Daughter of Sri Guru Amar Das Ji, wife of Sri Guru Ram Das Ji, mother of Sri Guru Arjun Dev Ji
Bibi Bhani
Bibi Bhani was the daughter of one Guru, the wife of another and the mother of a third. Through her, the office of Guru passed into the Sodhi family, where it stayed. Sikh chronicles remember her above all for her service to her father at Goindwal.
Family
Bibi Bhani was born to Sri Guru Amar Das Ji and Mata Mansa Devi on 19 January 1535 at Basarke Gillan, near Amritsar. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism gives the date as 21 Magh 1591 Bikrami.
She married Bhai Jetha, the future Sri Guru Ram Das Ji, who had come from Lahore and was serving at Goindwal. The couple stayed on at Goindwal in the service of Guru Ji. Their three sons were Prithi Chand, born in 1558, Mahadev, born in 1560, and Sri Guru Arjun Dev Ji, born in 1563.[EoS][EoS][Macauliffe]
Service at Goindwal
Macauliffe, retelling Sikh chronicles, describes a girl drawn to prayer who preferred it to the games of her friends. After her marriage she kept attending on her father, fanning him and drawing water.
The best-known story is told in the old chronicles and repeated in the Encyclopaedia. One morning, as Guru Ji sat in meditation, she saw that a leg of his low seat was about to give way. She held it up with her hand until he finished, and he then saw that the hand was bleeding. He blessed her and said that her descendants would inherit the Guruship. Gupta also links the choice of a successor in her family with the service of Bibi Bhani and her husband. The blessing is reported by tradition, and no record from her own time confirms it.[EoS][Macauliffe][Gupta]
Amritsar and later years
One account says Emperor Akbar gave the land that became Amritsar to Bibi Bhani during a visit to Sri Guru Amar Das Ji, after Guru Ji had declined it. Others say the site was bought from local villagers.
Macauliffe says she understood the signs when her husband gave his last instructions in 1581, and he records the bitter rift with her eldest son Prithi Chand over the succession of his younger brother. She lived on through the first part of Sri Guru Arjun Dev Ji's Guruship, and passed away at Goindwal on 9 April 1598.[EoS][Macauliffe]
What the sources disagree on
- Year of the marriage
The Encyclopaedia dates the wedding to 18 February 1554. Gupta places it at the beginning of 1553.[EoS][Gupta]
- Land at Amritsar
The Encyclopaedia presents the gift from Akbar as one version among others. Macauliffe and Gupta tell it as the emperor's grant in her name.[EoS][Macauliffe][Gupta]