Book errors: Notice issued to varsity, govt

CHANDIGARH: The Punjab and Haryana high court on Monday put the Punjab government and Punjabi University, Patiala, on notice on a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking review of a Punjabi reference book, Mahan Kosh.

“Gurshabad Ratnakar Mahan Kosh”, also known as Mahan Kosh and subtitled “Encyclopaedia of Sikh Literature” containing 65,990 entries, was written by Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha, a leading scholar of Punjabi language and Sikh thought.

It was published in 1930. The book has been printed several times by the Punjab language department.

In 2011, Punjabi University, Patiala, undertook the project to print the book in Hindi, English and Punjabi.

The petition, filed by Rajinder Singh of Chandigarh and three others, was taken up by the high court bench of justice SS Saron and justice Darshan Singh on Monday and sought response from respondents by April 19.

The petitioners had argued that the work is not only authentic compendium of information about Sikhism but also of ancient Hindu literature, prosody, medicine and music as well.

The Punjabi University had recently brought out its English and Punjabi versions in four volumes and one volume in Hindi, but there are gross errors and they turned out to be a defective and mutilated versions of the original one, the petitioners had argued seeking directions to form a expert panels to examine compendium in each language to review it, besides stopping the sale of the work published by the university till then.

On being asked, the petitioner suggested names of experts Rattan Singh Jaggi, Madhav Kaushik, Tajinder Bhatia and Inderjit Singh for the Hindi version; Rana Nair, Beant Singh Ahluwalia, Manohar Lal and Harvinder Kaur for English version and OP Vashishth, Jagdeep Singh and Kulbir Singh for the Punjabi version.