Faculty Publications

Martyrdom and the Execution of Guru Arjan in Early Sikh Sources

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Journal of the American Oriental Society

Volume

121

Issue

1

First Page

20

Last Page

31

Abstract

Popular Sikh histories of today are united in their claim that the execution in 1606 of the fifth Sikh Master, Guru Arjan, has always been understood as an heroic martyrdom. Yet the fact that this event is not mentioned either in the Bachitar Nāṭak, the first Sikh text to allocate privileged space to martyrdom, nor in subsequent eighteenth-century Khalsa Sikh literature of the gur-bilās genre, makes such a claim very difficult to sustain. This paper turns a critical eye towards these sources and speculates as to how Sikhs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in fact understood Guru Arjan's demise.

Department

Department of History

Original Publication Date

3-1-2001

DOI of published version

10.2307/606726

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