Bhai Jodh Singh and Teja Singh

Bhai Jodh Singh, 1882 to 1981, taught at Khalsa College Amritsar, was the first Vice-Chancellor of Punjabi University Patiala, and was a member of the committee that produced the Sikh Rehat Maryada in 1945.

He examined the Kartarpur birh, the manuscript of the Adi Granth held by the Sodhi family, and published a report on it, which remains one of very few scholarly examinations of that document by anyone.

Teja Singh, 1894 to 1958, taught English and Punjabi, translated Sikh scripture into English, and with Ganda Singh wrote A Short History of the Sikhs, which was the standard modern history in English for decades.

Between them and Ganda Singh and Sahib Singh, the middle of the twentieth century produced the modern scholarly apparatus of the Sikh tradition: a grammar, a commentary, a document collection, a history and a code of conduct.

All of it was done in institutions that were underfunded and mostly by men teaching full time.

Both were scholars of the Singh Sabha generation who moved Sikh studies out of polemic and into something like academic work, teaching at Khalsa College and later at the universities.

Teja Singh's translations and his history, and Bhai Jodh Singh's work on gurbani and on the Kartarpuri birh, are still the starting points on their subjects.

Bhai Jodh Singh's report on the Kartarpuri manuscript is the closest thing to an independent examination of it that has been published, and it is disputed.

What we don't know

  • The current status of access to the Kartarpur birh.

Where to check this

  1. Sikh Rehat Maryada, 1945. Sikh Rehat Maryada, SGPC (English text) ↗

Named but not linked. These are real, findable documents. This project has not consulted them for this page.

  • Published works of Bhai Jodh Singh and Teja Singh.

This page has not yet been read through by the editor. Treat it with more caution than the rest.

How this page was written. The text is compiled from the standard published histories and reference works, not from a document held in hand. Nobody from this project has visited the place or read the archive. The list above is where a reader can go to check it, not a record of what was consulted line by line. Dates and figures are the received account. If you hold something better, write in and it will be corrected.

This is one of 220 accounts in When the Water Went, the chapter of this site covering Punjab since 1947: land, water, debt and everything after.