Bhai Vir Singh's Printing of Santokh Singh’s Suraj Prakash

Written in the mid-19^th century, just at the cusp of full-scale colonial upheaval in Punjab, the voluminous epic of Santokh Singh, the Suraj Prakash, describes the life stories from the first Sikh Guru, Nanak to Guru Gobind Singh. Since its inception the text attracted significant attention from scholars and various Gurdwara’s soon then mandated kathā, discourse, of the text daily in the late afternoon. Listening to the kathā remained the form in which most people engaged with the text for more than the next half century before Bhai Vir Singh endeavoured to print the text, which included many explanatory notes, which often even disagreed with Santokh Singh. This paper explores Bhai Vir Singh’s decade long endeavour to print the text and to thus present it in a palatable manner for colonially influenced Punjab of the early 20^th century.