INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

assistance. It held a small room around 9 to 10 square meters wide with a platform
and a jujube tree (beri) on the outside. 225 Local Sikhs were of different opinions as to
whether the platform or the area under the tree denoted the original seat of Guru
Nanak. One elder man who grew up in gurdwara remembered that the architectural
decision was taken in connection with the appearance of a white snake. Many people,
including my interlocutor, recurrently saw a snake winding nearby the platform. At
first people got very frightened, but realized it was a token of a divine intervention in
the construction work: “We just folded our hands in respect and the snake was gone”,
he said. Other informants alleged that white snakes are believed to be a form of God,
which appears to give people assistance in particular situations, 226 in this case verifying
a sacred space.
The exact location of Guru Nanak’s seat was however identified by a dream.
The granthi of Gurubagh Gurdwara dreamt that Guru Nanak came to him and said
“At the spot where you are sleeping right now, there I was seated and sung, not at
the place where Prakash and Sukhasan is done today”. After the granthi told about his
vision the next morning the congregation drew the conclusion that the Nirmala sants
apparently had built the Guru’s seat on the wrong spot. These two incidents – the
appearance of a snake and the dream ‒ were taken as proof of a divine interference in
the building plan and consequently the managing committee decided to construct the
gurdwara hall on the ground floor and keep the seat of Guru Granth Sahib a little
beside the original platform. Adjusting the location of the seat established a permanent
presence and continuity of the Guru’s authority at a particular site. When people
today are entering gurdwara Gurubagh they bow and pay respect to the pristine seat
of Guru Nanak as well as that of Guru Granth Sahib.
In Nichibagh Gurdwara the “seat” of Guru Tegh Bahadur was decided to be a
small underground chamber located in the right-hand corner of the gurdwara hall,
which today is used as bedroom (sachkhand) for texts of the Guru Granth Sahib. The
chamber is singled out as the exact spot on which the Guru did meditation ‒ tapas or
tapashya ‒ daily in the nectar hours (amritvela). The room is consequently called
tapasthan, or “the place of meditation”, and spatializes the Guru’s seat and austere
practices. For this reason the chamber has become a place of veneration in itself.
Placed on a small stool in front of the entrance to tapasthan the gurdwara employees
keep a jyoti, a brass-mounted oil lamp that should burn day and night. People in the
gurdwara are unsure of the original reasons for keeping the oil lamp, but still claim
225
The local history narrates that Guru Nanak occupied this platform in the beautiful garden
when he arrived at Varanasi (Varanasi Dian Kuch Ithasik Yadan).
226
An elderly Sikh woman narrated how a white snake guided her to go on a pilgrimage to
Patna Sahib. One morning when she was taking a bath at her house a white snake appeared on
the ground, it stared at her and then disappeared. She was not frightened but was surprised to
not find any snake nest or pit. The following day she travelled to Patna Sahib on request of her
husband, who was ill following an accident. As she recounted, when she inquired to religious
people at Patna Sahib about the white snake she was told that it was the form of God that came
to inspire her for pilgrimage.
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008