SOAS Library and Bawa Budh Singh's Punjabi-Language Literary Criticism

June 17, 2026, 6:04 PM

As the temperature in London began to rise, I returned to the SOAS Library today armed with a British iPhone charger and the knowledge that my offsite circulating items are ready for me. Thankfully, there is a faucet at the back of the main floor of the Library from which I can refill my water bottle.

The literary criticism of the Punjabi scholar Bawa Budh Singh (1878-1931) is difficult to come by in North America, in spite of the fact that, when we trace the lineage of ideas recorded in east Punjabi, especially Gurmukhi-script, literary-critical or -historical works, it very often leads to one of Budh Singh's books. Several of these books, including Hans chog (1921), Bañbīhā bol (1925), and Koil kū (Amritsar, 1927), had titles inspired by birds.

Bullhe Shāh, asmānīñ uḍdiyāñ phaṛdā
jihṛā ghar baiṭhā ohnūñ phaṛeyā hī nahīñ

Well, I'm here to catch Budh Singh's banbiha and koyal. I'll deal with my nafs once I'm home in Montreal.

Bañbīhā bol turns out to be a periodised history of Punjabi literature. I don't have a lot of time to think over Budh Singh's periodisation (Muġhlaī vañḍ, Ḳhālsaī vañḍ, Sikh shreṇī dī kavitā) and compare it in my mind to the hundred other periodisations of Punjabi lit. that followed his. So I leap straight into his "Ḳhālsaī vanḍ," meaning the reign of Ranjit Singh and his successors. You may see the results of this leaping with my bird-catching net in my paper on Ranjit Singh's reign, if I ever manage to finish it. Please make du‘a.

The investigation into poetry, Koil kū, is one that I will need more time to digest. It is a wide-ranging and learned poetological work that, like Urdu works earlier in the 20th century, comprehends both precolonial and colonial ideas about poetry. What interests me is one of Budh Singh's sidelines in Koil kū: the interaction between Punjabi poetry and poetry in other languages as Budh Singh understood them.

While I revel in SOAS' printed books, my attempts to order books at the British Library are unsuccessful. Following the October 2023 cyber-attack, ordering of materials seems to be happening via a form of the kind that you see from Google and Microsoft. For each item that I order, an email appears in my inbox stating that my request was unsuccessful. It looks as if their recovery has some way to go.