INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

irth in the form of Guru Nanak Dev ji, but Guru Gobind Singh ji said there will be
no other incarnation after him”, a young woman said. In a fashion similar to the Puranic
tradition the Sikh Gurus are provided with elaborated mytho-genealogical
charts that connect them with Lav and Kush, the two sons of the deity couple Ram
and Sita. 252 A popular legend narrates how Lav inherited Ram’s kingdom in Lahore
after a war over the succession and became known as Sodhi. His brother Kush escaped
to Varanasi to study the Veda books and was therefore called Bedi. Later on
Kush returned as a hermit in the court of Lav to predestine the birth of a future Sikh
dynasty: the Bedi clan would be born under the name of Nanak and all the Gurus
from the forth Guru in succession would be descendants of the Sodhi clan. Kush and
Lav were thus ancestors of the two clans to which all the Sikhs Gurus belonged. Kinship
relations that are crucial to the social life have modelled genealogical narratives
about the Gurus’ origin and relationship to popular divinities in the Hindu mythology.
To substantiate the ancestral bond between Nanak and Ram, the folk lore
stores bundles of legends that aim to prove a similarity between the two incarnations.
The loyalty of the monkey god Hanuman, Ram’s most devout follower, often makes
the plot of these stories. A Sikh woman in her fifties related the outline of one story
she liked:
Once when Hanuman ji was walking in the nectar hours he heard the
sound of wooden sandals. It was Guru Nanak Dev ji. Guru Nanak Dev
ji told Hanuman ji:
- Open your eyes and just look at me, look who came for you.
But Hanuman ji said:
- I open my eyes only to see Ram, no one else.
Then Guru Nanak Dev ji said:
- Open you eyes – Ram came!
Then Hanuman ji looked up and saw Ram standing before him. Guru
Nanak Dev ji changed into the form of Ram. From that time Hanuman
ji started to believe in Guru Nanak dev ji. He said:
- You are Ram, you are Govind.
Other popular anecdotes will tell how the Sikh Gurus, on command of God, gave
auspicious sight (darshan) of Ram to pious Hindus by their own physical appearances;
Vaishnava followers saw the incarnation of Ram by gazing at the Sikh Gurus. Popular
mythologies that are locally retold provide the material and prototypes for stories
about the Gurus situated in a larger cosmological context.
Although it is evident that interlocutors appealing to the avatar theory are
strongly influenced by the local culture of Varanasi, the mythologized notion of
252
The birth of the two sons of Ram is portrayed in Lavkush Khand, included as appendix to
contemporary versions of Tulsidas’ Ramcharitmanas.
121
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008