Adigranth

(“Primal Book”) One of the names for
the Sikh scripture, most often used by
people outside the tradition. Sikhs
themselves are more likely to use the
honorific title Shri Guru Granth Sahib,
which reflects the scripture’s status as
the spiritual leader (guru) of the Sikh
community. This status was conferred
by the tenth Sikh guru, Gobind Singh
(d. 1708), who proclaimed that after his
8
Adi
death the community would have no
more human leaders, but only their
scripture to guide them. The book’s religious authority can be seen in the way
that the Sikhs treat it. They accord the
Adigranth the status of a living person.
In Sikh temples the Adigranth is ceremonially put to bed at night and woken
up in the morning. It is enshrined under
a canopy (a sign of royalty) for worship,
is fanned during hot weather and
warmed during cold, and if it has to be
taken anywhere, is carried on the bearer’s head, considered the purest part of
the body. In according this respectful
treatment to a physical book, the Sikhs
were probably influenced by Muslim
practice with regard to the Qur’an, since
in general Hindus pay little heed to a
book itself, however important the text
may be.
The Adigranth plays a central role in
Sikh life: Children are named by opening
the book at random and taking the first
consonant on the upper-left-hand page
as the first letter of the child’s name; Sikh
couples are married by circling the
book, as Hindu couples circle the
sacred fire (agnipradakshinam), and a
commonly performed death rite is an
unbroken reading (akhand path) of the
entire text.
The text itself was compiled in
1603–1604 by Guru Arjan, the fifth Sikh
guru. According to tradition he compiled the book in response to certain
rivals contesting his authority, some of
whom had compiled and were circulating books purporting to be the teachings
of Guru Nanak, the Sikhs’ founder and
first guru. There may be some truth in
this tradition, but it is now well established that Arjan himself was working
from a compilation made a generation
before. The text’s opening verses are
known as the mul mantra, which gives a
collection of attributes and qualities
ascribed to the Supreme Being. After
this opening, the Adigranth has
three main parts. The first is the Japji,
a sequence of thirty-eight poems
written by Guru Nanak that is
considered the essence of the Sikh faith,
and which is recited by the faithful as
the morning prayer.
The second section contains the
hymns of the Sikh gurus, arranged by
raga, or melodic mode. Within each raga
the hymns are arranged according to
poetic meter, and within each meter the
hymns are arranged sequentially according to which of the gurus composed
them. Since the Sikh tradition holds that
all ten gurus contained the same divine
spirit, they all identified themselves as
“Nanak.” But introductions to the songs
differentiate between them by calling
them Mahala (literally “house,” but figuratively “body”) followed by a number—
from Mahala 1 for Guru Nanak to Mahala
5 for Guru Arjan.
The final section of the Adigranth
contains hymns by various other devotees (bhakta), both Hindu and Muslim,
whom the Sikh gurus believed to
be propounding the essential Sikh
message of monotheism and the need
to serve God. Among the Hindu
devotional (bhakti) poets whose works
can be found in this section are
Trilochan, Jayadeva, Pipa, Ramananda,
Sen, Namdev, Kabir, and Ravidas, with
significant collections for the last three.
Even for those not interested in the
Sikhs, this last section makes the
Adigranth an extremely important
document. Not only does this section
provide manuscript tradition that can
be precisely and accurately dated, but
the sacred status of the text has ensured
that it has remained unchanged since
the beginning of the seventeenth century. Many other manuscript sources
for these poets are far more recent and
are made problematic by textual corruption and pseudonymous additions.