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Bhai Kahn
Singh Nahba
Bhai Kahn
Singh was a celebrated scholar and encyclopaedist, born
on August 30 1861 in a Dhillon Jatt family at the
village of Sabaz Banera, in what then used to be the
territory of the princely ruler of patiala. His father
was Narain Singh and mother Har Kaur. Narain Singh was
a man of saintly character and he succeeded to the
charge of Gurdwara Dera Baba Ajapal Singh, at Nabha,
after the death of his grandfather Sarup Singh in 1861.
Kahn Singh was the eldest of three brothers and one
sister. He did not attend any school or college for
formal education, yet he mastered several branches of
learning by his own effort. By the age of Ten he could
recite freely both the Guru Granth Sahib and Dasam
Granth. He read Sanskrit classics with Pundits in and
around Nabha and learnt music from a famous Mahant
Gajja singh. He sought Maulawis in Delhi to teach him
Persian. In 1883 he went to Lahore where during his
two-year stay he studied Persian texts and assisted
Professor Gurmukh Singh, a leading figure in the Singh
Sabha, in the publication of his Sudhararak. In 1887 he
was appointed tutor to Tikka Ripudaman Singh, the heir
apparent of Nabha state. From the Maharaja's private
secretary to judge of the High Court, he held several
different appointments in the state, serving for a
brief interregnum, 1915-17, in the neighbouring Sikh
state of Patiala.
In 1885, he
had a chance meeting with Max Arthur Macauliffe which
led to a life-long friendship. Macauliffe depended a
great deal on his advice and guidance in the work he
was then doing on Sikh scriptures and on the history of
early Sikhism. He took him along to England when his
6-volume The Sikh Religton was in print at the
Clarendon Press. Such was his admiration for Bhai Kahn
Singh that he assigned to him the copyright of the book
.
From among
Bhai Kahn Singh's works, Gurushabad Ratanakar Mahan
Kosh (1930), an encyclopaedia of Sikh literature, will
remain a permanent monument to his unmatched industry
and erudition. His maiden work Raj Dharam (1884),
written at the instance of Maharaja Hira Singh of Nabha,
was followed by Nanak Bhavarth Dipika (1888), an
exegesis of extracts from the Hanuman Natak, based on
his notes prepared for the instruction of the young
prince under his tutelage. In 1898, he published Ham
Hindu Nahin which set forth forcefully the Singh Sabha
standpoint with regard to Sikh identity. The Gurmat
Prabhakar, a glossary of Sikh terminology, concepts and
institutions, was published in 1898, and Gurmat
Sudhakar, an anthology of important Sikh texts,
scriptural and historical, in 1899. His Guru Chand
divakar (1924) and Gur sabad Alankar (1925) deal
primarily with rhetoric and prosody employed in the
Guru Granth Sahib and some other Sikh texts. His Gur
Gira Kasauti answers some of the questions raised by
his pupil, Tikka Ripudaman Singh, about the meanings of
certain hymns in the Guru Granth Sahib, and his Sharab
Nikhedh (1907) is a didactic work stressing the harmful
effects of drinking. Among his other works are tikas or
exegeses of Jaimant Assamedh (1896), Visnu Purana
(1903), Sadu and Chandi di Var (1935). From among his
works which were published posthumously, Gurmat Martand
(2 volumes) which essentially follows the format of his
earlier Gurmat Prabhakar but includes much more
explanatory material was published in 1960. A
travelogue was published in 1984.
Bhai Kahn
Singh lived in seclusion, totally immersed in his
scholarly pursuit, yet his influence transcended the
bounds he had created around himself. From the privacy
of his study, he continued to enrich contemporary Sikh
life in its diverse aspects. A man of aristocratic
bearing, he was extraordinarily handsome, with sharp,
chiselled features. He had the interests of an aesthete
and loved art, flowers and music. In several spheres,
he was the arbiter of taste Through his writings, hc
subtly moulded the course of Sikh awakening at the turn
of the century. On latter-day Sikh learning, he has
left a permanent imprint. Bhai Kahn Singh died at Nabha
on 24 November 1938.
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