Bibi Sharan Kaur

Bibi Sharan Kaur is the Sikh woman remembered in Panthic tradition for giving the last rites to the Singhs who fell at Chamkaur, alone and at night, with the Mughal cordon still round the garhi, and for being killed doing it. She is known from sakhi literature and later devotional writing, not from contemporary records, and the story is told in more than one way.

The tradition

After the battle of Chamkaur, in the winter of 1704 to 1705 (the year is itself disputed), the Mughal side announced that the Guru was dead and ordered that no one cremate the Sikh dead. The accounts say that Bibi Sharan Kaur, a young woman of the area, went to the field in the dark, identified the Singhs by their kara, kachhera, kirpan and kesh, and gathered the bodies, among them Sahibzada Ajit Singh and Sahibzada Jujhar Singh; the Dhan Sikhi telling counts the two Sahibzade and about thirty Shaheed Singhs. She lit a pyre and recited the Sohila. When soldiers found her she is said to have answered that she was cremating her martyred brothers and that the order of a false king did not stand against that of the True King. She did not leave the field alive.

Where the accounts differ

• Her name: Sharan Kaur (the name All About Sikhs credits to Bhai Vir Singh's Kalghidhar Chamatkar), Harsharan Kaur or Harsarn Kaur.
• Who she was: a young Sikh woman, said to be 16, living near Chamkaur (Basics of Sikhi); a woman who had nursed the Sahibzade (All About Sikhs); or a daughter of Guru Gobind Singh (Dhan Sikhi).
• How she died: Basics of Sikhi says she fought the soldiers with a sword, was struck on the head and was placed on the pyre; the other tellings say the soldiers threw her into the fire, after she fought or after she would not speak. All About Sikhs gives 23 December 1704 as the day of her martyrdom.

None of the pages consulted names a contemporary source. They cite a Punjabi book, Adarshak Singhnia, and Bhai Vir Singh's twentieth-century work, or cite nothing. The story is recorded here as a tradition of the Panth, which is not the same as calling it false.

What she is remembered for. She is the Panth's standing image of the woman who goes to the battlefield after the battle, when the act brings no glory and almost certain death, and she is the person tradition credits with giving the elder Sahibzade their last rites.