Hymns of the Sikh Gurus

by Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh

  All of Guru Nanak’s teaching is set forth in verse. His genius was best expressed in the poetical attitude. No other way would have been adequate to the range and depth of his mood—his fervent longing for the Infinite, his joy and wonder at the beauty and vastness of His creation, his tender love for his fellowmen, his moral speculation and his concern at the suppression and exaction to which the people in his day were subject. His compositions reveal an abounding imagination and a subtle aesthetic sensitivity.4

  Whatever he said, and however he said it, Nanak acknowledged that it was divinely inspired. ‘As the Word comes to me, that is how I deliver it.’5 This poetic mode was to be the starting point of the Sikh scripture, the Guru Granth.

  For twenty-four years after his revelation, Guru Nanak travelled throughout India and beyond spreading the divine Word.

  He was accompanied during most of his travels by his Muslim companion, Mardana, who played on the rebec while Guru Nanak sang songs of intense love for the Divine One. The dress he wore as he set out on his journeys combined elements of Hindu and Muslim wear, a mixture which was symbolic of his common message for all peoples. Recognizing and accepting the religious plurality in which he lived, he freely mixed with the exponents of different traditions. Throughour his life, he continued to preach for a common humanity which, to his way of thinking, transcended all racial, social, religious and gender barriers and which he wished people of all faiths to perceive and cherish. During his extensive travels throughout India, he visited places of worship belonging to various religious traditions—Hindu temples, Muslim mosques, Buddhist viharas, and Sufi khanaqahs—and attended their fairs and festivals. In the Guru Granth we come across evidence that he met with yogis, Sufis, and naths. When he met Muslims, he adjured them to be faithful to the teaching of their faith; when he met Hindus, he urged them to abide by the tenets of their own tradition. The essential and eternal truth which lay beyond all externals and particularisms was the core of Guru Nanak’s vision of the Transcendent One.

  The rich but simple style of his teaching drew people from different religious, cultural and social backgrounds. Wherever Guru Nanak went, people began to follow him, calling themselves Sikhs, a Punjabi word which means ‘disciple’. It can be traced to the Sanskrit shishya and the Pali sekka. Bhai Gurdas (1551–1636), the first Sikh historian and theologian, viewed this new faith as ‘a needle which sews materials that are ripped asunder, bringing harmony to the torn and conflicting groups’.6

  At the end of his travels, Guru Nanak settled in Kartarpur, a Punjabi village he had founded on the right bank of the river Ravi. A community of disciples grew around him here. It was not a monastic order of any kind, but a fellowship of men and women engaged in the ordinary occupations of life. Guru Nanak established two important Sikh institutions: those of sangat and langar. Sangat is the holy congregation where men and women sit together to recite praises of the Divine; langar is the community refectory where men and women, irrespective of caste and creed, eat a common meal. Both have been potent factors in fostering the values of equality, fellowship and humility, and in affirming a new and dynamic sense of ‘family’.

  A further crucial development was the appointment of a successor. Before he passed away in 1539, Guru Nanak announced that his disciple Lahina was henceforth to be named ‘Angad’, literally ‘part of his own body’. This phenomenon is described in the Guru Granth as the transference of Light: ‘And now the writ of Angad ran instead of Nanak’s; for, the Light was the same, the Way the same, only the body had changed.’7 Bhai Gurdas depicts it as one flame lighting another. For the Sikhs this process was repeated successively until the Tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, ended the line of personal Guruship and made the Granth the Guru eternal. We learn from Bhai Gurdas that Guru Nanak carried a manuscript of his poetry under his arm,8 perhaps foreseeing the need for a scripture for the growing Sikh community. When Angad succeeded Guru Nanak, he inherited this record and also composed metaphysical poetry of his own. For him, the divine Word had an aesthetic as well as an epistemological value: ‘It is ambrosia, it is the essence of all, it emerges from deep knowledge and intense concentration.’9 Thus, while heightening and refining the senses, poetry also reveals the essence of existence itself. Guru Angad added his poetry to that of Guru Nanak’s collection, and signed it too with the name ‘Nanak’. It was Guru Angad who developed the Gurmukhi script in which the Guru Granth was to be written.

  As the succession of Guruship passed on, so did the verse of one Guru to the next. Each valued and nurtured the literary inheritance from his predecessor and, adding his own compositions also under the pseudonym ‘Nanak’, he would pass on the poetic legacy to the next. Guru Nanak was cherished as the founder of something new and different, and they felt that they were simply continuing his message.

  The Compilation of the Guru Granth

  In 1603, Guru Arjan, the Fifth Guru, took upon himself the compilation of the Granth. Guru Arjan had two reasons for taking up this physically and intellectually demanding task. First, he realized that the community needed a text that would encapsulate the Sikh world-view—a Granth (book) for the Panth (community). The fellowship of Sikhs had increased and spread, calling for a common message for its spiritual and moral life. Guru Arjan himself had travelled widely. There had been a famine in the Punjab, so the Guru travelled from village to village, helping people sink wells and undertake other works of public welfare. As a consequence many more people were drawn into the Sikh fold. There was thus an urgency for the revelation corning from Guru Nanak and his successors to be crystallized. Second, there was the problem of ‘counterfeit’ works. Guru Ram Das, the Fourth Guru, had bypassed his older sons and appointed Arjan to the Guruship, causing a rift with Pirthi Chand, his eldest son. Pirthi and his gifted son Meharban began to compose sacred poetry under the name of Nanak. To fix the seal on the sacred Word and to preserve it for posterity Guru Arjan began to codify the Sikh literary legacy into an authorized volume.

  Bhai Gurdas was called upon for help. He and Guru Arjan retreated to a serene and picturesque spot in the thick of a forest outside Amritsar and started work. Today, this site in the southern part of the city is marked by a shrine called Ramsar. There was a vast amount of poetic material; selections had to be made from the works of all the preceding four Gurus, as well as Guru Arjan’s own superb and extensive body of poetry. Furthermore, whatever was in harmony with the Sikh Gurus, even the sayings of the Hindu or Muslim saints, was also to be included. Finally, what was genuinely composed by the Gurus had to be sifted from what was incorrectly attributed to them. With literary finesse and scholarly precision, Guru Arjan acted as compiler and editor while Bhai Gurdas was the amanuensis using the Gurmukhi script of Punjabi.

  The organization of the poetry was musical. Apart from a few hymns, the entire collection is organized into thirty-one sections, each section containing poems in one melodic scale (rag). These rags appear in the following order: Sri, Majh, Gauri, Asa, Gujri, Devgandhari, Bihagara, Vadahans, Sorath, Dhanasri, Jaitsri, Todi, Bairari, Tilang, Suhi, Bilaval, Gaund, Ramkali, Nut-Narayan, Mali Gaura, Maru, Tukhari, Kedara, Bhairo, Basant, Sarang, Malar, Kanra, Kalyan, Prabhat and Jaijawanti. Each measure has its particular characteristic, its timing and season. For instance, the first, Sri, meaning ‘supreme’, is one of the parent measures from which the others are derived. It is compared to the philosopher’s stone, supreme among other stones, which transforms baser metals into gold.

  It is sung in the evening, when darkness takes over. In content too, it expresses the darkness of ignorance and superstition in which Guru Nanak’s society was enfolded. Seasonally, the measure Sri is associated with extreme heat and cold, indicating an intensity of emotion. The poets in this measure are heard expressing their ardent yearning for the Divine.

  Within each of these thirty-one sections, the poetry of the Gurus was organized in the order of their succession. We know that all the Gurus signed their compositions with the name of Nanak to show that they w
ere continuing his work. This was a little confusing, of course, so at the top of each work Guru Arjan wrote Mahalla 1 if the poem was written by the First Guru, Mahalla 2 if it was written by the Second Guru, and so on. Mahalla means ‘body’, and it indicates that the Gurus are different bodies of the one spirit of Nanak which they all share. So a poem by a particular Guru will be titled first by the name of the rag to which it is sung (this may or may not include the word ‘rag’), then by the mahalla number. There may also be an actual title to the poetry as for example with Sodar Rag Asa Mahalla 1. Sodar means ‘Gate’ and is the title, Asa is the rag, and Mahalla 1 indicates it is the composition of Guru Nanak.

  These poems by the first five Gurus were followed by those of numerous Hindu and Muslim saints. (For a list of the contributors, see Appendix Two, p. 248).

  The completion of the Granth was an occasion of great celebration. Later Sikh history compares the festivities with those of a wedding. Huge quantities of karahprashad, the Sikh sacred food (made up of sugar, butter, water and flour), were distributed. Sikhs travelled for miles to witness the colourful procession that would bear the sacred volume to Harimandir, the temple at Amritsar, a special place for Sikh worship, which was the inspiration of Amar Das, the Third Guru. Work on

  the Harimandir had begun under Ram Das, the Fourth Guru, in 1577. A structure of great architectural beauty, the shrine was completed in Guru Arjan’s period, in 1601, only three years before the completion of the Guru Granth. The Harimandir came to be known as the Golden Temple after the Sikh Maharajah Ranjit Singh had it reconstructed and plated with gold. On 16 August 1604 the Guru Granth was ceremoniously installed in the inner sanctuary of the Harimandir. Bhai Buddha, the surviving elderly and venerable Sikh devotee of Guru Nanak, actually carried it on his head while Guru Arjan walked behind holding the whisk over it in homage. Musicians played hymns from the sacred text. Bhai Buddha opened the Granth with reverence to obtain the divine command (hukam) from it; Guru Arjan stood in attendance behind. At dusk, the Granth was taken to a specially built chamber. There it was placed on a pedestal while Guru Arjan slept on the floor by its side. Such was the veneration shown to the Granth by the Gurus themselves. The original copy of the sacred book is preserved to this day at Kartarpur, a town near Jalandhar founded by Guru Arjan.

  The Founding of the Khalsa and the Apotheosis of the Guru Granth

  By Guru Arjan’s time, therefore, the Sikhs had received both a sacred space and a sacred text. These were both important in moulding Sikh self-consciousness. The Harimandir provided a central place for gathering and worship. The Granth gave the Sikh message a concrete form. It not only became their spiritual and religious guide but also shaped their intellectual and cultural environment. These were significant events in the crystallization of the Sikh faith.

  As the Sikh faith began to solidify and the Sikhs grew in number, the Muslim rulers of India became concerned.

  Guru Arjan was imprisoned by the governor of the Punjab. In 1606 he was executed. The martyrdom of the Fifth Guru generated a strong impulse of resistance and inaugurated a new era of militarism. Instead of the rosary and other saintly emblems, his son Guru Hargobind, the Sixth Guru, wore a warrior’s equipment for the ceremonies of succession. He put on two swords: one was declared the symbol of his spiritual (piri) and the other of his temporal (miri) investiture, emphasizing how in the Sikh faith the worldly and the other-worldly are

  not separate.10

  This act of combining miri and piri in two swords marked an important development in the evolution of the Sikh community—the development of a martial spirit. Since peaceful resistance to oppression had proved abortive, the Guru recognized recourse to the sword as a lawful alternative. He raised a small armed band of Sikhs and sent out messages that disciples in the future should come with gifts of horses and weapons. In 1609, to defend the town of Amritsar, he built a fortress called the Iron Fort. Another symbol of temporal authority instituted by Guru Hargobind was the Akal Takht (the Throne of the Timeless One) in front of the Harimandir. The Harimandir was for prayer, the Akal Takht for the conduct of the community’s secular affairs.

  But it was the martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur (the Ninth Guru) in Delhi that finally consolidated the martial aspect of Sikhism. This Sikh Guru challenged the policy of the Muslim rulers of converting Hindus by force, and for this defence of religious freedom he was executed in 1675. His son and successor, Guru Gobind Singh, the Tenth Guru, though only nine years of age then, provided vigorous leadership to the Sikhs. His first task was to infuse a new spirit among his people.

  Guru Gobind Singh fulfilled his aspiration for religious freedom in 1699 by inaugurating the Khalsa, the Order of the Pure. It was a casteless and self-abnegating body of Sikhs ready to take up arms to fight against oppression. The day was Vaisakhi, New Year’s Day in the north Indian calendar. The town was Anandpur in the Shivalik hills. Chanting verses from the Guru Granth, Guru Gobind Singh began the new initiation into the Khalsa by churning water, poured into a steel bowl, with a double-edged sword. His wife, Mata Sahib Kaur, came forward and dropped sugar crystals into the vessel. Sweetness through the feminine hand was thus mingled with the alchemy of iron.

  The occasion marked a dramatic departure from the past. The five to whom the rites of initiation were administered by Guru Gobind Singh were given the surname of Singh, meaning ‘lion’, and were ever after to wear the emblems of the Khalsa, popularly known as the Five Ks. These were kesha or uncut hair; kangha, a comb tucked into the kesha to keep it tidy in contrast with the recluses who kept it matted as a token of their having renounced the world; kara, a steel bracelet symbolizing strength and unity; kachha, short breeches worn by the soldiers of that time; and kirpan, a sword. Their rebirth into the new order represented the annihilation of their family (caste) lineage, of their confinement to a hereditary occupation, of all their earlier beliefs and creeds, and of the rituals they had so far observed. They were enjoined to help the weak and fight the oppressor. Guru Gobind Singh reiterated the First Sikh Guru’s message to have faith in the One, and consider all human beings equal, irrespective of caste and religion. In Guru Gobind Singh’s words:

  I wish you all to embrace one creed and follow one path, rising above all differences of religion as now practised. Let the four Hindu castes, who have different duties laid down for them in their scriptures, abandon them altogether, and adopting the way of mutual help and cooperation, mix freely with one another. Do not follow the old scriptures. Let none pay homage to the Ganges and other places of pilgrimage which are considered to be holy in the Hindu religion, or worship the Hindu deities such as Rama, Krishna, Brahma and Durga, but all should cherish faith in the teachings of Guru Nanak and his successors. Let each of the four castes receive my Baptism of the double-edged sword, eat out of the same vessel, and feel no aloofness from, or contempt for one another.11

  Guru Nanak’s vision to affirm and celebrate the oneness of Ultimate Reality and the oneness of humanity was given a practical form by Guru Gobind Singh. His verse ‘recognize the single caste of humanity’ is very popular in modern times and is recited by Sikhs in India and abroad. The initiation through steel was open to both men and women. Women were also to wear the five emblems of the Khalsa. As men received the surname Singh, women received the surname Kaur, signifying ‘princess’, and they retained this name whether single or married. Thus the patriarchal structure of society was modified. Men and women no longer traced their lineage or occupation to the ‘father’; as ‘Singh’ and ‘Kaur’ both became equal partners in the new family of Sikhism.

  Shortly before he passed away, Guru Gobind Singh made a momentous decision. On 6 October, 1708, he asked his disciples to bring the Granth to him. In a manner reminiscent of Guru Nanak’s appointment of Angad as his successor, Guru Gobind Singh placed a five paise coin and a coconut before the Granth and bowed his head in veneration before it. He told the gathered community that it was his commandment that henceforth they acknowledge the Grant
h in his place. The Granth was thus apotheosized as the Guru. Personal guruship came to an end. Succession now passed to the Guru Granth in perpetuity. Sikhs were not to perceive Guru in any other form. The Word alone was to be the Guru Eternal. From that day on, the Sikhs in their daily supplications, morning and evening, recite: ‘Acknowledge the Guru Granth as the visible body of the Gurus.’ The Guru Granth is thus revered as both the physical body of the Gurus and the metaphysical corpus of their poetry.

  The Guru Granth in Daily Life

  The Guru Granth has been the continuing spiritual and historical authority for Sikhs as well as a primary source for their literary inspiration. Through their scripture, Sikhs have been able to observe their faith more fully and more vividly. The community’s ideals, institutions and rituals have derived their meaning from the Guru Granth. In the words of the eminent Sikh scholar Harbans Singh, ‘the physical presence of the Guru Granth and its sublime poetry have constituted the twin regulative principles for the psyche of the Sikhs and their conduct’.12

  The shrine which houses the Guru Granth is called a gurudwara, literally, a door (dwara) to ultimate enlightenment (guru). But many Sikhs keep the holy volume in their homes, paying full respect by keeping it in a separate room, on a pedestal, draped in silks. Whether in homes or in gurudwaras, the holy book is ceremoniously opened in the morning and closed in

  the evening. It is also present at special gatherings such as weddings, name-giving ceremonies, birthdays, commemorations and house-blessing events. In such functions, it is carried onto the lawns or verandahs or drawing-rooms and paid the utmost homage. Wherever the Book is kept or heard, that space is revered by the Sikhs. A line in the Guru Granth says that paradise is where the holy verses are recited. As we noted, the Word embodied in the Guru Granth is present and resonates within our own bodies.