Text · Sikh scripture
Guru Granth Sahib
/ɡʊɾuː ɡɾənt̪ʰᵊ säː(ɦ)(ɪ)bᵊ(˦)/
Also known as Gurū Granth Sāhib, Adi Granth, Ād Granth, Pothi Sahib, Granth Sahib, Sri Guru Granth Sahib
The scripture of Sikhism, held by Sikhs to be their final and eternal Guru: 1,430 angs of 5,894 shabads arranged by 31 ragas, written in Gurmukhi in a mix of Punjabi, Braj, Marathi, Persian and other tongues. Guru Arjan compiled it as the Adi Granth in 1604, and Guru Gobind Singh conferred guruship on it in 1708. Beside six Gurus it carries hymns of fourteen Hindu bhakti sants, among them Kabir and Namdev, and of the Sufi Sheikh Farid.
- Date
- 1604–1708
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
Its pages are called ang, limb, because the book is treated as a living Guru. When Ram Rai altered a word of the Asa ki Var to please Aurangzeb, his father Guru Har Rai barred him from his presence and passed the succession to a younger son, and no word of the text may be changed since.
Scholars disagree on how the text took shape before 1604, from a single carefully kept codex (Balwant Singh Dhillon) to independent regional traditions that Guru Arjan and his associates edited together (Jeevan Deol, Pashaura Singh). Whether the 123 or 134 hymns under Sheikh Farid's name are his, or those of his eleventh successor Ibrahim Farid (d. 1552), is also debated.
Connections (5)
- Associated withGuru Arjan
Guru Arjan compiled the Adi Granth because rival hymn collections were in circulation: his eldest brother Prithi Chand, a competing claimant to the guruship, was distributing hymns of the earlier Gurus with his own. Arjan sent associates across the subcontinent to collect hymns, persuaded Mohan, son of Guru Amar Das, to hand over the writings of the first three Gurus, and edited the result with Bhai Gurdas as scribe. The compilation was completed on 29 August 1604.
- Located atHarmandir Sahib (Golden Temple)
Three days after its compilation was completed, the Adi Granth was installed in the Harmandir Sahib at Amritsar on 1 September 1604, with Baba Buddha as its first granthi, or reader. Amritsar remains where the text is fixed: the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee is its only authorised publisher, printing it in the basement of Gurdwara Ramsar, and in 1998 the Akal Takht banned private publication of the scripture.
- Historical linkDamdama Sahib, Talwandi Sabo
At Damdama Sahib, during a respite from fighting Aurangzeb's armies, Guru Gobind Singh and Bhai Mani Singh added the hymns of Guru Tegh Bahadur, Gobind Singh's father, to the Adi Granth and closed the canon; Wikipedia dates this to 1704. Three slightly different versions of the Adi Granth had been circulating at shrines, besides unauthorised ones from rival sects. Gobind Singh left out his own compositions, which went into the separate Dasam Granth.
- Scripture as guruHazur Sahib, Nanded
At Nanded in the Deccan, fatally wounded, Guru Gobind Singh proclaimed shortly before his death in October 1708 that the Granth would succeed him, ending the line of living Gurus. A bard, Narbud Singh, recorded the event as an eyewitness in a Bhatt Vahi. Groups that tried to continue a human guruship were sidelined by the faction of Mata Sundari and Bhai Mani Singh, and a rare 1707 copy of the Damdama recension is still kept in the Toshakhana at Nanded.
- Scriptural inclusion inBaba Farid
The Guru Granth Sahib carries 123 hymns, or 134 by another count, under the name of Sheikh Farid, the only Muslim Sufi among its contributors, and Guru Arjan placed them in the Adi Granth himself. Sikhs count Farid among the fifteen revered bhagats. Whose verses they are is debated: Bhardwaj (2016) finds their Punjabi closer to a later stage of the language and suggests Ibrahim Farid, Farid's eleventh successor, who died at Sirhind in 1552.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Guru Granth Sahib"; "Baba Farid". Gurinder Singh Mann, The Making of Sikh Scripture (2001); Pashaura Singh & Louis E. Fenech (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies (2014).
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