhi and scripture for generations afterwards, which is the Sikh tradition building its own seat of learning rather than borrowing one.
- Scripture as guruHazūr Sāhib, Nanded
At Nanded in 1708, dying of a wound, Gobind Singh ended the line of human Gurus by conferring the office on the Granth itself. Authority passed from a person to a text, which is why the book is treated as a living Guru — put to bed at night, woken in the morning, and never argued over as an object.
- Life routePatna Sāhib
Gobind Singh was born at Patna in 1666 while his father Tegh Bahadur was travelling in Bengal and Assam, and spent his first years there. The Bihar takht exists because the ninth Guru was away from Punjab, and the tenth's childhood belongs to the Ganges rather than the Sutlej. He left Patna at about six and never returned, but the Bihar sangat maintained the house, and the takht there now keeps a distinct eastern Sikh practice of its own.
- Succession in timeSarmad Shaheed Dargah, Old Delhi
Sarmad, an Armenian Jewish merchant turned naked Persian-writing mystic, was beheaded at the Jama Masjid steps in 1661; Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded at Chandni Chowk fourteen years later, a few hundred metres away. Aurangzeb's two most-remembered executions in Delhi were of men who threatened nothing but his claim to decide what belief was permissible, and both graves are now shrines.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Guru Gobind Singh”. The subject’s own writings where they survive, and the standard biographical literature.
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