page_title: Janamsakhis
section_title: Bhai Mani Singh’s Janamsakhi
hierarchical_section_title: Janamsakhis / Main Janamsakhis / Bhai Mani Singh’s Janamsakhi
caption_attribution_description: English: Bhai Mani Singh's Janamsakhi was originally written in 1712. This reproduction of the Janamsakhi is likely from the 19th century.
context_page_description: The Janamsakhis, are legendary biographies of Guru Nanak – the founder of Sikhism. Popular in the Sikh history, these texts are considered by scholars as imaginary hagiographies of his life story, full of miracles and travels, built on a Sikh oral tradition and some historical facts. The first Janamsakhis were composed between 50 and 80 years after his death. Many more were written in the 17th and 18th century. The largest Guru Nanak Prakash, with about 9,700 verses, was written in the early 19th century.
  The four Janamsakhis that have survived into the modern era include the Bala, Miharban, Adi and Puratan versions, and each hagiography contradicts the other. Each of these are in three parts, each with an idealized and adulatory description of Guru Nanak. The first part covers his childhood and early adulthood. The second part describes him as a traveling missionary over thousands of miles and mythical places such as Mount Meru. The last part presents him as settled in Kartarpur with his followers. These mythological texts are ahistorical and do not offer chronological, geographical or objective accuracy about Guru Nanak's life.
context_section_description: The fourth and evidently the latest is the Gyan-ratanavali attributed to Bhai Mani Singh who wrote it with the express intention of correcting heretical accounts of Guru Nanak. Bhai Mani Singh was a Sikh of Guru Gobind Singh. He was approached by some Sikhs with a request that he should prepare an authentic account of Guru Nanak's life. This they assured him was essential as the Minas were circulating objectionable things in their version. Bhai Mani Singh referred them to the Var of Bhai Gurdas, but this, they maintained was too brief and a longer more fuller account was needed. Bhai Mani Singh writes :
  Just as swimmers fix reeds in the river so that those who do not know the way may also cross, so I shall take Bhai Gurdas’s var as my basis and in accordance with it, and with the accounts that I have heard at the court of the tenth Master, I shall relate to you whatever commentary issues from my humble mind. At the end of the Janam-sakhi there is an epilogue in which it is stated that the completed work was taken to Guru Gobind Singh Ji for his seal of approval. Guru Sahib Ji duly signed it and commended it as a means of acquiring knowledge of Sikh belief.
caption: Bhai Mani Singh's Janamsakhi
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