The Consecrated Warrior in Dasam Bāṇī's Khalsa cosmos
“The vital center of the heroic world is violent catastrophe.” (Jan Heesterman, 1986)
ਜੂਝਬੋ ਜੂਝ ਕੈ ਪ੍ਰਾਨ ਤਜੈ ਜੁਝਾਇਬੋ ਛਤ੍ਰਨ ਕੋ ਬਨ ਆਯੋ ॥—To wage war, to fight and sacrifice his life is the only dharam of the kshatriya. (Krishan Avatara, Dasam Granth)
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The Aryan rajan
In the mobile world of the ancient Aryan cattle keepers, the rajan would set out on cyclical raiding expeditions to conquer others’ possessions, distributing the booty via offerings and gifts. Akin to the consecrated warrior, the knight-errant, the devas who roam the four directions. From these cyclical conquests was borne the rajan’s kṣatrasya dhṛti, static, stable ‘holding of power’: kingship rooted in the Nietzschean imperative of freely expended strength, imposing one’s dominion, achieving “maximal feeling of power.” Conquest begets order.
Having established a settled domain, the warriors no longer needed to rely on their cyclical deva-like raiding and transhumance, and settled as lordly magnates ‘in their halls’ like the asuras. A sacrificer fetched his fire from a wealthy person who was “like an asura.”
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Sacrificial offerings and gifts were essentially seen as an integral part of the rajan, a form of himself given away from the wealth he acquired through plunder, war and conquest at risk of death. This risk of death integrated his wealth into his being. It was this he then offered in lieu of sacrificing his own life (which was vowed to death).
Failing this, the solution was the rajan’s self-sacrifice in battle. The Bataillean economy thus continued to operate unbroken. Solar expenditure of excess, of that which exceeds utility—through ostentatious ceremonies or self-sacrifice. “Sacrifice is the production of sacred objects.”
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Nomadic devas and settled asuras
The archaic mind expressed the cyclically recurrent conflict between nomadic warbands and sedentary settled society mythologically through the ever-renewed fight between devas and asuras. “The devas drove about on wheels, the asuras sat in their halls.”
A deva-like roving rajan could, through conquest and risk of death, acquire the status of settled magnate, akin to the asuras. Thus, he would give up his godly warrior life on wheels and settle down as a wealthy lord. However, this position was not tenable, and the rajan, even in stability, always ran the risk of being challenged by fresh blood striving through force or astuteness to subdue or oust the wealthy magnate, and in turn to establish himself as the master and patron who distributes gifts and offerings.
The two are invariably locked in conflict. Khaldun sees virile nomadic hordes taking over exhausted civilizations, Deleuze sees the warmachine evade the state’s attempts to appropriate it, Heesterman resolves the tension through the archaic institution of the sacrifice.
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The gods as vratyas
Some Indologists have endeavored to shed light on the presence of vratya practices and lifestyles within the epics. This has prompted the intriguing notion of Krishna as the leader of an eastern vratya militant brotherhood. Bollée (1981) writes:
“The followers of this Kṛṣṇa were… as late as Śaṅkara (8th century A.D.), not deemed orthodox—perhaps because [of] the recollection of the rugged Yādava leader, the Vrātya (whose personality fits in well with the names Kṛṣṇa ‘the black one’ and Keśava ‘the long-haired one’).”
In the Mahabharata, the Kaurava Bhurisravas admonishes Arjuna for his blind trust in Krishna and his kin, calling them vratyas. Vassilikov (2016) uses this, among other references, to present Krishna as the vratyapati/leader of a prominent youthful warrior brotherhood.
It is suggested that Arjuna, too, had been initiated into this brotherhood, as evidenced by the warm reception he receives when he visits Dvaraka during his exile, “embracing all (the youths) of his age (samanavayasah)”— similar age-set indicating they were initiated together. Afterwards, Arjuna participates in an unorthodox bacchanalian festival. Present are young kshatriyas (kumara), drunken and samaradurmada “war-crazed”, in a bloodthirsty frenzy similar to the bersærkergang demonstrated during ceremonies of Indo-European warrior brotherhoods.
Further, the names assigned to both relate to the vratya lifestyle: Arjuna (Guḍākeśa “having a ball of hair”, Dhanaṃjaya “winner of wealth = herd”), Krishna (Hṛṣīkeśa “with hair upstanding”, Govinda “one who finds lost/stolen cows”) signifying long hair (kesin) and cattle raids.
One can further utilize the framework of comparative mythology to view Krishna and Arjuna on the chariot as cognates of the Indo-European divine twins (Ashvins, Diocuri).
Arjuna, a creature of aktion, the embodiment of kshatra, is ‘quickened’ by the counsel of the god Krishna, the epitome of brahma— completing Dumézil’s sovereignty (Perhaps this paradigmatic relationship can also be extended to Banda Bahadur and Guru Gobind Singh).
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Similarly, Kershaw (1997) notes that the Bhattikavya, a seventh century text, shows the exiled Lord Rama as a vratina in the forest, protector of hermits who possess characteristics of the vratya warband: savage beasts armed with ‘brennenden Geschob.’ She also equates them with the nordischen Berserkern.
In the Valmiki Ramayana as well, Rama is compared to Indra, waging chaoskampf against the rakshasa king Ravana. Ravana’s death, in fact, is explicitly compared to Vritra’s slaying by Indra: he falls, “as Vritra when struck by Indra’s thunderbolt” (The Ramayana of Valmiki, tr. Hari Prasad Shastri, 1952). The vanara sena (monkey army) becomes a youthful warband living in the forest; most intriguingly, their leader is called Maruti (Maruts being the celestial archetype of the Vedic warband).
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Heesterman (1995) calls the vratya “the immediate ancestor of the sattrin, the diksita and brahmacarin. As such he was the prototype of the consecrated warrior.” Considering this statement binding, gods like Krishna and Rama too become the vratya-as-consecrated-warrior— leaders of vratya bands sworn to them, roving in the wilderness, slipping in and out of the settled world— and by extension, homologized with the Khalsa via a framework of cumulative identifications.
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‘islands in a sea of vratya cultures’
Relying on the Baudhayana Srautasutra’s mention of Kuru raids into Pancala territory, Heesterman (1962) believed such raids stemmed from an archaic vratya tradition, and that “the vratyas’ relation to brahmanical ritual is not one of antithesis but of precedence in development.”
Likewise, Vassilkov (2008) says that “centres of Vedic culture emerged against a background of vratya culture, and existed for centuries as islands in a sea of vratya cultures.” Later, in 2013:
“These territories [beyond North-Western India] were inhabited by the Aryan as well as non-Aryan tribes that had already long ago established cultural unity based on the worldview of ‘pastoral heroism,’ the cult of Rudra (or Rudra-like gods) and the vratya (pre-classical) ritual.”
Here, it is useful to recall Witzel’s (1995) views on early Aryan vratya acculturation into Vedic orthodoxy as the latter expanded east. The movement of Vedic clans eastwards can be understood as Sanskritization or the “civilization process of the East,” ritual occupation by orthodox bearers of Kuru culture—rather than the first settlement of the East by Indo-Aryan tribes, which happened earlier.
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Raiding and headhunting
The raiding aspect is common to Indo-European nomadic cultures settled in and around the Indian subcontinent. The kafir tribes of the Hindu Kush had elaborately ritualized and violent traditions of competitive raiding and headhunting, conducted by individuals or war-parties (often recruited from kinship groups) traveling deep into the territory of rival tribes, and on occasion, the much reviled Afghans. Upon returning, the warrior was expected to bring the enemy’s head as a trophy, as proof of his conquest, following which he would be honored and rewarded at a victory feast accordingly.
Similarly, the earliest memorial inscriptions of the Rajputs mention cattle raids; clans would raid, fight, and defend in the name of the revered cow. “Bhomiya, having taken some bhang and tied a turban on your head / You went to fight for the cows alone.” Similar histories are preserved in the folklore and popular oral literature of numerous Indo-Aryan communities.
The Vedic word for war, गविष्टि ‘gaviṣṭi’, literally means the desire for (more) cows. The Aryan chieftain or rajan who successfully acquired or defended cattle would consequently be called the गोपति ‘gopati’— the lord of the cattle.
In his commentary on the Scythians, Herodotus says that a Scythian would cut off his enemies’ heads, and carry them to the king as proof; only thus would he be entitled to the booty, forfeiting his claim if he failed to produce the enemy’s head.
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The Dasam Granth cosmos
Viewing the Dasam Granth within the context of medieval kingship, Indic cosmology and martial legitimacy, Rinehart (2011) highlights the “linkages between the goddess and the avatar-like figure of the Guru, the goddess and the king.” She notes an overlap between the avatar and the king in the figure of the Guru (similar to Heesterman’s positioning of the rajan between man and god, the grama ‘settled world’ and aranya ‘wilderness’, yoga and kshema). The goddess and the avatar mirror each other in their fight against forces that challenge proper dharma.
Further,
“Bachitar Natak is a striking combination of long-standing Indic themes—the lineage, or vamsha, the decline of dharma through the ages and avatars sent to restore it, the king who legitimizes his rule through his protection of dharma—and specific concerns of the late seventeenth century Punjab, with its warring hill chiefs, intrigues with Mughal officials, and the rising power of the Sikh panth, told in the first person.”
Deol (2001) sees the Bachitar Natak as a Puranic metanarrative that was central to the development of the Khalsa identity in the eighteenth century, situating the Panth “within a longer mythological time-cycle in which it is part of a larger design to fight the forces of evil,” thus creating a reinterpretation of dharam that included notions of rule and political sovereignty.
In this sense, the text’s mythological tales are contextualized within the political and cultural flux of the 17th century. Guru Gobind Singh deftly utilizes Indic, folk, Persian and Islamic motifs to create a literary cosmos shot through with poetic heroism, bir-rasa and dharam-yuddha, one that the Khalsa can endlessly refer to and inhabit themselves— within the conceptual structure of itihasa-as-myth, the myths become didactic and archetypal models that can orient and guide the Khalsa as it engages with the vicissitudes of historical time.
In essence, the literary cosmos of the Dasam Granth was (meant to be) actualized in the actions of the Khalsa. In smiting the mlecha, in protecting the meek and the holy, in waging war against adharam, they emulated and perfected the actions of the gods. ਦੇ ਕਰਿ ਇਨ ਕੋ ਭਰਤਖੰਡ, ਸੁਰ ਸੁਰਗ ਸਿਧਾਰੇ । ਬੈਠੇ ਜਾਇ ਨਿਚਿੰਤ ਹੁਇ, ਸਾਂਭੀ ਸਭਿ ਕਾਰੇ ॥—Handing over Bharatkhanda to the Shaheed Singhs, the gods departed for heaven. They sat without a worry, as the Shaheeds handled all their tasks.
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“Succinctly put, before there was a priesthood, there was the consecrated warrior. Not the professional priest but the consecrated warrior is the exemplar of sacrality… It is the consecrated itinerant warrior who is the common ancestor of both the king and the brahmin. This warrior was not just a soldier of fortune, although he had to be that too, but rather a ‘knight errant’ in quest of the brahman.” (Heesterman, 1995)
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The gods of the Dasam cosmos
It is within this cyclical universe, where the consecrated warrior (or sant-sipahi) figure is an eternally recurring kshatriya ideal—complete, undifferentiated, cakravartin— that Jathedar Baba Trilok Singh deems gods like Sri Rama and Siva to be Khalsa:
In Dasam Bani, the gods operate in a distinctly Khalsa cosmos, in a heroic milieu valorizing war in service of dharam, strength, virility, aktionism, disdainful of death and weakness. The pacing of the meters and rhythms itself lends the recitation of the hymns a decidedly martial, quick cadence. Manuscript art presents soldiers and even the gods themselves in typical Khalsa attire: keshadhari, white kachera, turban, flowing beard, swords strapped on the hip. The imagery employed to describe Akal Purakh incorporates warlike symbolism: concluding Ram Avtar, Guru Gobind Singh addresses the Supreme Lord as ਸ੍ਰੀ ਅਸਿਪਾਨ—O Supreme wielder of the sword.
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ਨਰ ਅਵਤਾਰ ਭਯੋ ਅਰਜੁਨਾ ॥—Arjuna becomes the Nar Avatara. Narsimha, the man-lion incarnation— perhaps the most literal, fiercest embodiment of the Indo-European berserker’s wolf/dog metamorphosis, transformed into the lion/tiger in the Indic context. In quick succession, Arjuna is homologized with both Rudra, who grants him a boon, and ਇੰਦ੍ਰ ਤਾਤ—Indra [his] father, representing the “two aspects—brutal and chivalrous—of the warrior's force,” of kshatra (Dumézil, 1970). This effectively produces a model of the berserk kshatriya ideal for the Singh.
The lengthy section detailing Krishna’s tales presents vivid, violent, poetic meditations on war. Warriors bearing names of power such as Virbhadar Singh, Rann Singh, Gaj Singh, Swachh Singh populate the text. The literary cosmos is both profoundly primordial and modern, undergirded by the kshatriya'a solar principles, the rajan’s volatile, violent sacrality that returns eternally in every yuga as a divine corrective force.
ਐਸੋ ਸੁ ਜੁਧ ਕੀਯੋ ਨੰਦ ਨੰਦਨ ਯਾ ਸੰਗਿ ਜੂਝ ਕਉ ਏਕ ਨ ਆਯੋ ॥—Such ferocious war Krishna waged, none dared to face up to him. Krishna is thus reconstructed as the ancient Vrishni hero, the battle-hardened warlord of a militant army of vratyas—a figure lost along with the para-Vedic “sea of vratya cultures”.
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This reorients the kshatriya or warrior as the central actor of the dharmic universe, reverting to the archaic proto-Vedic principle of the consecrated warrior as the exemplar of sacrality. The ancient warrior’s world was ordered by violence and chaos, conflict being the operating principle. “It is an intensely personal order depending, as it does, on the uncertain outcome of the ever-recurring sacrificial hour of death.” (Heesterman, 1986)
Heesterman contends this ultraviolent cosmos of conflict and competition was tamed and stabilized by the Vedic brahmins via the mechanism of ritual, creating a transcendental order. Arguably, while the Khalsa reinstates the archaic consecrated warrior’s violent ethos, it also tempers it with an ethical framework of its own, albeit one that valorizes relentless dharam-yuddha over ritual or stability, veering close to the fracturing, rupturing cosmos of the archaic warrior. ਛਤ੍ਰੀ ਕੋ ਪੂਤ ਹੋ ਬਾਮ੍ਹਨ ਕੋ ਨਹਿ—I am the son of a kshatriya, not a brahmin.
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“The ever-recurring sacrificial hour of death”
The Khalsa is consecrated through initiation by the sword. Bhagauti anoints the Sikh— who is now dead to the world, divested of his self— as a Singh. The Singh is the vehicle of the Devi, deathless, an ascetic even in hedonism, a bairagi even as a bhogi. Emptied of all superfluous ego, the Singh is filled to the brim with the Tenth King’s spiritual-temporal sovereignty. He is now vowed to death, bound by an eternal, fearless confrontation with death, with Kala. Death dwells within the heart-lotus of the Singh.
Having confronted and overcome death, the archaic rajan embodies the undifferentiated functions of warrior and priest, “successful warriordom and visionary knowledge of the brahman”—sovereign and complete in this unity, “the exemplar of sacrality.”
As the site of unity, the Khalsa ‘encompasses’ and unites the regnal and sacerdotal functions in the undifferentiated figure of the consecrated warrior. ਅਨਦ ਬਿਨੋਦੀ ਜੀਅ—The blissful and miraculous Lord dwells in/fills [the Satiguru]. In turn filled with this divine sovereignty, the Khalsa continues (as a patishah or rajan) to function as the enigmatic connective nexus that links the contradictory, hemorrhaging gulf between god and man, between the settled world and the wilderness, between yoga and kshema, between vairag and bhog, between life and death.
This is the capacity in which the gods themselves function in Dasam Bani’s cosmos. This is the crux of the kshatriya’s sacrality. “The ever-recurring sacrificial hour of death.”
And so, in the violent, precarious flux of dual poles (God/man, grama/aranya, stability/volatility, asura/deva, life/death…) the warrior steps into battle, staking his claim to glory, power, ‘the goods of life,’ at risk of death. ਲਲਕਾਰਿਯੋਤਬਮੀਚ॥—He then challenges death.
This unstable, catastrophic violence (the Devi’s wrath) is ultimately harnessed in service of dharam-yuddha. The instability borne of the warrior’s relentless confrontation with death is wedded to the defense of pure, unconditioned, absolute order. The warrior is forever a sacrifice in defense of dharam, forever steeped in death; his sacrifice holds the cosmos together.
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The texts consciously craft a ‘messianic martial religiosity’ (Murphy, 2015) focused on dharam-yuddha: ਅਵਰ ਬਾਸਨਾ ਨਾਹਿ ਪ੍ਰਭ ਧਰਮ ਜੁਧ ਕੇ ਚਾਇ ॥—I have no desires, O Prabhu, save for dharam-yuddha. The gods wage war against adharam, over and over, an endless cycle of chaoskampf against the inevitable decay and entropy of the material universe. ਕੇਤੇ ਕਾਨ ਮਹੇਸ—many Krishnas, many Shivas have manifested over the ages. ਏਕ ਸ਼ਿਵ ਭਏ ਏਕ ਗਏ ਏਕ ਫੇਰ ਭਏ ਰਾਮ ਚੰਦ੍ਰ ਕਿਸ਼ਨ ਕੇ ਅਵਤਾਰ ਭੀ ਅਨੇਕ ਹੈਂ ॥— One Shiva arrives, one departs, yet another arrives; Ramchandra and Krishna’s avataras are numberless. The Khalsa themselves are expendable in this eternal cosmic battle, sacrificed over and over in defense of dharam in an age that steadily, intractably descends into darkness.
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prathami bhagautī simar kai
The tales in Dasam Granth provide models of ideal martial and noble conduct for the Khalsa. In this context, consider Dasam Bani’s tales of warrior-gods waging dharam-yuddha: the gods are often presented worshipping the Devi, who is herself presented as the supreme manifestation of martial prowess and fury.
ਤਛਨ ਲਛਨ ਦੈ ਕੈ ਪ੍ਰਦਛਨ ਟੀਕਾ ਸੁ ਚੰਡਿ ਕੇ ਭਾਲ ਮੈ ਦੀਨੋ ॥—Quickly circumambulating the Goddess, the gods immediately applied the victory tilak on her forehead.
This motif of the gods worshipping the Devi upholds the fundamental metaphysical principle of ਪ੍ਰਥਮਿ ਭਗਉਤੀ ਸਿਮਰ ਕੈ—First I contemplate Bhagauti, the creative-productive-destructive faculty of Akal, His techne, His shakti. ਅਕਲੰਕਾ ਅਤ੍ਰੀ ਛਤ੍ਰਾਣੀ ॥—Unblemished, bearing weapons, [you are] the Queen of Kshatriyas. The Devi is established as Waheguru’s primordial power that drives the cosmos, one that the devout sant-sipahi can access and tap into. It is this power that the gods, and by association the Khalsa, worship and embody in war, as in life (for life, even in peace, is war).
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lutt mār khālsā
ਸਿਖੋ ਤੁਸੀਂ ਲੁਟ ਖਾਵੋ।—Plunder and eat, O Seikhs.
Like the archaic rajan, the itinerant vratyas and the Rajputs, the Khalsa engaged in plundering and raiding as a martial enterprise, part of the consecrated warrior’s roving conquests. The Tenth Patishahi’s Singhs, ਦੰਗੇ ਬਾਜ ਲੁਟੇਰੇ ਅਤਿ ਹੀ—prone to rioting, menacing plunderers, would raid neighboring estates and villages at will.
The Guru himself embodied the archaic ideal of the Nietzschean rajan, one who conjures sovereignty through sheer will, plundering and seizing territory. Kavi Sainapati notes, ਕਰੈ ਬਿਲੰਮ ਭੇਟ ਨਾ ਦੇਈ। ਤਾ ਕੋ ਲੂਟ ਖਾਲਸਾ ਲੇਈ।—[The towns and villages which] delayed in offering or failed to offer anything, those were plundered by the Khalsa.
ਬੀਸ ਪਚਾਸ ਸਿੰਘ ਮਿਲ ਜਾਵੈਂ । ਇਤ ਉਤ ਤੈ ਗ੍ਰਾਮਨ ਲੁਟ ਲ੍ਯਾਵੈਂ ।—Whenever twenty to fifty Singhs assembled, they would go about plundering various towns. And, recalling the kafir headhunters wading deep into enemy territory, ਦੂਰ ਦੇਸ ਤੁਰਕਨ ਕੇ ਮਾਂਹੀ । ਮਾਰਹਿਂ ਧਾਰੇ ਸੰਕਹਿਂ ਨਾਹੀ ।—Going deep into the heartland of the Turks, they [the Singhs] would attack them without fear.
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In the 18th century, the Misl sirdars continued to regularly organize raids all over North India, storming deep into the heart of the Gangetic valley, extracting revenue and projecting their power beyond Delhi. In 1783, Jassa Singh Ahluwalia, in alliance with Baghel Singh Kroresinghia, led a raid into the upper Gangetic plains. Reports from the 1790s show Singhs numbering ten thousand, at times upto 30-40 thousand, raiding villages and towns in Awadh, projecting deep into the Gangetic plains, forcing the Nawab to request assistance from the East India Company.
Perhaps as poetic eternal recurrence, the raiding patterns of the Khalsa in the 18th century mimicked the migration patterns of the Rigvedic Aryans into the Gangetic plains. There is nothing new under the Sun.
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Construction of the kshatriya ideal
Kshatra can broadly be defined as ‘dominion, power.’ Guru Gobind Singh's scripture takes care to attach the appellation kshatriya to the Khalsa, cultivating an image that embodies the Khalsa’s will-to-power. Bhai Mani Singh writes, ਤੇ ਸਾਹਿਬ ਖਾਲਸੇ ਜੀ ਨੂ ਰਘਵੰਸ ਜਾਣਕੈ ਫਿਰ ਰਾਜ ਲੈ ਦੇਵਣਾ ਸੀ ॥—And so [Guru] Sahib, considering the Khalsa of the Raghuvamsha lineage, wanted to grant them sovereignty.
The kshatriya, the rajan, the patishah, the Maharaja, the Singh ‘lion’: these signifiers are all meaningfully inscribed upon the body of the Khalsa, tapping into the timeless, primordial warrior archetype. ਭਗਤ ਸੂਰ ਦ੍ਵ ਰੂਪ ਨਰਵਰ—the Supreme Man, the form of devotee as well as hero-warrior.
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“Guru Gobind Singh’s Khalsa embodied the ‘householder-sovereign’ ideal which was intellectually steeped in classical Kshatriya notions of sovereignty and social order.” (Syan, 2013)
Indeed, the ‘householder-sovereign’ ideal overcomes the ascetic’s will to nothingness; it overcomes and interiorizes this clear-eyed, lucid, radiant, rarefied nothingness. Quietly, in silence, the Khalsa carries this numinous lucidity (one may even call it the ‘clearpill’) deep in his heart-lotus, as he plunges into the jagata-tamasha, the worldly spectacle, as a man of aktion. Bhai Gurdasa writes, ਗੁਰਸਿਖ ਜੋਗੀ ਜਾਗਦੇ ਮਾਇਆ ਅੰਦਰਿ ਕਰਨਿ ਉਦਾਸੀ॥—The gursikh, as yogis, ever awake; they remain detached (udasi) amidst the Maya.
Interestingly, vratya militant brotherhoods were of two types: younger, adolescent warriors who led nocturnal, predatory (‘wolf-like’) lifestyles; and older, married warriors who primarily engaged in defensive (‘dog-like’) rather than predatory violence. The latter type is comparable to the Khalsa’s ‘householder-sovereign’ ideal, waging war in defense of dharam.
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Dhavan (2011) explains that the Khalsa Sikhs of the 18th century were acutely aware of the self-fashioning they were engaging in. They spent time debating their conduct, referring in their normative literature to their adab (Persianate civility) and their adhikara (Hindu social rights).
“This identity had its moorings in Kshatriya martial endeavour where the Khalsa were imagined as members of Durga’s army— re-creating a chivalric civility associated with the primordial Vedic warriors.”
Thus the Khalsa fashioned (or, depending on one’s sensibilities, revitalized) an identity that was simultaneously distinct and timeless, forging a ਤਿਸਰ ਪੰਥ or third position as much as it meaningfully embodied and revived the archaic form of the consecrated warrior, encompassing as well as transcending its historical contexts and antecedents.
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The thirst for annihilation
ਛਤ੍ਰੀ ਕੋ ਪੂਤ ਥੋ ਕੋਪ ਭਰੇ ਤਿਹ ਨਾਸ ਕਯੋ ਬਿਨਤੀ ਸੁਨਿ ਲੀਜੈ ॥—Being the son of a kshatriya, I was filled with wrath and annihilated him.
What this whole business ultimately leads us to is the crux of the warrior’s sacrality, the cold heart of it. The warrior’s cosmos is saturated by blood, fire and death; ruinous excess, solar expenditure, self-destructive limit-experience; a sacral realm of relentless chaos, conflict, catastrophe, volatility, instability, intensity; ever-fracturing, ever-rupturing. The kshatriya is born into death, forever a sacrifice. The warrior is invariably oriented towards death. Bhai Gurdasa writes, ਮੁਏ ਮੁਰੀਦ ਗੋਰਿ ਗੁਰ ਪੀਰਾ ॥ the most unsettling translation of which is “The disciples are corpses, the Guru is the grave.”
This is mirrored in Sau Sakhi’s dramatic sakhi sixty-one, where the Guru prophesizes the Khalsa’s fate: ਮਰਣਾ ਮਰਣਾ ਮਾਰਿ ਮਾਰਿ ਗਲਣਾ ਗਲ ਗਲ ਸੀਤ ਸਰਬ ਖਾਲਸਾ ਤਿਆਗ ਤਨ ਤਾਂ ਲਗ ਸਹੀਦਨ ਰੀਤ।—We shall kill and be killed. We shall be dissolved in heaps of ice as high as man's stature. All the Khalsa will then throw off their bodies and shall obtain the dignity of martyrs. Bhadour’s translation concludes: This will be the end of the Khalsa.
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Death inspires nothing except disdain and contempt in the warrior. Kala holds no sway over him, for he is beyond Kala: Akali. Death is actively courted; what matters is dying in the vortex of battle. ਜਬ ਆਉ ਕੀ ਅਉਧਿ ਨਿਦਾਨ ਬਨੈ ਅਤਿ ਹੀ ਰਨ ਮੈ ਤਬ ਜੂਝਿ ਮਰੋ ॥—In my time of dying, may I perish engaged in intense battle. Death is merely the vehicle that carries him to glory, fame, annihilation in the ecstasies of war. The PIE formula*ḱlewos *ndhgwhitom (“fame that does not decay”) is mirrored in κλέος ἄφθιτον—kléos áphthiton (Homer), as well as अक्षितम् श्रवस्—ákṣitam śrávas (RV 1.9.7), also finding an echo in the formula अक्षया कीर्ति:—akṣayā kīrtiḥ (Mahabharata).
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Immortality is intimately tied with blood. It is either passed onto your children, or shed in service of God. Lineages and martyrdom— biological continuity and sublime metaphysical transformation. It is by conserving one’s blood through the thickets of time that a man sustains his earthly dominion. It is by expending blood that he ascends to the exalted courts of Mahakala. The vaults of heaven are washed in the sacred blood of martyrs.
The asura, in his hall, besotted with his wealth and acquisitions, sees immortality in the ultimately finite, profane sequence of lineages. The deva, free, cakravartin, an itinerant, errant warrior on wheels, operating in smooth space, knows immortality through the rarified, excessive, explosive principle of martyrdom.
For the gods themselves shower flowers and sing praises from the heavens, as damsels marry the martyr and take him to the abode of the heroes. ਸਾਮੁਹਿ ਪ੍ਰਾਨ ਦੇਤ ਜੋ ਜਾਈ ॥ ਸੋ ਪਾਵਨ ਸੁਰ ਪੁਰ ਬੜਿਆਈ ॥—He who confronts [the enemy in battle] and gives his life, he attains a passage to the land of the gods.
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