Boundless Scripture of Guru Granth Sahib
The Guru Granth Sahib is a sacred scripture of the world and is the
Eternal Guru of the Sikhs. Because it is a scripture suitable of a
universal religion, many world class philosophers and holy men
consider it a unique treasure and a noble heritage for all humankind.
Because, it is the Guru of the Sikhs, its adoration or veneration is
an article of faith with the Sikhs. In the year 2004, the world will
celebrate the Quad-Centennial of the Granth's First Compilation. In
2008, the Sikhs will celebrate the Tercentennial of the Canonization
of the Granth as the Sri Guru Granth Sahib.
The sacred verses of Sri Guru Granth Sahib are called Gurbani, which
means the Guru's word or the song messages enshrined in Sri Guru
Granth Sahib. In Sikhism, the Guru is the 'Wisdom of the Word' and
not a human or a book. God revealed the Word through the holy men and
women from time to time, and the most recent revelations were entered
in the text of Sri Guru Granth Sahib. To the Sikhs, any scripture not
included in the Guru Granth is unacceptable as the Guru's word or
authority behind their theology, and it is not allowed to be recited,
sung, or discussed in Sikh congregations with only exception for the
compositions of Guru Gobind Singh, Bhai Gurdas and Bhai Nand Lal.
These were considered to elucidate the Guru Granth verses. Those who
explain the scripture or teach the doctrines contained in the
scripture are respected as teachers, granthi, missionaries, saints or
enlightened souls in the Sikh religion.
The Sikhs regard Sri Guru Granth Sahib as a complete, inviolable and
final embodiment of the message for them. There is to be no word
beyond the Word. And that's how their last guru, Guru Gobind Singh,
spoke to the congregation on October 20, 1708 shortly before his
ascension.
"Those who desire to behold the Guru should obey the Granth Sahib.
Its contents are the visible body of the Guru.”
Sri Guru Granth Sahib contains hymns of 36 composers written in
twenty-two languages employing a phonetically perfected Gurmukhi
script on 1430 pages in 511,874 words, 1,720,345 characters, and
28,534 lines. It has been preserved in its original format since its
last completion by Guru Gobind Singh in 1705.
It is well known that religious institutions protect themselves from
erosion by enshrining their tenets and doctrines in some tangible
form. The best and the most modern form of preserving the doctrinal
purity today is the use of printed media and electronic storage. At
the time of the Granth's compilation, the Sikh gurus could make use
of only handwritten books, and they used this medium wisely. If
available, all of the founders and the followers of great religions
would have liked to compile one volume of their scriptures, as the
Sikh gurus did, to preserve their scriptures for posterity.
Guru Granth was composed in poetry perhaps to both prevent
alterations or adulterations, and to reach out to human heart.
According to some writers," its power is the power of the puissant
and winged word, and no exegesis or commentary or translation can
ever convey the full beauty of its thought and poetry.”Further,
poetry can be left to the culture and the times that follow to best
interpret the message.
Thus the Guru Granth incorporates all of the features to place it
alongside the world's greatest scriptures. Besides, this is the only
scripture which in spite of its interfaith nature was dictated,
edited, proof-read, and signed for authenticity by the founders of
the faith in their life time. These unique features helped preserve
the Sikh religion throughout the numerous onslaughts it endured over
the period of five centuries. The Granth proved to be a sufficiently
foolproof means for continuously providing safeguard against
adulteration and extinction of the Sikh religion for centuries to
come.
The fifth Sikh Guru, Arjan Dev first compiled the Guru Granth in I604
in the city of Amritsar. Guru Gobind Singh prepared the second
edition, which he completed at Damdama, a town in the State of Punjab
in India in 1705. Since then, his authorized version has been
transcribed and printed numerous times; it always conforms to the
Damdama edition in every respect. More recently the text in its
original font is available electronically on many web sites for every
one to have free access. In addition to the edition in original
Gurmukhi script, the Guru Granth on the web is available in Hindi,
Sindhi, and roman English transliterations. Whereas translations in
English, French, Spanish, Punjabi, Hindi, Sindhi and German are
already available, those in Thai, Urdu, Hebrew and many Indic
languages are in preparation.
The Granth compiled by Guru Arjan contained the hymns of the first
five Gurus along with most of the saints and holy men of medieval
India and the Far East. He installed this scripture in the
Sikhs'central shrine, Hari Mandar, at the City of Golden Temple in
1604. Later, this copy was taken into possession by guru's rivals who
would not wish to share it freely with the mainstream Sikhs. Guru
Gobind Singh took upon himself to recreate the entire Granth. He
dictated to a Sikh scholar, Bhai Mani Singh, all verses he considered
revealed including the hymns written after Guru Arjan. It took him
nearly five years at Anadpur Sahib and Damdama Sahib to complete this
project in 1705. He founded Dandama town to immortalize this
occasion.
On October 20, 1708 Guru Gobind Singh gave his final sermon that
conferred permanent gurudom on the Damdama version of the Granth. He
selected town of Naderh several hundred miles away from Damdama for
this event. Since that day, the Granth has come to be known as Sri
Guru Granth Sahib.
Sri Guru Granth Sahib contains 5894 hymns. Guru Arjan contributed the
largest number of 2216 hymns. Besides the hymns of other Gurus, he
also included 937 hymns of fifteen other saints and eleven poet
laureates of the Guru's court whose compositions tallied with the
gospel of the Sikh faith. Here, the Hindu, the Muslim, the Brahmin,
and the untouchable, all meet in the same congregation of holy souls
to create a truly universal scripture for our world.
From the linguistic point of view, Sri Guru Granth Sahib is a
treasury of the languages of its times that communicated well with
every segment of the society. The language principally employed is
the language of the saints, evolved during the medieval period. Based
upon the local dialects, it was leavened with expressions from
Sanskrit, Prakrit, Persian, Arabic, Bengali and Marathi etc. This
language allowed for variations and still enjoyed wide currency in
Southeast Asia. Its appeal is found in its directness, energy and
resilience. In addition, the Guru designed a phonetically complete
gurmukhi font to meet the need of inscribing the multi-linguistic
scripture that is also musical.
The poetry of the Granth is in itself a subject worthy of the highest
consideration. Music forms the basis of the rhythms and
classification of the hymns. They follow a definite metrical system
called raags. A raag in Indian classical music means a pattern of
melodic notes. This form is not only used to preserve the originality
of the composition, as the poetry written in this form is difficult
to imitate, but more so to provide the divine experience through the
medium of music and the sounds of God's creation. The total number of
ragas is 31. The gurus themselves invented some of those. Under each
Raag, the hymns are arranged in different meters as Chaupadas and
Ashtapadas; long poems include Chhands, Vars, and Bhagat verses.
Another outstanding feature of the Guru Granth is the rescission and
beauty of its prosody. Whilst a great deal of it is cast in
traditional verse forms (e.g. shlokas and paudis), and could best be
understood in the context of the well-known classical raags, several
hymns and songs make use of popular folklore and meters (e.g.
alahanis, ghoris, chands, etc.). The inner and integral relationship
between music and verse has been maintained with scholarly rectitude
and concern. The complete musicalization of thought was accomplished
in a scientific and scholarly manner so that it makes for the
unusually vigorous yet supple discipline of the Granth's own metrics
and notations.
The Guru Granth verses are often sung in a process known as kirtan.
In this process true meaning is revealed directly to the Surat
(consciousness and awareness) through cosmic vibrations. The body's
energetic vibrations from our voices bond us to the spiritual light
of universal intelligence. As we chant the Granth's verses the
universe speaks to us in metaphoric images. The physical body of the
singer experiences the essence of each word through the lightening
energy in the brain and the calming vibrations in the body, all
caused by the sound currents. They keep the mind to stay focused on
the Word. They heal the physical body and cleanse inner thoughts. The
sound waves of the Gurmat Raags connect the mind, body, and spirit by
alignment of the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual entities.
They implant in the psyche the basis for both spiritual and mental
growth. To see a Sikh congregation chant the sacred hymns in unison
is to see massed spiritual energy bubble before your eyes. This is
how the ordinary words change into the logos and become auspicious.
Reading of Sri Guru Granth Sahib, known as Gurbani paath, is a sacred
rite for every Sikh that permits a connection to the Guru for
spiritual guidance. It is more than a simple ritual or a complex
scholarly endeavor; intellectual deliberation is engaged to seek
wisdom while faith is cultivated in the process to receive the inner
light. Reading the rhythmic poetry of Guru Granth is considered by
some as healing in itself. Its chant is frequently prescribed to
patients for relief of their symptoms and to reduce illnesses. It
seems to facilitate understanding of pain and pleasure
by"mindfulness"or"being in the moment.”
In mystic literature of Guru Granth the appeal of the numinous
becomes ineffable, if not inexplicable. And yet the great Sikh
scripture is not a knot of metaphysical riddles and abstract
theorizing. For the most part it employs the idiom of the common
people, and draws its imagery and metaphors from the home, the street
and the work place. The hymns of the Guru Granth show an admirable
use of the current figures of speech apart from their metrical
richness and sweetness. Imagery was taken from everyday life and
common occurrence to simplify subtle thoughts and profound concepts.
The Gurus were keen lovers of nature and as such, have written
glowing descriptions of panoramic environmental beauty, changes in
the times of day, and the changes of seasons to inculcate love for
the One Creator. Thus they made Guru Granth poetry an extraordinary
breed of divinity, mysticism, immediacy, concreteness and urgency
with which it touches the human heart.
One of the greatest glories of the Guru Granth is its all-embracing
character. It is a scripture completely free from bias, animus and
controversy. Indeed, the uniqueness of the Granth in this respect is
all the more astonishing when we think of the obscurantism,
factionalism and religious fanaticism of the periods in which it was
composed. They were all counterbalanced by inclusion of the songs and
verses of a wide diversity of holy men, saints, savants and bards. Of
course, their hymns and couplets rendered in their own language and
idiom were so dovetailed as to find a complete correspondence with
themes or motifs in the compositions of the Sikh Gurus.
The Guru Granth, then, is unique in that it formed the first
interfaith and still universal scripture. It is indeed a magnificent
compendium of the religious, mystic and metaphysical poetry written
or recited between the 12th and 17th centuries in different parts of
the Mid-Eastern and Far-Eastern continents. It is also at the same
time a reflection of the sociological, economic and political
conditions of the day. The satire on the reactionary rulers, the
obscurantist clergy, the fake fakirs and the like is uncompromising
and telling. In showing the path to spiritual salvation, the Guru
Granth does not ignore the secular and creative life of living
beings. In addition to its mysticism and spiritual depth, the poetry
of the Gurus throws light on their contemporary situations. It lays
bare the corruption and degradation of the society of those times and
underscores the need of social reform and economic uplift. Guru
Granth verses advocate a spiritual soul for their otherwise inhumane
administration of the then rulers.
Obviously, the idea of Guru Arjan Dev was to celebrate the diversity
in all religions and mystic experiences, and, at the same time,
establish the fundamental unity of spirituality and faith through the
scripture of Sri Guru Granth Sahib. In this scripture he founded an
integral congress of all minds and souls operating on the same
spiritual vibration. He elevated the songs of the saints, the Sufis
and the bards to the elevation of the logos to salute the power of
the Word whatever form it might take to reveal the glory of the One
Reality.
The Sikhs in particular and the religious world in general must be
congratulated to be the recipients of the unique scripture of Sri
Guru Granth Sahib. We, the Sikhs, must be humble and grateful to be
chosen by Guru Gobind Singh who assigned us the task of the keepers
of the light of Sri Guru Granth Sahib on this Day of October 20,
1708.
Harbans Lal, PhD., D.Litt (hons)
6415 Amicable Drive, Arlington, TX 76016, USA
Phone: 817-654-0844, Fax: 707-922-7724
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