In 1708, when Gurū Gobind Singh vested eternal Gurūship in the Ādi Granth—thereby ending individual succession to the throne of Gurū Nanak and vesting sovereignty in the communal body of travelers on the GurSikh path—we entered the era of Gurū Granth and Gurū Panth. The Panth assumes its true form as the incarnate Gurū in direct proportion to our realization of the revelatory Sabads comprising Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib.
A hundred Sikhs may be of a hundred minds, but the Gurū is of a single mind. If we grant both that all Sikhs acknowledge the Gurū’s supreme authority and that all Sikhs endeavor to follow the Gurū to the best of their understanding, then the conspicuous lack of strategic unity in the Panth would seem to indicate a lack of basic agreement on what Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib instructs us to do. Even allowing for prudential differences and human shortcomings in execution, it would seem that as fellow Sikhs of the Gurū, we should be better aligned than we are on matters of principle and their practical corollaries.
Thus are we confronted with the interpretive imperative: Gurmat, the Gurū’s sovereign knowledge, may illuminate our path to the degree our manmat or mental delusions do not obscure it. Let us then consider how we might glean a sound doctrinal understanding adequate for the victorious accomplishment of the Gurū’s vision for us individually and as a Panth.
The following list—presented as something approaching an interpretive toolkit—does not aspire to originality or exhaustivity, but merely to catalog some exegetical principles, criteria, and activities humbly offered foremost to aid in the study of Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib, and secondarily, in other works of exceptional merit. Rising to these exacting standards will require a trans-generational partnership of GurSikhs; happily, rising to meet these exacting standards will also enable closer collaboration among GurSikhs:
I. Minimize your distance from the Gurū.
a) Listen (suṇīae) to and sing (gāvīae) the Sabads as they were first sung by the Gurū; these are the primary modalities for experiencing the Sabad. The vast majority of Gurbāṇī was first revealed in the form of song. Over more than half a millennium, a wondrous trove of revelatory songs of the Gurūs and other Gurbāṇī recipients has been carefully safeguarded by an unbroken series of GurSikh custodians. These heritage compositions are known as Sabad Rīts. Comparative musicological analysis of the Sabad Rīt repertory, its accompanying musical instrumentation, and its musical culture unmistakably reveals a distinctive and aesthetically significant tradition employing and enriching the pre-darbārī Indic frameworks of rāga and tāla. If it is difficult to believe the revelatory music of Gurū Nanak has been faithfully transmitted by a pedagogically sophisticated oral tradition to the present, consider the alternative; could it be that not a single GurSikh remembered something so precious as the notes formed by Gurū Nanak’s breath as he sang the holy Word in mystical union with the One? Could it further be that he or she could not find a single GurSikh likewise devoted to undergoing the exacting study necessary to carry forward this transformative knowledge? It is by singing and listening to Gurbāṇī as originally sung by the Gurūs in expression of the ineffable that we are best situated to quaff the ambrosial elixir the Sabad is capable of imparting.
b) Read Gurbāṇī as it was written by the Gurūs. After it was sung, Gurbāṇī was recorded in Gurmukhī, a script developed by Gurū Angad. While contemporary sarūps of Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib tend to separate individual words, striking manuscripts with writing from the hands of the Gurūs and older sarūps more generally are written in a continuous (laṛīvār) form. The visual indeterminacy of where one word ends and the next begins at times offers multiple readings, including beautiful cases where the placement of a single letter can form both a question and its solution.
c) Pronounce Gurbāṇī as it is written. Many words that occur in Gurbāṇī have cognates with a slightly different orthography and pronunciation from what is found in contemporary Panjābī. Clearly enunciate the rich variety of vowel markings in such a manner that the Gurū’s Word may be accurately transcribed from its recitation. The vowel markings provide information about the syntactical function of words and reflect the sound of their utterance by the Gurūs. It is accordingly improper to take the liberty of altering the pronunciation of words to match their more common forms in contemporary speech. Recitation should additionally follow the Gurbāṇī’s prosody.
d) Commit Gurbāṇī to memory, keeping in mind I (a, b, and c).
e) Study the historical variants of the different languages, their dialects, and literary forms employed in Gurbāṇī.
f) Where available from the janamsākhīs and oral accounts, consider the circumstances in which the Gurūs sang particular Sabads and the interpretative reception of later tradition.
g) Recognizing the supreme authority of Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib, gain familiarity with GurSikh texts including the Dasam Granth, the Sarabloh Granth, the Vārāṅ of Bhāī Gurdas—celebrated as the ‘key’ to the Ādi Granth by Gurū Arjan—and the Persian writings of Bhāī Nand Lal ‘Goya.’ The hagiographical janamsākhīs, commentaries on Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib such as the Farīdkōṭ vālā Ṭīkā, and the writings of Kavī Santokh Singh, Akalī Rattan Singh Bhangu, and Bhāī Vir Singh among others further provide striking insights into GurSikh tradition in historical perspective.
h) Build conversancy with scriptures, traditions, beliefs, practices, and literary references beyond GurSikhī that find mention in Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib, as in the Vedās, Purānas, Smṛitis, and Quran.
II. Determine the nature of what you are interpreting, for both wholes and their parts.
a) Meaning comes into view against a backdrop of its medium. Knowledge of genre helps identify what is conventional, thus foregrounding what is singular in the particular at hand and revealing intentional departures from the expected.
b) Understanding the intended function of a statement helps establish its correct interpretation. For instance, a technical exposition of a summative judgement differs from an impassioned cry against mankind’s folly in a particular circumstance.
c) Distinguish carefully between literal, figurative, and simultaneously literal and figurative uses of language.
III. Consider internal organizational structures.
a) These include rāga chapters, arrangement of Gurbāṇī by the Gurūs in order of succession under these, ghars, and use of the rahāu and numbered sections within particular Sabads.
IV. Note both pivotal and recurring words, concepts, themes, and their interrelations.
a) What continuities and inflectional differences appear across Gurbāṇī recipients? Are there apparent tensions between particular ideas?
b) What concepts appear in clusters of opposition, necessity, or sufficiency?
c) Is a single phenomenon being described in multiple ways or are there in fact multiple phenomena?
V. Explicate implicit propositions.
a) In traversing phonemes, words, lines, and stanzas within a Sabad, is there an unexpected transition? Do you find there exists an unstated but intermediate thought you must supply to understand how what comes before and after are linked?
b) Do conceptual relations clarified in one instance entail unstated conclusions for another?
c) Is it necessary to add to or subtract content from your understanding of a concept for a condition to hold?
VI. Account for received beliefs.
a) When proposing a revision to a prevailing notion, it is necessary to account for the credence it has been afforded by intelligent persons, to draw attention to the error the position nonetheless harbors, and to demonstrate why the evidence justifies its replacement with the proposed revision.
b) Such emendation is not to be undertaken lightly, but neither is it to be delayed when necessary.
VII. An interpretation that contradicts itself defeats itself.
a) It is a minimum condition of an interpretation’s viability that it be internally coherent, with its terms defined unambiguously. A self-contradictory interpretation cancels itself out, leaving no direct teaching on its subject. Whatever contradicts itself fails to correspond to any existing thing in reality. It is ridiculous to simultaneously affirm and deny the same acceptation of a given proposition.
b) Apparent paradoxes are puzzles demanding resolution; see V (c).
c) Simultaneous affirmation of disjunctive propositions may be used to point beyond the present terms of analysis.
VIII. An adequate interpretation of Gurū Granth Sāhib must be expressible using only concepts present in Gurbāṇī as load-bearing and must further leave no major concepts in Gurbāṇī unexplained.
IX. Seek concrete referents for the terms of Gurbāṇī in the world, the lives of the Gurūs, and within yourself.
X. Continuously discovering that the state of perfection the Gurūs describe is real, superlatively choiceworthy, and perennially realizable, know that the final test of any interpretation of GurSikh doctrine is how reliably it helps mint the sort of supremely exalted beings Gurbāṇī describes, never forgetting that victory on this path is by the grace of the SatGurū, for the glory of the One.
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Nihal Singh