attendant in all his wanderings. Bala is said to have dictated the biography to Paira by order of Guru Angad, the Guru next in succession to Guru Nanak. What the value of this Janamsakhi is we shall briefly consider.
It is generally written in the current Panjabi dialect, with a slight admixture of archaic words, and no more corresponds with the dialect of the age of Guru Nanak and Guru Angad, whose compositions have descended to us and can be examined, than the English of the present day corresponds with that of Chaucer or Piers Plowman. If Paira wrote from Bala's dictation, where is the original volume, which of course was written in the language of the time? When Bala proffered to dictate the biography, Guru Angad, who was well acquainted with Guru Nanak, knew so little of Bala that he is represented as having asked him whose disciple he was, and if he had ever seen Nanak. This does not appear as if Bala, supposing him to have ever existed, had been an eye-witness of Guru Nanak's deeds, or a trustworthy authority for the particulars of his life. If he had been, his fitness for the duty of biographer would have been well known to Guru Angad, who was a constant companion of Guru Nanak in the end of his life.
In Gur Das's eleventh War is found a list of well-known Sikhs up to his time. He does not state what Sikhs were converted by or lived in the time of each Guru. Mani Singh, in the Bhagat Ratanwali, has given the same list with fuller particulars of the Sikhs. Among them Bhai Bala is not mentioned. This Janamsakhi professes to have been written in the Sambat year 1592,[1] when Guru Nanak was still alive, and three years before Angad had obtained the Guruship. An earlier recension of the same biography professes to have been written in Sambat 1582, or thirteen years before the demise of Guru Nanak.
There were three great schisms of the Sikh religion which led to the falsification of old, or the composition of new Janamsakhis. The schismatics were known as the Udasis,
- ↑ The Sambat or Vikramaditya era is fifty-seven years prior to annus domini.
