The Gurū Granth Sāhib

Bound Volume, Living Gurū

Earliest record: 1604the Ādi Granth completed at Amritsar on 29 August 1604 and installed in the Harmandir Sāhib on 1 September that year

On 29 March 2000 India's Supreme Court held an installed Gurū Granth Sāhib a juristic person able to hold property, adding that it "cannot be equated with an Idol".

Supreme Court of India, Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, Amritsar v. Som Nath Dass and Others, Civil Appeal 3968 of 1987, decided 29 March 2000

The Sikh scripture, compiled by Gurū Arjan in 1604 and installed as the living Gurū in 1708.

More context

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; Shaikh Farīd's saloks fill aṅgs 1377–1384.

Shadow

Desecration is used as provocation: torn aṅgs at Bargari in October 2015, then two protesters shot dead at Behbal Kalan.

Sources8 sources

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.
we have no hesitation to hold that Guru Granth Sahib is a Juristic Person
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.
Gurū Rām Dās, Gurū Granth Sāhib, Rāg Nat, Mahalla 4, tr. Sant Singh Khalsa (srigranth.org), 1604, aṅg 982The scripture's own ground for the guruship of the Word, cited in the interpretation for the 1708 investiture of the book as Gurū.
The Word, the Bani is Guru, and Guru is the Bani.

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.