Bhagat Bheekhan Ji

Bhagat Bheekhan Ji has two hymns in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, in Sorath. He is generally identified with Sheikh Bhikhan of Kakori near Lucknow, a Sufi who died in 1573, in Akbar's reign.

If that identification holds, he was a near contemporary of Guru Amar Das Ji, and his compositions entered the collection within a generation of his death rather than across centuries.

The two hymns are about the body's ailments and the one medicine. They are short and clinical.

He is one of two Muslim Sufis in the volume, the other being Sheikh Farid Ji, which is a small number that is nonetheless larger than the number of Sufis in any other scripture of the region.

The two Sorath hymns use the language of illness directly. The body is described as failing, the eyes going, the ears going, the strength going, and the one remedy named is the Name. The imagery is medical rather than metaphysical, which is unusual in the volume.

The identification with Sheikh Bheekhan of Kakori in Awadh rests on tradition rather than on anything internal to the hymns. If it holds, he died around 1573. If it does not, nothing at all is known of when he lived.

Kakori is a town near Lucknow now and has no shrine identified with him that draws Sikh visitors. The relationship between the volume and the Sufi establishments of Awadh is one of the least examined parts of its formation.

What we don't know

  • The identification itself, which is probable rather than proved.

Where to check this

  1. Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Sorath. Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji (searchable text and translations) ↗

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

  • Standard scholarship on the identification with Sheikh Bhikhan of Kakori.

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 65 accounts in Before the Gurus, the chapter of this site covering the region before 1469, from the Indus cities to the Lodhis.