Devotee's offering

WHILE few will dispute the need for translations to take literary gems across linguistic barriers, no translation is final; certainly not when words acquire new connotations with the passage of time.

And so those who have read earlier translations of the Zafarnama and Fatehnama by Guru Gobind Singh could well find something new in Sardar Darshan Singh's fresh attempt at taking the Persian verse of Sikhism's tenth guru to a larger audience. Better known as "letters of admonition", they are the two epistles that Guru Gobind Singh addressed to the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb after a disastrous engagement on the battlefield.

Written in Persian verse, the two works - which embody the indomitable spirit of the Guru - also reflect the poet in the saint who established the Khalsa Panth. And Sardar Darshan Singh's translation is his contribution to the third centenary celebrations of the birth of the Panth.

Zafarnama: Epistle of Victory, written in Persian by the Tenth Guru Shri Guru Gobind Singhji to Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, Sardar Darshan Singh, ABC Publishing House, Rs. 295

ANITA JOSHUA

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