The Gurū Granth Sāhib

Bound Volume, Living Gurū

First attested
1604the Ādi Granth completed at Amritsar on 29 August 1604 and installed in the Harmandir Sāhib on 1 September that year

Guruship passed to the book itself at Nanded in October 1708, so the bedchamber, the palanquin and the chaur are protocol owed to a person rather than devotional symbolism — and Indian law has since recognised an installed Gurū Granth Sāhib as a juristic person able to hold property in its own name.

Hindu and Muslim voices sing inside it beside the Gurus; anyone may sit before it, level with everyone.

Gurū Arjan compiled the Ādi Granth at Amritsar, dictating to Bhāī Gurdās; it was finished on 29 August 1604 and installed in the Harmandir Sāhib on 1 September, Bābā Buddhā its first granthī. Drawing on the Goindvāl pothīs of the 1570s, he set it to rāg — the book is sung. Fifteen bhagats, Hindu and Muslim, stand beside the Gurus: Kabīr, Ravidās, Nāmdev, Shaikh Farīd. Gurū Gobind Siṅgh fixed the text at Damdamā Sāhib, adding Gurū Tegh Bahādur's hymns and none of his own; his verse stands in the separate Dasam Granth. At Nanded in October 1708, days before his death, he conferred guruship on the volume, ending the line of human Gurus. This is not metaphor: a bedchamber, the sachkhaṇḍ, daily installation and retirement, attendants with a chaur.

Light

Ravidās, who names himself a chamār, sits in the rāg sections beside the Gurus; the saloks of Shaikh Farīd the Sufi hold their own section, aṅgs 1377 to 1384, into which the Gurus wrote replies. Anyone may sit before it barefoot, level with everyone.

Shadow

Desecration works as provocation: torn aṅgs at Bargari, October 2015; two protesters shot dead by police at Behbal Kalan. Scholarship draws its own charge — the Akal Takht found Pashaura Singh guilty of blasphemy on 25 June 1994 and set a tankhāh, a penance he performed.

Sources and verification7 sources · 5 links

Primary source

  • Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, Sikh Rahit Maryādā, 1945, approved 3 February 1945; sections on the Gurū Granth SāhibThe prescribed protocol for installing, carrying, ceremonially opening and retiring the Gurū Granth Sāhib — this is a published code, not informal local custom.
  • Supreme Court of India, Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, Amritsar v. Som Nath Dass and Others, 2000, decided 29 March 2000A Gurū Granth Sāhib installed in a gurdwārā is recognised in Indian law as a juristic person capable of holding property in its own name.
  • Justice (retd.) Ranjit Singh, Commission of Inquiry to Inquire into the Incidents of Sacrilege of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Srimad Bhagwad Gita and Holy Quran Sharif in the State of Punjab — Final Report, Part I, 2018, Part I: incidents of sacrilege at Burj Jawaharsingh Wala, Bargari, Gursar and Mallke and police firing at Kotkapura and Behbal Kalan; submitted 30 June 2018The 2015 sacrilege at Bargari and the police firing at Behbal Kalan on 14 October 2015 in which two protesters were killed.

Scholarship

  • J. S. Grewal, Contesting Interpretations of the Sikh Tradition, 1998, Manohar, New DelhiThe dispute of the 1990s over critical textual scholarship on the Ādi Granth, including the Akal Takht proceedings against Pashaura Singh in June 1994.
  • Pashaura Singh, The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and Authority, 2000, Oxford University Press, New DelhiGurū Arjan's compilation of the Ādi Granth in 1604, dictated to Bhāī Gurdās, its antecedents in late-sixteenth-century manuscripts, and the process by which canonical authority came to rest in the text itself.
  • Gurinder Singh Mann, The Making of Sikh Scripture, 2001, Oxford University PressThe Goindvāl pothīs of the 1570s as surviving source material behind the 1604 compilation, and the stages by which the Sikh canon was assembled.

Further reading

Linked entries

  • Set againstRūmīAttested

    Gurū Arjan bound Shaikh Farīd's Sufi saloks into the volume in 1604 as scripture on the same footing as the Gurus' own; Rūmī's Masnavī, left unfinished at his death in 1273, is revered within Islam but never canonised.

  • Set againstIfá DivinationA modern connection

    Both are treated as a living presence rather than a reference book, but the Gurū Granth Sāhib is a fixed text read from the page, where Ifá's ẹsẹ are carried by living diviners and no edition closes the corpus.

  • Set againstThe Bhagavad GītāAttested

    Both are Indian scriptures recited daily, but the Guru Granth Sahib is installed and attended as a living Guru, where the Gītā is an episode of an epic that later editions bound on its own.

  • Set againstThe Chakra SystemAttested

    Sikh scripture speaks of the dasam duār, the tenth gate, and of a lotus of many petals opening, but places the nectar in the Name given by the Guru rather than in kuṇḍalinī or khecarī mudrā.

  • Set againstThe DaodejingAttested

    Sikh scripture whose compilation is documented to the year, dictated to Bhai Gurdas and installed in 1604, where the Daodejing's earliest witness is an anonymous partial copy on bamboo from a tomb.

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