The Sikh Zafar-nāmah of Guru Gobind Singh: A Discursive Blade in the Heart op the Mughal Ekmpire

摘要

The Zafarnāma is one of the most fascinating and unusual of early Sikh texts. It is preserved in the Dasam Granth, the second Sikh scripture containing a large number of heterogeneous texts associated with the tenth and last Guru Gobind Singh. Much controversy has come to surround the authorship of many of these often very lengthy compositions, which are nearly all written in Brajbhasha, whereas the Zafarnāma ('Epistle of Victory') is a short Persian composition of iii verses in the heroic style and metre of Firdausi s Shāhnāma. Addressed as a missive to the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, it is generally accepted to have been composed by Guru Gobind Singh himself in the aftermath of the capture in 1704 of the Sikh stronghold of Anandpur by Mughal forces who had treacherously offered safe conduct out of the fortress to the Guru's forces. This betrayal of a sacred oath by Aurangzeb's officers provokes the Zafarnāma to denounce the unrighteousness of the emperor and to exalt the justness before God of the Guru's cause.