The Ideal Life of Love: Bhai Nand Lal's Zindagi-nama Through a Sampardai Lens

Bhai Nand Lal Ji is remembered as a gifted poet connected to the court of Guru Gobind Singh Ji. In his time, Persian was the language of learning and government across much of South Asia, much as English is a shared language today. A poet who wished to be read widely, and who served at a court, would naturally write in Persian. So when Bhai Nand Lal set down his devotional verses, he reached for Persian forms and images that his educated readers already knew.

The poem at the center of this course is the ਜ਼ਿੰਦਗੀਨਾਮਾ (Zindagi-nama), a title that simply means a 'book of life.' The name tells us the aim: it is a guide to how a devotee should live. It is not a story or a history. It is a poem of teaching and longing.

Our guide to this poem is Sant Kirpal Singh's ਸੰਪਰਦਾਈ ਟੀਕਾ (sampardai teeka), a traditional commentary in the collection. A teeka is a line-by-line explanation. The word 'sampardai' tells us it comes from a teaching lineage, a chain of teachers and students who passed the meaning down by mouth before it was written. As the Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies notes, such commentary traditions are central to how Sikh texts have been understood across generations (Singh and Fenech 2014).

The single question we follow is plain: what does it mean to live an ideal life of love for the Guru and the Divine? Everything in the course returns to that.

We will not reproduce the verses of the poem. Instead we describe what it teaches. Read as a whole, the Zindagi-nama returns again and again to three linked ideas.

First is ਨਾਮ (Naam), the Divine Name. The poem treats remembrance of the Name as the food of the soul. To remember is to live; to forget is a kind of death. Second is ਇਸ਼ਕ (ishq), intense love. The poem speaks of the seeker as a lover and the Divine as the Beloved, a way of speaking shared across Persian devotional poetry. Third is ਬੰਦਗੀ (bandagi), humble devotion shown in daily conduct: honesty, service, and the keeping of company with the good.

These three are not separate boxes. The poem weaves them together: love drives remembrance, and remembrance shows itself in humble conduct. Fenech's study of Bhai Nand Lal's wider world helps us see that this poetry sat inside a court where Persian letters carried real weight (Fenech 2013).

A ਸੰਪਰਦਾਈ ਟੀਕਾ is more than a translation. It is a way of reading that belongs to a community of teachers. The word 'sampardai' points to a sampardai, a lineage. A meaning is taught, learned, taught again, and so the understanding stays alive across time. When that understanding is finally written, as Sant Kirpal Singh has done with the Zindagi-nama, the written page carries the weight of the spoken tradition.

How does such a commentary work? It usually moves slowly through the poem. For a line it may: give the plain sense of hard Persian words; explain an image; and then connect the image to Sikh teaching. A modern academic translation often aims at the literal words and at history. A sampardai teeka aims at the devotional meaning the tradition has always heard in the line.

Both have value. The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies describes how exegesis within tradition has shaped Sikh understanding for centuries, and treats it as a serious object of study, not a relic (Singh and Fenech 2014).

Persian devotional poetry uses a stock of images: the lover and the Beloved, the wine of love, the moth and the flame, the ਮੁਰਸ਼ਿਦ (murshid) or spiritual guide. A reader who knows only worldly poetry might take 'wine' or 'the Beloved' in a plain bodily way. This is exactly where a traditional commentary earns its place.

The teeka steps in and says, in effect: here the Beloved is the Divine, the wine is the joy of the Name, the burning moth is the seeker who gives up the self in love. In the Sikh setting, the murshid is understood as the Guru. So the same image that a stranger might misread is, through the commentary, returned to its devotional home.

This is the heart of the course's claim. The value of the sampardai teeka is that it keeps the poem from being flattened into mere romance. It guards the reading. It also opens the reading, because once you know the key, lines that seemed strange become clear and moving. Scholars of Sikh literature have shown how Persian forms were taken up and turned to Sikh ends in this period (Fenech 2013; Singh 2005).

We have praised the traditional commentary, and rightly. But a graduate course should also weigh limits. This lesson does both, plainly.

The value is real. A sampardai teeka gives a reader the inherited key to the poem. It explains hard words, it ties images to settled Sikh teaching, and it speaks in a reverent voice that matches the poem's own aim. It keeps a devotional poem devotional. For most readers, this is the doorway in.

The limits are also worth naming. A traditional commentary is a reading from inside a lineage, so it may pass over questions a historian would ask, such as exact dates of composition or the manuscript history of the text. It speaks for one settled understanding and may not list other readings. A careful student therefore uses the teeka for devotional depth and uses academic work, such as the Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies, for historical and critical context (Singh and Fenech 2014). The two together give a fuller view than either alone. Mann's work on how Sikh texts were formed reminds us that the life of a text has both a devotional and a documentary side (Mann 2001).

Why study a Persian poem and its commentary today? A few simple reasons close the course.

First, the Zindagi-nama shows that Sikh devotion has spoken in many languages. The faith took shape in a world where Punjabi, Persian, and other tongues met. A poem in ਫ਼ਾਰਸੀ (Farsi) is a reminder that the message of love and the Name could cross language lines. Second, the poem gives a clear picture of the ideal life: remembrance of the Name, love of the Divine, and humble conduct. That picture is as useful now as when it was written.

Third, the sampardai teeka of Sant Kirpal Singh shows the worth of tradition itself. Without a living chain of teachers, an old Persian poem could become locked away. With it, the poem stays open and alive. As the Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies argues, taking these commentary traditions seriously enriches both faith and scholarship (Singh and Fenech 2014). Grewal's history places this whole flowering of letters within the broader life of the Sikh community of the Punjab (Grewal 1998).

The student who finishes this course should be able to describe the poem, explain the role of the commentary, and say clearly why both still matter.