INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

Nanak cannot be reduced to contemporary contextual influences, but finds support in
historical and modern Sikh texts which have gained various degree of acceptance. 253
That Nanak is as an embodiment of God with kinship ties to the avatar of Vishnu is
not necessarily perceived contradictory to beliefs in a formless God and the human
nature of the Guru, since avatars are still subordinate to God and like humans subjected
to birth and death. Whether individuals will perceive the first Guru as an ordinary
human graced with knowledge, an enlightened preceptor working on God’s
command, or an avatar of Vishnu may, on the other hand, determine the ways by
which people think and speak of Guru Granth Sahib. An elderly Sikh man said “Guru
Granth Sahib ji is not only a text for us but it is our God (bhagwan) and our favored
deity (istdev)”. Thus, if the human Gurus are perceived as incarnations of God then
the Sikh scripture is likely to share the apotheosized status, since the text is empowered
by the same spiritual authority and power as its human predecessors.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE GURUS
It is a well-known fact within the Sikh tradition that Guru Nanak instituted a succession
line of Gurus in the late 1530s by nominating his devout disciple Lehna to the
gaddi, or the “seat” of temporal and spiritual authority. Instead of appointing any of
his two sons as successor, Nanak chose an obedient follower as the appropriate Guru
to lead the community after him. The nomination of Lehna did not only ensure a
continuation of the office which Nanak had established at Kartarpur but also marked
out that spiritual merits, rather than kinship ties, should serve as the sole criterion for
selection of a succeeding Guru. 254 Guru Nanak renamed Lehna Angad (in Punjabi
“my limb”) to indicate a unity between the Guru and his successor. Based on this
important event in history, the dominant Sikh theory of guruship presupposes a close
spiritual relationship which existed between ten graced men who occupied the
Guru’s post. The ancient metaphor of the Guru as the embodiment of a divine “light”
(jot) that illuminates the world and is passed on from one preceptor to another is
often employed to illustrate this relationship. An oft-quoted textual reference to support
the theory of spiritual transmission is found in a sixteenth century verse of Bhai
Gurdas, which suggests that Nanak’s installation of Angad was a mystical event:
253
The late seventeenth century poem Bachitra Natak, or “The Wondrous Drama” ascribed to
Guru Gobind Singh, relates the story of the Sodhi clan and its connection to the Sikh Gurus.
From a mythological framework guru Gobind Singh describes his own history in terms of a
divine plan to reveal God by proclaiming a community and spreading faith. For an English
translation of the composition, see Kohli 2003. Another popularized version of the mythogenealogical
link between the Sikh Gurus and the deity couple Ram and Sita is found the lifestory
of Baba Vadbhag Singh (See Chapter 4).
254
Grewal 1999: 41. From the third Guru, Amardas, the succession line of Gurus came to stay
within the family.
122
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008