Table Of Contents For 'Parasaraprasna -The Baisakhi Of Guru Gobind Singh' By Kapoor Singh I.C.S

Editors' Note To Book 'Parasaraprasna -The Baisakhi Of Guru Gobind Singh' By Kapoor Singh I.C.S

In writing his book, Parasaraprasna, its author, Sirdar Kapur Singh, had drawn his material from a large number of sources and had, in doing so, stuck to the orthographic patterns followed by their authors without keeping in mind whether he was quoting them verbatim or was, simply, reporting the matter on his own. This had resulted in figuring of the same word in its different forms, side by side; for instance, Krishan, Krishna and Krshna, or Shiv, Shiva, siva, or Muhammad, Mohammed and Mohamet. We have at all such places kept the character of the original source in mind and tried to bring about uniformity in their use to the extent it was possible, leaving at places, the tatsama and the tadbhava, both the forms, in tact. Similarly a word come from an antiquated sources in its antique sense has been left untouched. Instances of these are the use of 'Sire' for 'Sir' and 'Mevalana', for 'Maulana'. At places we have been forced to use s and sh and c and ch for the Sanskrit letters because of shortage of type with the requisite diacritical signs. For the facility of the readers a Key to Transliteration and Abbreviations stands added to the Book.

Sirdar Kapur Singh had in this book made profuse and repetitive use of capital letters to bring into focus certain concepts and phrases. While we have retained them at places where they were warranted, we have taken care to avoid unnecessary repetition and their futile use, though they may, even now, sound exuberant at places to a highly critical mind.

Sirdar Kapur Singh, as the readers will note, was found of writing long sentences full of elliptical phrases and parenthetic subclauses. This tended to make his sentences unintelligible at places. We have sought to make them more intelligible by changing their sequence in the sentences concerned, or by readjusting their punctuation marks, all the time taking care not to disturb the tenure of his argument.

As it is, Sirdar Kapur Singh's style will appear to modern readers marred by classical stiffness. Yet, his credentials are irreproachable. He had not only produced a work of high scholarship in Sikh Studies but had also made serious efforts to promote comparative study of Oriental Mysticism.

The documentation of authorities depend upon and sources used by the author for producing  this magnum opus has, indeed, been a very formidable task because of the very large number of works of all shades and major languages of the world involved, and because of the slip-shod way in which the author had noted them. Though Prof. Pritam Singh, the sponsor  of this book, and his team of workers consisting of Dr.K.L. Sharma and Shri Raghubir Singh Tak, had spent considerable labour on it , the work required a reappraisal, filling in of certain gaps, and recasting of various references. This having been done to the extent possible, the work still remains short of necessary information here and there. For this, we seek pardon of the reader, since the author is no longer with us to provide the much needed clues.

To facilitate location of a topic, we have, apart from the General Index, added a Subject Index which, we hope, the readers will find very useful.

We owe our sincere thanks to the very kind cooperation extended to us by Dr.K.L. Sharma and Dr. Sukhdev Sharma of the Department of Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit, in checking Sanskrit quotations appearing in the book.