IB World Religions 7.3.3. Interpretation and Language: Gurbani, Gurmukhi and Translation Notes

7.3.3. Interpretation and Language: Gurbani, Gurmukhi and Translation

Gurbani and the Word

1. Gurbani means the Guru's utterance, and Sikhs use it for the divinely revealed words of God spoken through the ten human Gurus. Everything in the Guru Granth Sahib is gurbani in this sense.
2. The claim is about origin rather than authorship. Sikhs hold that the Gurus did not invent their hymns but voiced what God gave them to say.
3. Guru Nanak states the position inside the scripture itself, saying that he speaks only as the Lord causes him to speak. Sikhs read the line as the tradition's own account of where its text came from.
4. The term covers the compositions of the bhagats and Pirs included in the volume as well. Once a hymn stands in the Guru Granth Sahib, Sikhs receive it as gurbani whoever first uttered it.
5. Gurbani is tied closely to shabad, the Word, and to nam, the divine Name. Reading, singing and dwelling on gurbani are treated as contact with God rather than as study of a document.
6. That shapes what interpretation is for. Sikhs come to the text expecting to be changed by it, so kirtan, the sung recitation of scripture, matters as much as working out what a passage means.
7. Interpretation starts from that premise. Because the words are held to be God's rather than a founder's opinions, no hymn is treated as overtaken by a later one.

Authority passed to the text

1. Guru Gobind Singh transferred the Guru's office to the scripture in 1708, and Sikhs often describe the result as a religion of the book. The authority the ten Gurus carried now rests in the words they left.
2. This has a direct effect on interpretation. No living person can overrule the text, because there is no human Guru left to speak for God.
3. Sikhs consult the Guru Granth Sahib by taking a vaak, opening the volume without choosing a place and reading the hymn at the top of the left page. The hymn is received as guidance for the day or the occasion.
4. A granthi is the person who reads and cares for the scripture in a gurdwara. The role is not a priesthood, and any Sikh of good standing, of either sex, may take it.
5. Interpretation is therefore spread across the community rather than reserved to a trained clergy. Katha, the spoken exposition of a passage, is given by granthis, scholars and visiting preachers alike.
6. Sikhs also read the text against itself. Because the sense of one hymn is checked against the rest of the volume, the scripture is treated as its own commentary.
7. The transfer also closed off appeals to private revelation. A Sikh who announces a new teaching is measured against the Guru Granth Sahib, and the text rather than the claimant settles the matter.

Reading in the gurdwara

1. The scripture is always read from the Gurmukhi text in the gurdwara. Sikhs treat the original wording as the thing actually being recited, whatever languages the congregation speaks.
2. Pages are called angs, meaning limbs, a word that treats the volume as a body rather than as an object. The standard printed edition has 1,430 angs, identical in every copy worldwide.
3. That fixed pagination has a practical effect. A Sikh in Delhi, Nairobi or Vancouver can be sent to a hymn by ang number and will find the same words on the same page.
4. The hymns are arranged in thirty one raags, the musical measures they are sung in. Sikhs hold that the raag carries part of the meaning, so the mood of the music belongs to the revelation.
5. A diwan, the gurdwara service, normally holds kirtan sung by ragis, the gurdwara musicians, katha on a passage, and Ardas. Recitation, singing and exposition sit together rather than being split into separate occasions.
6. Unbroken readings mark particular occasions. An Akhand Path is a continuous reading of the whole volume by a relay of readers, commissioned for births, weddings, deaths and anniversaries.
7. Reading follows a physical discipline of its own. The reader sits behind the volume, waves the chaur over it, and reads the words as they stand without adding to them.

The Gurmukhi script

1. Gurmukhi means from the Guru's mouth, and it is the script in which the Guru Granth Sahib is written. Sikhs credit Guru Angad, the second Guru, with giving it its settled form.
2. The script was standardised for a reason. Punjabi had been written in several competing hands, and one agreed alphabet made an authoritative text possible.
3. It carries no barrier of learning. Sanskrit and Arabic scholarship were confined to small classes of men, while Gurmukhi could be taught to farmers, women and children in their own language.
4. The language inside the script is not uniform. The volume holds Punjabi, Braj, Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic vocabulary, and some hymns use forms a modern Punjabi speaker finds hard going.
5. Sikh children commonly learn Gurmukhi in classes at the gurdwara. Reading scripture in its own script is treated as ordinary formation rather than as specialist training.
6. Santhiya, the disciplined study of correct pronunciation, is taught to those who will read publicly. Accuracy of sound is treated as part of accuracy in reciting the Word.
7. The alphabet runs left to right and has thirty five letters in a fixed order. Sikhs call it the Painti, from the Punjabi word for thirty five, and children learn the order as a sequence.

Translation and its limits

1. Translations of the Guru Granth Sahib exist in many languages and Sikhs use them widely. They are treated as aids to understanding rather than as the scripture itself.
2. The first full English translation was made by Ernest Trumpp in 1877 and was badly received, since Sikhs judged that he had misread the text and disparaged it.
3. Max Arthur Macauliffe produced a more sympathetic English rendering in 1909, working closely with Sikh scholars. Later versions by Gopal Singh and Gurbachan Singh Talib followed in the twentieth century.
4. In practice a translation is often read after the Punjabi. A congregation may hear the hymn in Gurmukhi and then hear its sense given in the local language.
5. Sikhs give a specific reason for keeping the original. The hymns are poetry set to raag, and rhyme, metre and the sound of the words are held to carry meaning that prose in another language drops.
6. Technology has widened access without displacing the original. Gurdwaras now project the Gurmukhi text with a transliteration and a translation during kirtan, so worshippers follow both at once.
7. Sikh scholars have produced commentaries in Punjabi as well, the best known being the nineteenth century Faridkot Teeka. These are read as helps towards the text and never as authorities over it.

Non-exclusivism in the text

1. Sikhs do not hold that God speaks only through their own scripture. The Guru Granth Sahib teaches one God for all people, and Sikhs draw from that the conclusion that God may be found in other faiths.
2. The clearest evidence is what the volume contains. Hymns by Hindu bhagats and Muslim Pirs stand in it as revelation, which would be impossible if revelation were confined to Sikhs.
3. Guru Nanak is remembered for saying that there is no Hindu and no Muslim. Sikhs read the saying as a claim about labels and outward observance rather than as a dismissal of either community.
4. The position does not flatten into saying that all religions are the same. Sikhs hold their own path to be true and sufficient while denying that God is confined to it.
5. Conversion is therefore not sought. Sikhism runs no missionary programme, and Sikhs are not taught that other communities must be brought into the Panth.
6. This shows in how the text is used in public. Sikhs quote the Guru Granth Sahib in interfaith settings as addressing everyone, and the langar, the free kitchen, is open to all comers on the same reasoning.
7. The same reasoning governs who may enter a gurdwara. Anyone may come in and sit before the Guru Granth Sahib, provided they cover the head, remove shoes and sit at the level of everyone else.