INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

Ram pursued this knowledge from the saint who cursed him and had ever since
been waiting for the arrival of Guru Nanak. The third and final conclusion is a confirming
statement that Nanak is indeed a reincarnation of God in the Dark Age and
the universal liberator.
Although the longer anecdote appears to be a local legend, resembling themes
may occur in some versions of the more mythologically embroidered janam-sakhi
stories or related narratives of later date. Like the stylistic feature of the janam-sakhi
genres, a quotation of a hymn from Guru Granth Sahib is interpolated in the narrative
discourse to corroborate the divine status and power of the Guru. At the very
end, and as the final punch line of the anecdote, Guru Nanak speaks up to confirm
that Chattur Das has indeed deceived innocent people in futile ritual conducts.
When the deluded pandit finally asks Nanak about true deeds, Nanak replies by
reciting the first verse of Shalok Sanskriti, 216 a hymn of four verses, which for local
Sikhs is intimately associated with Varanasi as the centre of Sanskrit studies:
You read books, say vesper prayers, argue, worship stones and sit in
trance like a crane. With you mouth you utter falsehood like the excellent
ornaments and recite the tripod gaotri three times a day. Round
your neck is the rosary, on your forhead the sacred mark and on your
head a towel and you have two loin-cloths. If you know the nature of
the Lord, then you will find that all these beliefs and rites are vain. Says
Nanak, in good faith, meditate thou on the Lord. Without the True
Guru, man finds not the way. 217
In a typical style, Shalok Sanskriti is modeled as an exhortatory lecture addressed to
Brahmins, whom the Guru identifies by their external appearances and then criticizes
for superstitious beliefs and arrogant attitudes. In the last part of the hymn the Guru
will praise the almighty creator and reprimand that only devotion and faith in the
divine word is the means towards salvation. After listening to these words Chattur
Das becomes a disciple to Guru Nanak. Ganga Ram is liberated from the cycle of
rebirth by touching the Guru’s feet.
To portray Guru Nanak as Sanskrit-speaking is certainly a discursive strategy
to underscore his intellectual superiority and appeal to the scholarly elite in the
sixteenth century Varanasi. The Guru adapts himself to the cultural environment he
encounters. To contemporary Sikhs the Shalok Sanskriti bears testimony to a divine
revelation situated in the local geography, more particularly at Gurubagh Gurdwara.
If the recorded emic history provides the genesis of this particular hymn of Guru
Nanak, then local Sikhs will describe what happened to the hymn thereafter. A Sikh
family who claim to be descendants of Ganga Ram told me that the grandsons of the
216
Except for the local narrative I have not found any mention of this particular hymn in narrative
discourses of the janam-sakhi literature.
217
GGS: 1353
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008