Jot Bigas and Rah-i-Rast: Bhai Nand Lal's Punjabi Works

A Poet of Two Worlds

Few figures in Sikh literary history embody the meeting of cultures as completely as ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ ਗੋਯਾ. Born in Ghazni and raised in the cosmopolitan Persianate world of Mughal administration, he became one of the supreme Persian poets of his age and yet ended his life as a devoted attendant at the court of ਗੁਰੂ ਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ at ਅਨੰਦਪੁਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ. His Persian works, the Divan-i-Goya, the Zindagi-nama, and the Ganj-nama, are jewels of devotional verse that have been recited in Sikh tradition for three centuries. Yet alongside this Persian achievement stands a smaller and far less studied body of work in Punjabi: the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ and the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ.

This course is devoted to these two Punjabi compositions. They matter for several reasons. First, they show a poet trained in the most refined Persian idiom deliberately turning to the vernacular of the ਸੰਗਤ, the language in which ਗੁਰਬਾਣੀ itself sings. Second, they carry distinct theological and ethical content: the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ unfolds a metaphysics of ਜੋਤਿ, the divine light, while the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ belongs to the prescriptive ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ literature that codified the discipline of the ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ. Third, they raise sharp scholarly questions about authorship and attribution that introduce students to the source-critical study of early Sikh texts.

The Scholarly Frame

Our guide through these texts is the work of historian Surjit Hans, whose A Reconstruction of Sikh History from Sikh Literature placed the ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ and devotional corpus under rigorous philological scrutiny. Hans taught that early Sikh literature must be read both as theology and as historical evidence, attentive to the layers of redaction that accreted over time. We will hold together two questions throughout: what do these works say, and what can we reliably know about who said it and when.

The intended audience of the Punjabi works is the heart of the matter. Persian was the language of the Mughal chancery and of the educated elite; a poem in Persian addressed a learned, often courtly readership. Punjabi was the language of the ਸੰਗਤ gathered before the Guru. When ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ writes that the devotee must remember the ਨਾਮ and serve the ਗੁਰੂ, he is no longer addressing connoisseurs of the ghazal but ordinary Sikhs seeking the path. As Gurbani in the ਜਪੁ ਜੀ teaches, the ਗੁਰਮੁਖਿ who remembers the Name crosses the ocean of existence; the Punjabi works translate this teaching into a direct, hortatory voice.

What This Course Will Do

Over eleven lessons we will move from biography to text to interpretation. We begin with the life of ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ and the world of ਅਨੰਦਪੁਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ. We then examine why a Persian master would compose in Punjabi, before turning to close reading of the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ and its central doctrine that the ਜੋਤਿ of the ਅਕਾਲ ਪੁਰਖ dwells within the seeker and is expanded through ਸਿਮਰਨ. We move to the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ and its ethical program for the ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ, set within the broader ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ genre. We confront the difficult problems of attribution that surround these texts, and we close by assessing their place in the literary afterlife of the Panth.

A word on method and humility is in order. The manuscript history of these short works is uncertain, and printed editions vary. We will therefore quote sparingly and, where the precise wording or location of a verse cannot be established with confidence, we will summarize the teaching rather than fabricate a citation. The goal is not to possess these texts as fixed monuments but to read them as living witnesses to how early Sikhs understood the light of the ਅਕਾਲ ਪੁਰਖ and the straight path of conduct. By the end, students should be able to articulate both the devotional power of these compositions and the careful scholarly caution they demand.

From Ghazni to the Court of the Guru

The life of ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ ਗੋਯਾ traces an extraordinary arc across the geography and learning of the seventeenth century. According to the traditional accounts gathered by Ganda Singh in the Bhai Nand Lal Granthavali, he was born around 1633 in Ghazni, in present-day Afghanistan, into a Khatri family steeped in Persian letters. His father, Diwan Chajju Ram, served in the Mughal administration, and the young Nand Lal received a thorough education in Persian and Arabic, mastering the poetic conventions that would later make his name.

Orphaned and seeking employment, he is said to have travelled to Multan and then into the wider Mughal world, eventually entering service connected to the household of the future emperor Bahadur Shah. His command of Persian was such that he composed verse admired by the most discerning critics of the imperial court. It was in this elite Persianate milieu that he adopted the takhallus, or pen-name, ਗੋਯਾ, meaning the eloquent or the one who speaks, a name that became inseparable from his identity.

The Turn to the Guru

The decisive event of his life was his arrival at ਅਨੰਦਪੁਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ and his entry into the service of ਗੁਰੂ ਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ. Sikh tradition preserves several accounts of how this came about, often emphasizing a moment in which the worldly accomplishment of the poet was redirected toward the divine. Whatever the precise circumstances, ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ became a cherished member of the Guru's darbar, numbered among the literary luminaries who gathered there. The court of the tenth Guru was a center of remarkable cultural activity, where poets translated, composed, and recited, and where the martial and the devotional were held together in a single vision.

It is essential to grasp the historical moment. ਗੁਰੂ ਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ created the ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ in 1699, an event that reframed Sikh identity around initiation, discipline, and sovereignty. The Guru faced mounting pressure from Mughal forces and hill rajas, and ਅਨੰਦਪੁਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ would eventually be evacuated in 1704. ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ's literary career, including his Punjabi works, unfolded against this backdrop of spiritual flourishing and political danger. Gurbani teaches in the bani of the Guru that the true warrior is the one who fights for righteousness; the poet who served this court understood devotion and duty as inseparable.

The Persian Achievement

Before turning to the Punjabi works, students must appreciate the scale of ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ's Persian achievement, because it frames everything else. The Divan-i-Goya is a collection of ghazals of intense mystical longing, suffused with the imagery of the lover and the Beloved that Persian poetry shares with the Sufi tradition, yet redirected wholly to the ਗੁਰੂ and the ਅਕਾਲ ਪੁਰਖ. The Zindagi-nama and Ganj-nama meditate on the lives and greatness of the Gurus. Sunil Sharma's study of Persian literature in Indian courts helps us see how a poet like Goya inhabited a trans-regional literary culture while bending it to a new devotional purpose.

Later Life and Death

The later years of ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ are less clearly documented. Tradition holds that after the events at ਅਨੰਦਪੁਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ he spent time at Multan, where he is said to have run a school of Persian and Arabic, and that he died around 1713. His tomb traditions and the survival of his works through devoted copyists testify to the reverence in which the Panth held him. He occupies a singular place: a Muslim by birth in the conventional reckoning, a master of the Islamicate Persian canon, who became one of the most beloved poets of the Sikh tradition.

Why Biography Matters for the Texts

This biography is not merely background. The questions we will face about the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ and ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ depend on it. Could a poet so steeped in Persian have written fluently in Punjabi, and in what register? Does the ethical content of a ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ fit the life of a courtier-poet, or does it point to later codification? When we read that these works flow from the same hand that wrote the Divan-i-Goya, we are making a historical claim that must be examined, not assumed. Holding the life and the works together is the discipline this course demands.

Two Languages, Two Communities

The most striking feature of ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ's Punjabi works is simply that they exist. A poet who could command the most elevated Persian idiom of his time chose, in the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ and the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ, to write in the vernacular. To understand this choice we must understand what each language signified in the late seventeenth century. Persian was the prestige language of the Mughal state, of administration, diplomacy, and high literary culture. To write in Persian was to address the educated elite across a vast cosmopolitan world stretching from the Deccan to Central Asia. Punjabi, by contrast, was the spoken language of the people of the region and, crucially, the language of ਗੁਰਬਾਣੀ and of the ਸੰਗਤ.

The shift in language is therefore a shift in audience and purpose. The Persian ghazals of the Divan-i-Goya are inward, mystical, and allusive, the speech of a refined soul to the Beloved. The Punjabi works are outward and instructional, the speech of a teacher to the community. When ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ writes in Punjabi about the ਜੋਤਿ and the ਨਾਮ, he is doing what ਗੁਰੂ ਨਾਨਕ ਦੇਵ ਜੀ did: bringing the highest truths into the language of ordinary devotion so that the ਸੰਗਤ might receive them directly.

The Question of Register

Scholars who examine the Punjabi works closely notice that their idiom differs markedly from the Persian poetry. The Persian is a masterwork of a native and trained sensibility. The Punjabi, by contrast, is functional and didactic, closer to the plain devotional and prescriptive registers of the ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ literature than to the soaring lyricism of the ghazal. This difference is one of the central puzzles the course will examine. It can be read in two ways. On one hand, a bilingual author naturally adopts a different register for a different purpose and audience; the same poet who polishes a courtly ghazal will write plainly when instructing the faithful. On the other hand, the gap in idiom is one of the data points that has led some scholars, including those in the tradition of source-criticism associated with Surjit Hans and W. H. McLeod, to question whether all the Punjabi works are securely the composition of the historical ਗੋਯਾ or whether they reflect later attribution.

The Rhetoric of Instruction

Whatever the resolution of the authorship question, the Punjabi works share a rhetorical mode that distinguishes them from the Persian. They instruct. They exhort. They frame teaching as transmission, sometimes through the device of the ਮੁਖਵਾਕ, the utterance presented as flowing from the mouth of the Guru. This dialogical and prescriptive structure is characteristic of the ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ genre, in which a teaching is given authority by being placed in the Guru's voice. Gurbani in the bani of the Gurus teaches that the word of the Guru, the ਸ਼ਬਦ, is the true guide; the Punjabi works of ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ lean on this conviction, presenting their counsel as continuous with the Guru's word.

The Vernacular and the Project of the Panth

There is a larger significance to the turn to Punjabi. The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were a period in which the Sikh community was consolidating its identity around the ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ, around shared discipline, and around a textual culture centered on ਗੁਰਬਾਣੀ. Vernacular literature that articulated devotion and conduct in Punjabi served this consolidation. Whether the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ and ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ were written by ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ himself or composed under his name by devoted Sikhs, their existence testifies to a community that needed and produced Punjabi works of devotion and ethics. The attachment of these works to the revered name of ਗੋਯਾ itself tells us something: his authority as a beloved poet of the Guru's court made his name a fitting vehicle for teaching the ਸੰਗਤ.

Reading Across the Divide

For the student, the lesson is to read the Punjabi works on their own terms while keeping the Persian achievement in view. We do not measure the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ against the Divan-i-Goya as if they aimed at the same thing. The ghazal seeks beauty and mystical intensity; the Punjabi works seek to teach the path. Both serve the ਗੁਰੂ, but they serve in different rooms of the same house. In the lessons that follow we enter the room of the Punjabi works and listen carefully to what they say about the light of the ਅਕਾਲ ਪੁਰਖ and the straight path of the Sikh.

What the Title Tells Us

The title ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ itself contains the heart of the work. ਜੋਤਿ means the divine light, the spark of the ਅਕਾਲ ਪੁਰਖ that the Gurus teach dwells within all creation. ਬਿਗਾਸ means expansion, blossoming, or unfolding, the same root used when ਗੁਰਬਾਣੀ describes the lotus of the heart opening or the mind blossoming in the dawn of divine awareness. The title therefore announces a theme: the work is about how the latent light within the devotee is expanded, made radiant, and brought to full flower through the path of devotion. It is a treatise, in vernacular and devotional form, on spiritual realization.

The Architecture of the Work

The ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ is a relatively short composition. In its Punjabi form it proceeds through a sequence of verses that develop, with cumulative force, a single overriding conviction: that the ਅਕਾਲ ਪੁਰਖ is the one light pervading all, and that the devotee who turns to the ਗੁਰੂ and remembers the ਨਾਮ comes to perceive and embody that light. The structure is not the tightly woven argument of a philosophical treatise but the layered repetition of devotional verse, returning again and again to the same truths so that they sink into the heart of the listener. This repetitive, incremental architecture is itself a teaching method, mirroring the practice of ਸਿਮਰਨ in which the Name is repeated until it transforms the one who repeats it.

We should be careful here. Because the manuscript and printed traditions of the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ vary, we will not pin our analysis to specific verse numbers or claim a fixed sequence. Instead we read the work for its dominant movements: from the affirmation of the one pervading light, to the obstacle of the self-centered ਮਨਮੁਖ condition, to the remedy of the ਗੁਰੂ and the ਨਾਮ, to the fruit of expanded ਜੋਤਿ in the realized ਗੁਰਮੁਖਿ.

The Pervading Light

The opening movement establishes the metaphysical ground. The ਅਕਾਲ ਪੁਰਖ is the single reality, and the ਜੋਤਿ that is the divine light shines in every being. This is wholly continuous with ਗੁਰਬਾਣੀ. Gurbani in the ਸੋਹਿਲਾ teaches that within all beings is the one light, and from that light the whole world is illumined; the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ takes up exactly this conviction and makes it the foundation of its devotional appeal. The work does not argue for the divine light as a philosophical proposition to be debated; it proclaims it as a truth to be realized.

The Obstacle and the Remedy

The second movement turns to the human condition. Why, if the light shines in all, do beings remain in darkness? The answer the work gives is the answer of ਗੁਰਮਤਿ: the veil of ਹਉਮੈ, self-centeredness, and attachment to the world obscures the light. The ਮਨਮੁਖ, the self-oriented person, lives turned away from the source. The remedy is the ਗੁਰੂ. Only through the grace and guidance of the Guru, and through the practice of ਸਿਮਰਨ of the ਨਾਮ, is the veil lifted and the ਜੋਤਿ expanded. This movement gives the work its devotional urgency: it is a summons to abandon the manmukh condition and turn to the Guru.

The Fruit: The Realized Gurmukh

The final movement describes the fruit. The one who remembers the ਨਾਮ under the Guru's guidance becomes a ਗੁਰਮੁਖਿ in whom the divine light blossoms fully. Such a person perceives the one light in all, is freed from fear and attachment, and merges into the source. This is the ਬਿਗਾਸ of the title: the full expansion of the light. The work thus has a clear devotional shape, moving from the universal truth of the light, through the human problem of the veil, to the path of remedy and its fruit.

Reading as Devotion

For the student, the lesson is that the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ should be read as devotional literature with a clear teaching purpose, not as systematic philosophy. Its repetitions are intentional. Its imagery of light and blossoming is shared with the deepest currents of ਗੁਰਬਾਣੀ. In the lessons that follow we will examine its two great themes in detail: the metaphysics of ਜੋਤਿ in the next lesson, and the practice of ਨਾਮ and ਸਿਮਰਨ in the one after. But the structure we have traced here, light, veil, Guru, and expansion, is the skeleton on which the whole work hangs, and keeping it in view will orient every closer reading.

The Doctrine of the One Light

At the center of the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ stands a single metaphysical conviction: there is one ਜੋਤਿ, one divine light, and it is the light of the ਅਕਾਲ ਪੁਰਖ shining in all creation. This is not a marginal idea borrowed for poetic effect; it is the load-bearing pillar of the entire work, and it is drawn directly from the heart of ਗੁਰਮਤਿ. To understand the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ we must understand what the Sikh tradition means by ਜੋਤਿ.

In ਗੁਰਬਾਣੀ, the imagery of light is used to express the immanence of the Divine. Gurbani in the bani of ਗੁਰੂ ਨਾਨਕ ਦੇਵ ਜੀ teaches that the same light dwells in all, that the one light pervades the whole creation, and that recognizing this light is the awakening of true understanding. The ਜੋਤਿ is not a created thing among other created things; it is the divine presence by which all things exist and are illumined. The ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ inherits this doctrine wholesale and makes the expansion of this light within the devotee its central concern.

Light Within the Self

The crucial move of the work is to locate the ਜੋਤਿ within the human self. The divine light is not merely a cosmic principle to be contemplated at a distance; it is the innermost reality of the seeker. The body is described, in the manner of ਗੁਰਬਾਣੀ, as the temple or vessel in which the light dwells. This interiorization of the light has profound consequences. It means that the spiritual quest is not a journey to a distant place but a turning inward to recognize what is already present. The ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ teaches that the light awaits recognition within, obscured only by the veil of ਹਉਮੈ and worldly attachment.

This interior emphasis distinguishes the metaphysics of the work from any merely external or ritual religion. The point is not to perform acts that earn divine favor from outside but to remove the obstruction that hides the light already within. As Gurbani in the ਆਸਾ ਦੀ ਵਾਰ teaches, ritual without inner truth is empty; the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ shares this insistence that the real work is interior.

The Self and the Veil

If the light shines within, why is it not seen? The work answers in the vocabulary of ਗੁਰਮਤਿ. The self in its ordinary condition is the ਮਨਮੁਖ self, turned toward ego and away from the source. ਹਉਮੈ, the disease of I-am-ness, creates a veil. Attachment to ਮਾਇਆ, the entangling world of appearances, thickens the veil. The light is not absent; it is curtained. The metaphysics of the work is therefore not dualistic in the sense of positing two ultimate realities. There is one light; the darkness is privation, the obscuring of the light by the unawakened self. This is an important theological point: evil and ignorance are not given the dignity of an independent existence. They are the shadow cast by a self that has turned away.

Expansion as Realization

The ਬਿਗਾਸ, the expansion, is therefore the realization of what is already true. When the veil is lifted, the light that was always present blossoms into full radiance. The self does not acquire a new substance; it recognizes its true nature as a vessel of the divine light and merges its awareness into the one ਜੋਤਿ. This is why the tradition speaks of the ਗੁਰਮੁਖਿ as one who beholds the one light in all beings. The expansion is at once interior and universal: the devotee who realizes the light within simultaneously perceives the same light everywhere. The barrier between self and other, which ਹਉਮੈ erects, dissolves.

Theological Stakes

The metaphysics of the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ carries real stakes. It grounds an ethic of universal regard: if the same light shines in all, then all beings are worthy of reverence, and the divisions that the world insists upon are exposed as illusions of the unawakened self. It grounds a spirituality of interiority: the path is one of turning inward and removing obstruction, not of external accumulation. And it grounds the centrality of the ਗੁਰੂ and the ਨਾਮ, for it is through the Guru's grace and the practice of remembrance that the veil is lifted. In this way the metaphysics of light is not abstract speculation but the foundation of a whole way of life, which the next lesson on ਨਾਮ and ਸਿਮਰਨ will develop, and which the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ will translate into conduct.

From Doctrine to Practice

If the metaphysics of the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ establishes that the divine light dwells within, the next question is practical: how is the veil lifted and the light expanded? The answer the work gives is the answer at the very center of ਗੁਰਮਤਿ: through ਨਾਮ and ਸਿਮਰਨ. The remembrance of the Name is the engine of the whole spiritual transformation the work describes. Without it, the metaphysics would remain a beautiful but inert doctrine; with it, the doctrine becomes a path that can actually be walked.

What Is Naam?

The ਨਾਮ, the Name, is not in ਗੁਰਮਤਿ a mere label or a magic word. It is the immanent, sustaining reality of the ਅਕਾਲ ਪੁਰਖ, the divine presence by which all things are upheld. To remember the ਨਾਮ is to attune the whole being to this sustaining reality. Gurbani in the bani of the Gurus teaches that the Name is the support of the saints, the wealth of the devotee, and the means by which the mind is purified. The ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ takes up this conviction and makes ਨਾਮ the indispensable means by which the ਜੋਤਿ within is kindled into full radiance.

Simran: The Discipline of Remembrance

ਸਿਮਰਨ is the loving, sustained remembrance and recitation of the ਨਾਮ. It is both an act and a state: the act of repeating and dwelling upon the Name, and the state of constant remembrance that this act cultivates. The ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ, like ਗੁਰਬਾਣੀ, presents ਸਿਮਰਨ not as one religious technique among many but as the very heart of the path. Through ਸਿਮਰਨ the noise of ਹਉਮੈ is stilled, the grip of ਮਾਇਆ is loosened, and the attention of the devotee is gathered and turned toward the light within. The repetitive structure of the work itself, which we noted earlier, enacts this discipline: the verses return again and again to the same truths, modeling the steady repetition that ਸਿਮਰਨ requires.

The Role of the Guru

Crucially, the ਨਾਮ is received through the ਗੁਰੂ. The ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ does not present remembrance as a self-generated technique that the isolated individual can simply adopt. The Name is a gift of grace, transmitted through the Guru, and the practice of ਸਿਮਰਨ is undertaken under the Guru's guidance. Gurbani in the bani of the Gurus teaches that without the Guru the Name is not obtained, and that it is the Guru who unites the devotee with the Name. This places the ਗੁਰੂ at the center of the path of expansion: the Guru gives the Name, the devotee remembers it, and the ਜੋਤਿ blossoms. For a work composed in the orbit of ਗੁਰੂ ਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ, this centrality of the Guru is no abstraction but the lived reality of the ਸੰਗਤ gathered at ਅਨੰਦਪੁਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ.

The Transformation Wrought by Naam

What does ਸਿਮਰਨ accomplish? The work describes a transformation that is at once psychological, ethical, and spiritual. Psychologically, the restless mind is stilled and the fevers of desire and fear are cooled. Ethically, the one who remembers the Name is drawn away from the vices that flow from ਹਉਮੈ and toward the virtues of compassion, humility, and truthful living, the very virtues the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ will prescribe. Spiritually, the veil over the ਜੋਤਿ is lifted and the light expands. These three dimensions are not separate; they are aspects of a single transformation. The remembrance of the Name reorders the whole person around the divine light.

Naam and the Unity of the Two Works

This lesson reveals a deep unity between the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ and the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ. The first work establishes the inner path of ਨਾਮ and ਸਿਮਰਨ by which the light is expanded; the second prescribes the outer conduct that flows from and supports this inner life. They are two faces of one vision: the inner remembrance and the outer discipline, the expanded light and the straight path. A Sikh who only studied conduct without the inner life of ਨਾਮ would have form without spirit; one who claimed inner experience without disciplined conduct would deceive himself. The genius of reading these two works together is that it holds the inner and the outer in the balance that ਗੁਰਮਤਿ everywhere insists upon. As we now turn to the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ, we carry with us the conviction that its ethics are rooted in the soil of ਨਾਮ.

A Work of Conduct

We now cross from the inner world of the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ to the outer world of the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ, The Straight Path. Where the first work is devotional and metaphysical, the second is prescriptive and ethical. It belongs to a distinct and historically important genre of early Sikh literature: the ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ. To read the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ well, we must first understand this genre and the scholarly questions that surround it.

What Is a Rahitnama?

A ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ is a text that codifies the ਰਹਿਤ, the code of conduct and discipline of the ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ. The creation of the ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ by ਗੁਰੂ ਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ in 1699 brought into being a community defined by initiation, by distinctive form, and by a way of life. The ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ literature arose to articulate that way of life: what the initiated Sikh must do and must avoid, the duties of devotion, the obligations of ethics, the marks of identity, and the prohibitions that guard the discipline. Several such texts circulate under the names of close companions of the Guru, including the rahitnamas attributed to Bhai Daya Singh, Bhai Chaupa Singh, Bhai Desa Singh, and Bhai Nand Lal himself. The ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ and the related ਤਨਖਾਹਨਾਮਾ are the works in this genre associated with ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ.

The Scholarly Study of the Genre

The ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ literature has been the subject of careful, sometimes contentious, scholarship. The most thorough study in English is that of W. H. McLeod, whose Sikhs of the Khalsa: A History of the Khalsa Rahit traces the development of the ਰਹਿਤ through these texts, and Surjit Hans's A Reconstruction of Sikh History from Sikh Literature subjected the corpus to rigorous philological analysis. The central insight of this scholarship is that the ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ texts are not simple, fixed documents written at a single moment. They were copied, expanded, and revised over time, and the versions that survive often contain layers from different periods. A given printed ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ may preserve an early core overlaid with later accretions reflecting the concerns of subsequent generations.

This does not diminish the value of the texts; it changes how we read them. We read a ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ not as a snapshot of a single hand at a single time but as a stratified witness to the evolving self-understanding of the Panth. For the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ this means we must be cautious about treating every line as the direct composition of the historical ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ. The work as we have it may carry both an early core associated with his name and later material that gathered around it.

The Form of the Rah-i-Rast

Within the genre, the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ has the characteristic form of prescriptive instruction. It sets out norms of conduct in a direct, often imperative voice. Like other rahitnamas, it frequently presents its teaching as transmitted from the Guru, using the device of the ਮੁਖਵਾਕ, the utterance from the Guru's mouth, to ground its authority. This dialogical framing, in which a teaching is given as the Guru's response to a question or as the Guru's direct command, is a hallmark of the genre. It expresses the conviction that the ਰਹਿਤ is not a human invention but flows from the will of the Guru.

Rahit as the Outer Form of Inner Devotion

It is essential not to read the ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ tradition as mere external rule-keeping. The discipline of the ਰਹਿਤ is understood in Sikh thought as the outer form of an inner devotion. The Sikh keeps the discipline not to satisfy an arbitrary law but because the disciplined life is the fitting vessel for the life of ਨਾਮ. This is exactly why reading the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ alongside the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ is so illuminating: the inner expansion of the light and the outer straight path are two aspects of one integrated life. Gurbani teaches that truth is high but higher still is truthful living; the ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ tradition is the attempt to spell out what truthful living means for the ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ.

Toward a Close Reading

With this framing in place, we are ready to examine the ethical content of the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ in the next lesson. We will read it as a witness to the ethics of the ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ, attentive both to what it prescribes and to the scholarly caution that the genre demands. The straight path it sets out, we will see, is the path on which the expanded light of the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ is meant to be walked.

The Straight Path in Practice

Having situated the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ within the ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ genre, we now turn to its content: the ethical and devotional path it prescribes for the Sikh. The title, The Straight Path, signals its purpose. It seeks to mark out clearly the road of right conduct so that the Sikh may walk it without wandering. The ethics it teaches can be gathered under several heads: devotion to the ਅਕਾਲ ਪੁਰਖ and the ਗੁਰੂ, the practice of ਨਾਮ, truthful and honest living, ਸੇਵਾ or selfless service, and the avoidance of vice.

Devotion as the Root

The first and deepest demand of the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ is devotion. The Sikh is to keep the ਅਕਾਲ ਪੁਰਖ ever before the mind and to remember the ਨਾਮ. This is no surprise given the unity we have traced with the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ. The ethics of the straight path are rooted in the inner life of remembrance. Conduct without devotion would be empty form; the work insists that right action flows from a heart turned toward the Divine. The devotion to the ਗੁਰੂ is central: the Sikh owes the Guru love, obedience, and service, for it is through the Guru that the path is given.

Truthful and Honest Living

A second great theme is truthful living. The Sikh is to earn an honest livelihood, to deal justly, and to avoid deceit. This reflects the foundational ਗੁਰਮਤਿ ethic articulated by ਗੁਰੂ ਨਾਨਕ ਦੇਵ ਜੀ, who taught that honest labor and sharing with others are pillars of the righteous life. The straight path is not a withdrawal from the world into ascetic isolation but a way of living rightly within the world, working honestly and dealing truthfully with others. This worldly engagement, sanctified by devotion, is a distinctive mark of the Sikh ethic that the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ upholds.

Seva: Selfless Service

A third theme is ਸੇਵਾ, selfless service. The Sikh is called to serve, to give, and to place the needs of the ਸੰਗਤ and of humanity before personal advantage. ਸੇਵਾ in Sikh ethics is not optional charity but a constitutive practice of the devoted life, a means by which ਹਉਮੈ is dissolved and the heart is purified. The one who serves without thought of reward enacts the truth that the same light shines in all, the very truth proclaimed by the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ. Thus the metaphysics of light and the ethics of service are joined: because the light is one, service to others is service to that light.

The Avoidance of Vice

A fourth theme, characteristic of the ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ genre, is the avoidance of vice and the maintenance of discipline. The ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ, like its sister texts, sets boundaries: the Sikh is to shun the vices that flow from ਹਉਮੈ, to maintain the discipline of the ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ, and to keep clear of conduct that would corrupt the devoted life. We must read these prohibitions with the scholarly caution established in the previous lesson, recognizing that specific injunctions in the surviving text may reflect layers of later codification. The general thrust, however, is clear and consistent: the straight path requires not only positive devotion and service but also the vigilant avoidance of what would draw the Sikh away from the Guru.

The Integrated Vision

What emerges from the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ is an integrated vision of the Sikh life. Devotion to the ਅਕਾਲ ਪੁਰਖ and the ਗੁਰੂ is the root; the remembrance of ਨਾਮ is the inner discipline; truthful living, ਸੇਵਾ, and the avoidance of vice are the fruits in conduct. This vision matches the wider teaching of ਗੁਰਮਤਿ and the ethics of the ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ as articulated by ਗੁਰੂ ਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ. The ਸੰਤ-ਸਿਪਾਹੀ ideal, the saint-soldier who is devoted in heart and courageous in action, hovers behind the work, for the same community that received the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ was the community of the newly formed ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ facing grave dangers.

Reading Ethics with Care

For the student, the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ teaches a double lesson. Substantively, it preserves a coherent and demanding ethic of devotion, honesty, service, and discipline rooted in the inner life of ਨਾਮ. Methodologically, it reminds us to read prescriptive literature with attention to its layered history. Both lessons are valuable. We honor the text by taking its ethical vision seriously and by reading it with the historical care it deserves. In the next lesson we confront directly the questions of authorship and attribution that this care requires.

Why Authorship Is a Real Question

It would be comfortable to assume that the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ and the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ flowed simply and wholly from the pen of the historical ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ ਗੋਯਾ. Sikh tradition reveres them under his name, and that reverence is meaningful. But responsible scholarship, the kind modeled by Surjit Hans and W. H. McLeod, requires us to examine the question rather than assume the answer. This lesson introduces the source-critical problems that surround these works and the disciplined humility they demand.

The Evidence of Idiom

The first piece of evidence is the one we noted earlier: the gap in idiom between ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ's Persian masterpieces and his attributed Punjabi works. The Persian poetry is the work of a supremely trained native sensibility. The Punjabi works are functional and didactic, in a register closer to the wider ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ literature than to refined poetry. This gap can be explained innocently: a bilingual author writes differently for different audiences and purposes, and a courtly ghazal and a devotional or prescriptive Punjabi work are simply different kinds of writing. But the gap is real and has rightly prompted scholarly scrutiny.

The Nature of the Rahitnama Genre

The second consideration is the nature of the ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ genre itself. As we have seen, these texts were copied, expanded, and revised over generations. McLeod's careful work showed that the surviving rahitnamas often contain an early core surrounded by later accretions. For a work like the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ, this means that even if an authentic early nucleus is associated with ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ, the text as printed may include material added by later hands to address later concerns. The attribution of a whole printed text to a single author can therefore be misleading; the text is better understood as a stratified document.

The Function of a Revered Name

The third consideration is sociological. In a manuscript culture, the attachment of a teaching to a revered name conferred authority. ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ was a beloved poet of the Guru's court; his name carried weight. It would not be surprising if devotional and prescriptive material composed by later Sikhs was attached to his name, not as a deception but as an expression of the conviction that such teaching belonged in his spirit and lineage. This is a common pattern in religious literature across traditions and does not imply bad faith. It does, however, mean that attribution by name cannot by itself settle the question of composition.

How Scholars Have Responded

Faced with this evidence, scholars have taken a range of positions. Some accept the core of the Punjabi works as genuinely associated with ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ while acknowledging later layering. Others are more skeptical, treating the attribution as traditional rather than securely historical. Ganda Singh, who gathered the works in the Bhai Nand Lal Granthavali, preserved them as the received corpus while scholars in the source-critical tradition have pressed harder on questions of dating and layering. The honest scholarly stance is to hold the question open: to take the works seriously as part of the Nand Lal tradition while declining to make confident claims about the exact authorship of every line.

What This Means for Reading

This source-critical caution is not destructive; it is clarifying. It frees us from a false either-or in which the works must be either wholly authentic or worthless. Instead we can read them as witnesses to early Sikh devotion and ethics, valuable regardless of the precise resolution of the authorship question. The metaphysics of ਜੋਤਿ and the ethics of the straight path are not less true or less important if some lines reflect later codification. At the same time, the caution disciplines our claims: we do not assert, for instance, that a particular verse proves what the historical ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ personally believed, nor do we invent precise dates or manuscript histories we cannot support.

A Model for Studying Sikh Literature

The authorship question surrounding these works is a valuable training ground for the student of Sikh literature more broadly. Much of the early corpus, from the ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ literature to the ਜਨਮਸਾਖੀ tradition, presents similar challenges of layering and attribution. Learning to read the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ and ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ with both devotion and critical care equips the student to approach the whole field with the same balance. We honor these texts neither by uncritical credulity nor by dismissive skepticism, but by patient, respectful, and honest reading.

Two Works, One Vision

Having examined each work in turn, we now bring them together. The ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ and the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ differ in genre, register, and immediate purpose, yet they articulate a single integrated vision of the Sikh life. The first is devotional and metaphysical, concerned with the inner expansion of the divine light through ਨਾਮ and ਸਿਮਰਨ. The second is prescriptive and ethical, concerned with the outer conduct of the straight path. Read together, they present the two faces of ਗੁਰਮਤਿ: the inner life of remembrance and the outer life of disciplined, truthful, and serviceable conduct.

Comparing the Registers

The comparison sharpens our sense of how a single tradition speaks in different keys. The ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ speaks the language of light, blossoming, and inner realization; its mode is contemplative and its imagery is luminous. The ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ speaks the language of duty, command, and discipline; its mode is hortatory and its form is prescriptive. The difference is not a contradiction but a complementarity. Sikh thought has always insisted that the inner and the outer must be held together, that ਭਗਤੀ and ਰਹਿਤ, devotion and discipline, are inseparable. The two works embody this insistence in literary form. To read only the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ would risk a spirituality untethered from conduct; to read only the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ would risk a discipline without devotional depth. Together they are whole.

The Place of the Punjabi Works Among the Persian

The comparison also illuminates the relationship between ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ's Punjabi and Persian corpora. His Persian works, the Divan-i-Goya and the others, are the heights of his literary art, addressed to a cosmopolitan and learned audience. The Punjabi works are addressed to the ਸੰਗਤ, in the language of ordinary devotion and conduct. The Persian and the Punjabi are not rivals; they are two services to the same Guru. The Persian carries the intensity of mystical longing into the high literary tradition; the Punjabi carries the teaching of light and the straight path into the practical life of the community. Whether or not every Punjabi line is from his own hand, the Nand Lal tradition as a whole bridges the elite and the popular, the Persianate and the vernacular, in service of the Panth.

The Literary Afterlife

The afterlife of these works is woven into the devotional and disciplinary life of the Sikh community. The reverence in which ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ is held has kept his name and his works alive across three centuries. His Persian verses are recited in Sikh tradition, and his name stands among the most honored in the ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ literature. The ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ and the related ਤਨਖਾਹਨਾਮਾ fed into the long process by which the ਰਹਿਤ of the ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ was articulated and eventually consolidated. While the modern ਸਿੱਖ ਰਹਿਤ ਮਰਯਾਦਾ was codified in the twentieth century through a deliberative process, the early ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ texts, including those associated with ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ, form part of the deep background of that tradition.

Reception and Reverence

It is worth reflecting on the quality of the reception. The Sikh community received these works not as detached literary artifacts but as living teaching. The ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ was read for its devotional power, the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ for its ethical guidance. The attachment of both to the beloved figure of ਗੋਯਾ gave them an authority and warmth that purely anonymous texts would have lacked. This reception is itself a historical fact of importance: it tells us how the community understood the relationship between the inner light and the outer path, and how it honored those, like ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ, who served the Guru with the gift of words.

Looking Forward

The comparison completed here prepares us for the final lesson, in which we assess the broader contribution of these Punjabi works to early Sikh literature. We have seen that they are, individually and together, witnesses to a vision in which the expansion of the divine light and the walking of the straight path are one. That vision, articulated in the vernacular of the ਸੰਗਤ, is the lasting gift of these two small but significant works.

Assessing the Contribution

We arrive at the final assessment. What is the lasting contribution of the ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ and the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ to Sikh literature and life? The answer must be measured. These are short works, surrounded by genuine questions of attribution and layering, and they do not occupy the central place in the canon that ਗੁਰਬਾਣੀ holds. Yet within their proper scope they make a real and enduring contribution, and the figure of ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ ਗੋਯਾ to whom they are attached is one of the most significant in the early Sikh literary tradition.

The Vernacular Bridge

The first contribution is the bridging of registers. ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ stands as the supreme example of a poet who served the Sikh tradition in the high Persian idiom of the Mughal world. The attachment of Punjabi works to his name extends his service into the vernacular of the ਸੰਗਤ. Together, the Persian and Punjabi corpora associated with him show the Sikh tradition speaking in multiple languages and registers, from the cosmopolitan to the popular, all in service of the one Guru. This breadth is itself a model of how a tradition can engage the wider world without losing its rootedness in the language of devotion. Sunil Sharma's work on Persian literature in Indian courts helps us see how remarkable it was for a master of that tradition to bend his art so fully to the Guru's path.

The Integration of Light and Path

The second contribution is the integration of inner devotion and outer discipline. Read together, the two works articulate the unity of ਭਗਤੀ and ਰਹਿਤ that lies at the heart of the ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ ideal. The ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ gives the inner metaphysics of light and the practice of ਨਾਮ; the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ gives the outer ethics of the straight path. This integration, expressed in accessible vernacular form, helped the community hold together the saint and the soldier, the contemplative and the active, the devotee and the disciplined Sikh. The ਸੰਤ-ਸਿਪਾਹੀ ideal of ਗੁਰੂ ਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ finds a literary echo in the pairing of these two works.

A Witness to Early Sikh Self-Understanding

The third contribution is historical. Whatever the precise authorship of each line, these works are witnesses to how early Sikhs understood the divine light, the practice of remembrance, and the discipline of the ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ. As Surjit Hans taught, Sikh literature is a source for reconstructing Sikh history and self-understanding, not merely a collection of devotional texts. The ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ and ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ, read with proper source-critical care, illuminate the devotional and ethical world of the community in the formative decades around the creation of the ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ. They are part of the textual culture through which the Panth articulated its identity.

The Discipline of Reading Well

Finally, the study of these works has taught us a method. We have learned to read early Sikh literature with both reverence and rigor: to take its teaching seriously as devotion and ethics, while reading its history with the care that questions of attribution and layering demand. This balance is the most valuable thing the student carries away. It applies far beyond these two works, to the whole rich and complex corpus of early Sikh literature. To read with devotion alone is to risk credulity; to read with skepticism alone is to risk missing the living teaching. The path between, the straight path of honest and reverent reading, is the one this course has tried to walk.

Conclusion

The ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ and the ਰਹਿ-ਇ-ਰਾਸਤ are small works with a large vision. They proclaim that the one divine light dwells within all and is expanded through the remembrance of the ਨਾਮ under the grace of the ਗੁਰੂ, and they prescribe the straight path of devotion, truthful living, ਸੇਵਾ, and discipline on which that expanded light is meant to be walked. Attached to the beloved name of ਭਾਈ ਨੰਦ ਲਾਲ ਗੋਯਾ, they bridge the Persian and the Punjabi, the inner and the outer, the elite and the popular. Read with care, they remain a luminous witness to the devotional and ethical world of the early ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ. May the student carry forward both their teaching and the discipline of reading them well.

Introduction

Among the poets of the kavi darbar of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, Bhai Nand Lal Goya stands alone in a crucial respect: he composed in two distinct literary languages — Persian and Punjabi — and achieved genuine mastery in both. While the overwhelming bulk of his preserved work is in Persian (the Divan-i-Goya, Zindginama, Ganjnama, Tausif-o-Sana, and others), two texts — Jot Bigas and Rah-i-Rast — are composed in Punjabi, written in the Gurmukhi script and rooted in the vernacular idiom of the Guru's sangat. This bilingualism was not incidental. It was a deliberate artistic and theological choice that positioned Bhai Nand Lal at the intersection of two worlds: the cosmopolitan Persianate literary culture of Mughal India and the emerging vernacular devotional literature of the Sikh tradition.

This final lesson asks a deceptively simple question: what does it mean that the same poet wrote in both Persian and Punjabi? How does the choice of language shape not just the audience a poet addresses but the theological ideas a poet can express, the emotional register available, and the literary tradition being invoked? By examining the formal and thematic differences between Bhai Nand Lal's Persian and Punjabi output, and by situating his bilingualism within the broader literary culture of seventeenth-century Punjab, we arrive at a richer, more integrated understanding of his genius — and of what the Guru's court was, intellectually and spiritually.

This lesson synthesizes the themes of the preceding eleven lessons. Students are encouraged to draw on what they have learned about Jot Bigas, Rah-i-Rast, the Persian ghazals, the Guru-disciple relationship, Naam Simran, and the canonical status of Bhai Nand Lal's texts as they engage with the comparative argument developed here.

Persian and Punjabi: Two Literary Worlds

To understand Bhai Nand Lal's bilingualism, we must first appreciate the profound difference between the two literary traditions he inhabited. Persian was the prestige language of the Mughal empire and of the broader Persianate literary world stretching from Central Asia to the Deccan. It carried with it a vast, centuries-old tradition of poetry — the ghazal, the masnavi, the qasida — with its own conventions, its own pantheon of masters (Hafiz, Rumi, Sa'di), and its own theology of mystical love. A poet writing in Persian in the late seventeenth century was positioning himself within this tradition, invoking it, speaking to it, and being judged by its standards. Bhai Nand Lal was educated in this tradition before he encountered the Guru, and his Persian poetry demonstrates genuine fluency — not imitation but creative participation.

Punjabi in the same period was a different kind of literary medium. It was the language of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji's vernacular passages, the language of Bhai Gurdas Ji's Kabit Savayye, the language of the sangat's daily devotional life. It did not carry the cosmopolitan prestige of Persian, but it carried something else: immediate access to the hearts of ordinary Sikhs, the capacity to communicate without mediation, and a directness of emotional appeal that Persian, for all its beauty, could not always achieve for Punjabi-speaking audiences. The Punjabi texts of Bhai Nand Lal — Jot Bigas and Rah-i-Rast — speak in this register. They are shorter, more compressed, more dialogic, and more immediately practical than the Persian ghazals.

Scholars such as Gurinder Singh Mann and Christopher Shackle have noted that early Sikh literary culture was genuinely multilingual, with Braj Bhasha, Sanskrit, Persian, and Punjabi all present in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji itself. Bhai Nand Lal's bilingualism is thus not an anomaly but an extension of this multilingual norm — though he is unusual in achieving canonical recognition in both languages simultaneously. This point matters for how we read his work: the Persian and the Punjabi do not represent two separate projects but two faces of the same devotional orientation.

What Changes Between Languages: Form, Theology, and Audience

When we read Bhai Nand Lal's Persian ghazals alongside Jot Bigas and Rah-i-Rast, certain differences immediately emerge. The Persian works are formally elaborate: the ghazal is a demanding form with strict metrical requirements, a mandatory internal rhyme scheme (radif and qafia), and a convention of the poet naming himself in the final couplet (maqta). The imagery is characteristically Sufi — the tavern, the cup-bearer (ਸਾਕੀ, saki), the beloved's curling hair as a chain binding the lover, the moth and the flame. All of these conventions are present in Bhai Nand Lal's Divan-i-Goya, and he handles them with evident skill. But within these Persian conventions, he performs a consistent theological redirection: the beloved is not an earthly figure but the Guru, the tavern is the space of spiritual intoxication through Naam, and the wine is the divine presence that the poet-devotee longs to drink.

The Punjabi texts operate differently. Jot Bigas (ਜੋਤਿ ਬਿਗਾਸ — Light Illuminated) does not work through a Sufi framework. Its imagery is drawn directly from Sikh theological vocabulary: ਜੋਤਿ (jot, divine light), ਨਾਮ (Naam, the divine Name), the lineage of the Gurus as a continuous illumination. The poem venerates the Gurus and their courts without the mediating layer of Persianate convention. The effect is different: more ceremonial, more liturgical, more immediately integrated into the Sikh devotional world. Rah-i-Rast (ਰਾਹਿ ਰਾਸਤ — The Right Way) takes yet another approach: it is dialogic, structured as a conversation between Bhai Nand Lal and Guru Gobind Singh Ji, and its content is explicitly ethical and practical — guidance for how a Gursikh should live. This is not the form of a ghazal at all; it is closer to a Rahitnama, a text of conduct.

The theological content, however, is consistent across languages. Whether Bhai Nand Lal writes in Persian or Punjabi, the central preoccupations are the same: the Guru as the gateway to ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ (Waheguru), devotion as the transforming force in human life, Naam Simran as the practice that dissolves the ego and opens the heart, and the sangat (community of the faithful) as the environment in which this transformation occurs. The language changes the dress of these ideas; it does not change the ideas themselves. This consistency is itself a significant theological statement: the truth Bhai Nand Lal was expressing was not language-specific. It could be clothed in Persian metaphysics or in Punjabi directness because it transcended both.

Bilingualism as a Bridge: The Broader Significance

Bhai Nand Lal's bilingual practice had significance that extended beyond his own individual achievement. The kavi darbar of Guru Gobind Singh Ji was a multilingual intellectual environment: the Guru himself composed in Braj Bhasha, Sanskrit, Persian, and Punjabi, and the poets gathered at Anandpur represented a range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In this context, Bhai Nand Lal's ability to move between Persian and Punjabi made him a living bridge between two audiences and two literary worlds. His Persian poetry could speak to Muslim scholars, Mughal courtiers, and Persianate intellectuals; his Punjabi poetry could speak to the sangat in the Guru's presence. Both audiences were, in Bhai Nand Lal's vision, potential recipients of the same devotional truth.

There is also a historical dimension worth noting. The seventeenth century was a period in which the Sikh community was actively negotiating its relationship with the broader political and cultural world of Mughal India. Guru Gobind Singh Ji's decision to maintain a kavi darbar that included Persian poets was partly a statement of cultural confidence: Sikh intellectual life could participate in the highest literary culture of the age without being absorbed by it. Bhai Nand Lal embodies this confidence more than any other single figure. His Persian is Mughal in form but Sikh in soul. His Punjabi is vernacular in medium but theologically sophisticated in content.

For contemporary students of Sikh studies, Bhai Nand Lal's bilingualism raises questions that remain relevant today. How do we transmit devotional content across linguistic and cultural boundaries without losing its essence? When Bhai Nand Lal translated the experience of Guru-devotion into Persian, what was preserved and what was inevitably transformed by the conventions of a foreign literary tradition? These are not merely historical questions — they are live challenges for diaspora Sikh communities translating Gurbani into English, Spanish, or Mandarin, and for scholars attempting to make early modern Sikh literature accessible to non-Punjabi readers. In this sense, studying Bhai Nand Lal's bilingualism is not an exercise in antiquarianism. It is an engagement with questions about language, meaning, and fidelity that every living religious tradition must confront.

Key Terms

• ਜੋਤਿ (Jot) — Divine light; the animating spiritual presence that Bhai Nand Lal invokes throughout Jot Bigas as the essential nature of the Guru and of Waheguru.
• ਗ਼ਜ਼ਲ / Ghazal — A Persian-origin poetic form characterized by a strict rhyme and refrain scheme (radif and qafia), self-naming in the final couplet (maqta), and traditionally themes of love and longing; Bhai Nand Lal's primary Persian form.
• ਰਾਦੀਫ਼ / Radif — The repeated end-word or phrase in a Persian ghazal that follows the rhyme (qafia); creates the structural unity and musical repetition characteristic of the form.
• ਕਵੀ ਦਰਬਾਰ (Kavi Darbar) — The court of poets; the assembly of scholar-poets maintained by Guru Gobind Singh Ji at Anandpur, reportedly comprising 52 poets of diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
• ਰਾਹਿਨਾਮਾ (Rahitnama) — A text of conduct; a genre of Sikh prose or verse that articulates the code of life (rehat) expected of a Gursikh; Rah-i-Rast functions partly within this genre.
• ਸੰਗਤ (Sangat) — The holy congregation; the community of the Guru's followers, understood in Sikh theology as a spiritually transformative environment in which individual devotion is nurtured and sustained.

Discussion Questions

1. Bhai Nand Lal used Persian Sufi conventions (the beloved, the tavern, the wine) and redirected them toward Sikh theology. Do you think this kind of creative borrowing enriches a tradition or risks diluting its distinctiveness? What criteria might we use to evaluate such borrowings?
2. The Punjabi texts Jot Bigas and Rah-i-Rast are shorter and more compressed than the Persian ghazals, but they achieved canonical status and are approved for recitation in divans alongside Gurbani. What does this suggest about how the Sikh community evaluates religious literature — is it primarily about content, form, historical authority, or some combination?
3. Bhai Nand Lal's bilingualism can be read as a bridge between cultures, or it can be read as a tension between two identities. Which reading do you find more persuasive, and why? What evidence from his poetry supports your view?
4. Contemporary Sikh communities translate Gurbani and devotional texts into dozens of languages. What lessons — cautions and encouragements — can be drawn from Bhai Nand Lal's example for how this translation work should be approached?

Further Reading

• Pritpal Singh Bindra — Kalaam-e-Goya: A Punjabi and English Translation of the Works of Bhai Nand Lal
• Christopher Shackle and Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair — Teachings of the Sikh Gurus: Selections from the Sikh Scriptures
• Gurinder Singh Mann — The Making of Sikh Scripture

Key Takeaways

• Bhai Nand Lal composed in both Persian and Punjabi, achieving canonical recognition in both languages — a unique distinction among the poets of Guru Gobind Singh Ji's court.
• The Persian ghazals and the Punjabi texts (Jot Bigas, Rah-i-Rast) differ significantly in form, convention, and audience, but are consistent in their core theological commitments: devotion to the Guru, Naam Simran, and the transformative power of divine love.
• His bilingualism was not incidental but reflected the deliberately multilingual intellectual culture of the kavi darbar, in which Sikh thought engaged confidently with the widest literary traditions of its era.
• The questions raised by Bhai Nand Lal's bilingual practice — about translation, cultural borrowing, and the transmission of devotional meaning across linguistic boundaries — remain urgently relevant for contemporary Sikh communities worldwide.