amardeep

i would recommend you to use www.srigranth.org instead for searching and reading the Guru Granth Sahib. It's a wonderful site that provides you two different english translations and has a simple yet beautiful layout.

Gurfateh
See the following list - it has various Gutke, Janam Sakhis, Prem Sumarag Granth, medicine Granths, translations of hindu and Islamic writings etc.
http://www.vismaadnaad.org/manuscript.php

Gurfateh
See the following list - it has various Gutke, Janam Sakhis, Prem Sumarag Granth, medicine Granths, translations of hindu and Islamic writings etc.
http://www.vismaadnaad.org/manuscript.php

I'm talking about  it from a comparative military history perspective - with other large scale battles taking place around that time. Whatever the numbers, I'm aware of the deep significance of the conflicts, whether they involved two groups bumping into each other whilst out hunting or otherwise. 
 
They were the first overt physical challenge by Sikhs  to one of the most powerful empires of the time.  To me the importance doesn't lie in the scale, but the act that some Sikhs (led by their Guru no less), had the audacity to challenge the power structures of the time (especially in the context of Guru Arjan Dev ji's shaheedi having took place as an assertion of that authority not long ago). 
 
In terms of messages, the one from the Moghuls to the Sikhs (and their Guru) was along the lines of 'know your place'; the response to this overt and brutally put message in the form of Guru Hargobind's challenge to Moghul authority is of major importance in terms of a precedent of physical resistance, which culminated in the Khalsa.  
However many people were involved, it was the act of open defiance in the face of a real and exercised violent threat that matters. 
 
I can imagine Jahangir thinking: 'I just had this guy's father executed and he's challenging me like this now. These people haven't learnt their lesson.'

Gurfateh
See the following list - it has various Gutke, Janam Sakhis, Prem Sumarag Granth, medicine Granths, translations of hindu and Islamic writings etc.
http://www.vismaadnaad.org/manuscript.php

For the past 7 years i've been working with counter-radicalization and extremism as a living and what he says is only partially true. The highly educated are often the leaders and forerunners of the groups - they always make up a small minority overall - whereas the majority of people are the uneducated coming from broken homes, have mental issues, lack of education and job experience etc.
98% of all cases i've been involved in relate to the above mentioned. Very few are middle class people - these only make up the recruiters who find the easy victims and sent them to Syria and else where.

 

For the past 7 years i've been working with counter-radicalization and extremism as a living and what he says is only partially true. The highly educated are often the leaders and forerunners of the groups - they always make up a small minority overall - whereas the majority of people are the uneducated coming from broken homes, have mental issues, lack of education and job experience etc.
98% of all cases i've been involved in relate to the above mentioned. Very few are middle class people - these only make up the recruiters who find the easy victims and sent them to Syria and else where.

 

Welcome to the path
 
All who are born will be held accountable for their deeds. Mann, bach, karam (thoughts, speech and actions).
Belonging to a specific religion is not what brings goodnes to people - it is their deeds alone. 
There are two levels of "sucess" in Sikhi - the material and the spiritual
For the material, people will be reborn over and over again - into good lives, bad lives, netural lives etc.. This is not to be seen as punishment but rather as the consequences of one's deeds (whether good or bad).
on the spiritual level - for those who strive for liberation - it requires a very disciplined spiritual practice. Very few people attain this and it is actually the ambition and goal for a very few people on earth to attain liberation.
People are different, - some people strive for the highest goal and live a disciplined spiritual life, whereas a majotiry of people do good deeds and merely wish to continue a reincarnated afterlife in a somewhat better life than what they have now..
Atheist people will not be "punished" for not being believers, - however they will have to face the fruits of whatever good and bad deeds they commit. Just like any other random Sikh, Christian, Muslim etc.
 

Look, I know academia. We build on previous contributions - if only to refute and correct previously held notions. That is what we are doing here and now.
 
The whole Singh Sabha thing and how some 'scholars' therein represented things to fit particular worldviews/agendas needs to be contextualised within the socio-political pressures of the time. You are right to highlight and question the actions of certain historians, but that still doesn't take away from the fact that progress has been made.  Whatever weaknesses they had, it is for the new generation to point out and ameliorate. 
This agenda driven approach to history is (sadly) a norm. Look at Anglos and their kartootan for example. I'd say even NOW, with people like J S Grewal (let alone institutes like the SGPC),  there is still an agenda driven approach to history in Sikh circles. 
If anything WE should be happy that some people are moving more and more closer to the truth (or at least trying to). This is the cutting edge of Sikh historiography. 
You and Amardeep need to chill a bit and just put your info out without the excessive jabs being thrown around. I like a little combative discussion myself, but don't let things degenerate into nothing but insults. 

Chatanga: In his medicinal granth Sainapati gives some biographica data about himself: The name of his Vidiya Guru, his parents, where he was born and lived as well as his caste.

Paapiman : Thanks I will try and look further in to it in the steek.
Dalsingh: True. No one is saying to go for the texts at face value but it is interesting that certain names are mentioned. It means there was fame and prestige to these SInghs since later generations wanted to be associated with them. For this reason alone it is worthy of being looked further into: Who were these men, did they write anything? Who were their students? etc.
 
Unlike Sikhkhoj who said he reads granths to look for errors in them, I look at Granths to see what they reveal about the time they were written in, the generation previous to it, details of earlier happenings etc. Im not interested in finding lies and errors.
 
In any case, even if the above text has a forged lineage it still talks about famous and not so famous scholars of Sikh history - what was the outcome of their students? Their students most likely produced some writings in later generations, - where are all these?

Chatanga and Dalsingh:

I wondered about incidents of looting taking place amongst the 18th century Khalsa as well (sources mention this happening from the time of the early Khalsa all the way up to the late misl period). After having struggled with this for a long time (on a personal level - as Dalsingh says because sometimes we have a romantic view of the Khalsa so stuff like this do get to us) I came across an interesting man who told me that the looting DID indeed take place as mentioned in the writings. BUT it was not targeted against civilians in the villages. The looting was against the "tax collectors" and local authorities in the villages -  these taxes would under normal circumstances been transfered to either the Rajput or Mughal overlords . So when the Sikhs attacked the villages they were NOT attacking villagers but rather the local political structure of the areas, - vassalage, rulership etc.
By the early and later Khalsa looting the tax collectors, the Khalsa was challenging the political structure of the time -  it goes hand in hand with other Khalsa injunctionos of the time of either being rebels or rulers, not to acknowledge external judicial courts, not to obey external rulers or pay taxes etc.

Gurfateh
 
I have come across an interesting pothi of a Guru Granth Sahib commentary from 19th Century. On the first page of the granth it has the lineage of the writer going back to Guru Gobind Singh.
 
I have some questions in regards to the text:

Do you read it as a linear lineage (ie X taught Y who taught Z who taught Y) or do you read it as "X taught Y,Z and E. E taught L, F and G. Z taught I,O and P" etc. etc.
 
What I find interesting in this pothi is that it mentions Bhai Mani Singh, Bhai Gurbaksh Singh, Bhai Surat Singh and Giani Sant Singh whom the present day Taksalis claim their lineages back to. However, the sequence is not correct if it is read as a linear lineage. There are other 18th and 19th Century writings however that claim a direct lineageship between the aforementioned Taksali jathedars.
 
How to make sense of this pothi?
 
 

I agree that women should be allowed to serve as panj pyare.
 
One argument I was given once is that equality is fulfilled when only men are allowed to give amrit.. In life, only women can give birth to babies. Men can't. Instead, men are given the opportunity to provide spiritual rebirth (amrit), - this provides full equality in terms of the spiritual and temporal.

Looking back on this thread i'd say Sikhs are coming along. I see more and more gore converting to Sikhi in Europe these days. Almost twice a week I come across new European converts on Facebook...

Check out the Prem Sumarag Granth and it's view on an ideal society. It suggests a somewhat socio-liberal society.

Everyone are so busy claiming Guru Nanak instead of listening to his message.

Aasaa, Fifth Mehl:
There is a garden, in which so many plants have grown.
They bear the Ambrosial Nectar of the Naam as their fruit. ||1||
Consider this, O wise one,
by which you may attain the state of Nirvaanaa.
All around this garden are pools of poison, but within it is the Ambrosial Nectar, O Siblings of Destiny.
There is only one gardener who tends it.
He takes care of every leaf and branch. ||2||
He brings all sorts of plants and plants them there.
They all bear fruit - none is without fruit. ||3||
One who receives the Ambrosial Fruit of the Naam from the Guru -
O Nanak, such a servant crosses over the ocean of Maya. ||4||5||56||

Looks good. what does alankar mean?