INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

ut without any scruples to depend on food offerings paid for by other castes. For
Kabir the pandits dressed in loincloths and adorned with rosaries and sacred threads
(tilak) are “the thugs of Benares” (Banaras ke thag) who always will be wandering in
self-conceit. 191
SOURCES ON GURU NANAK’S VISIT TO VARANASI
JANAM-SAKHI
Valaitvali Janam-sakhi
1600
THEME
Discourse with pandit Chattur Das.
Miharbani Janam-sakhi 1. Nanak teaches Ram-followers on the
1600 merits of studying religious books.
2. Nanak is invited to orthodox pandits
for food.
3. Nanak teaches noble men in eastern Banaras
on how to become righteous.
4. Nanak lectures Banarsi people on knowledge
and the Vedas.
5. Nanak discusses with Vaishnava students at
a pilgrimage place.
6. Nanak encounters a group of pandits at the
riverbank of Ganga.
Bala Janam-sakhi
Discourse with pandit Chattur Das.
1800 Figure 6.
The hagiographical janam-sakhi literature recorded from the seventeenth century
and onwards came to create mythologized prose stories about the life and deeds of
Guru Nanak to impart narrative settings and delineate the origin of the sacred
speech. The narrators apparently draw much of the textual fabrics from the writings
of the Sikh Gurus, pre-exiting oral traditions, and motifs and themes in their own
social and cultural context. 192 Guru Nanak’s encounter with learned scholars and
Vaishnava followers in Varanasi on his travels eastwards became a predominant
theme in this literary genre. At least three of the recorded janam-sakhi versions of
different ages mention Guru Nanak’s visit in the city (See Figure 6) and in all probability
additional references are to be found in other oral and written versions from
the nineteenth and twentieth century. 193
191
GGS: 476.
192
McLeod 1980a.
193
The Bala Janam-sakhi is recorded in Henry Court’s History of the Sikhs from 1888, which is an
English translation of Sardha Ram’s work Sikhan de Raj di Vithia written in the 1860s. According
to McLeod the work includes twenty stories from a version of Bala Janam-sakhi of the late nine-
84
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008