Gurū Gobind Singh — see main

Takht Sri Patna Sahib — Guru Gobind Singh's birthplace in Bihar

The gurdwara and the Qila Shahi Mubarak

This corpus record was a pointer to a main entry and carried almost no content of its own. It is written here as a proper place-entry in its own right, because the site is worth documenting independently and because the redirect-to-another-file structure loses the fact that Patna has its own Takht, one of the five.

Guru Gobind Singh was born at Patna in 1666, the son of Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Guru, and of Mata Gujri Bai. The gurdwara complex, Takht Sri Patna Sahib, stands in the old city. The building is associated with the Qila Shahi Mubarak, the fortified Mughal palace complex in Patna, which is the location tradition assigns to the Guru's birth; the gurdwara grew around and partly within the older palace precincts. The walled enclosure with the jhanda (standard) raised on the Guru's birth anniversary is a familiar Sikh idiom, and the santhan — the small chamber said to be the birthplace, sealed by a nāqā (votive offering) plate — is kept as a place of circumambulation rather than opened. Many gurdwaras have a santhan; what distinguishes this one is that it is attached to a royal palace rather than to a village.

Devotees circumambulate the santhan at night with lamps after dark on the day of the birth anniversary, and the kīrtan is held through the night. The practice of consecrating food and distributing it follows the standard gurdwara pattern. The gurdwara is administered by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, like the other Takhts.

Sources and what is still unverified

The Sikh Encyclopedia and Khushwant Singh's history are the standard starting points; the Patna district gazetteer is the local source; the gurdwara's own account should be consulted directly rather than paraphrased at second hand.

Outstanding for a named guardian: which part of the Qila Shahi Mubarak is actually identified with the birth chamber, since the palace precinct has been built over repeatedly; the date and manner of the gurdwara's own foundation and enlargement, which the record currently lacks; and the correct local name of the birth anniversary observance as it is kept in Bihar.