INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

answers are indicative of the extent to which normative historiography, communicated
through literature and oral expositions, plays a significant role for religious
identities and self-representations in a local community. Of all persons and happenings
that took place during an era comprising more than five hundred years, it is the
episodes explaining the origin and succession of the Guru Granth Sahib that are
deemed momentous events. Unlike the approaches to history by modern scholarship,
which characteristically view history as evolving processes from the perspective of
contextual influences and change, the perception of history among local Sikhs is
(similar to narratives in the janam-sakhi tradition) reduced to a few particular episodes.
These episodes constitute a structure of events with a clear “agent-centric”
perspective, that is, display centricity on the deeds of the Sikh Gurus as active agents
and creators of history. Only the human Gurus had authority to initiate major
changes in the Sikh tradition and gave orders which contemporary Sikhs are expected
to obey and follow. While the first event explains the origin and compilation of the
Sikh scripture, represented as a patient in relation to the human Gurus – the written
text is compiled, protected and treasured by the Gurus ‒ the second event relates to
the transfer of authority that brought gurbani to the centre as the agent embodied in
the Guru Granth Sahib. The scripture became the personal Guru, ascribed capacities
to continue a revelation and cause action in the world. Together the two episodes
constitute a meaningful history which discursively explain and legitimize the occasions
by which the scripture became and continues to be the Guru of the Sikhs.
Sikh historiography has characteristically been occupied with confirming an
early textual authority in the Sikh tradition and has developed different theories on
the motives which the Gurus might have had for committing their compositions to
writing and compiling a scripture. References to the scripture itself are often quoted
or rephrased to confirm that the Sikh Gurus regarded manuscripts with sacred
hymns as an abode of the divine, 264 and the act of inscribing sacred words was a devotional
act that people should engage in. 265 The existence of an early manuscript
culture suggests the Gurus venerated the written word and recognized the social
importance of committing their utterances to writing, especially in a culture where
other religious communities consolidated around defined scripts. The hagiographical
literature on Guru Nanak and the writings of Bhai Gurdas assert that the first Guru
was carrying a pothi which he presumably used for recording his sacred poetry and
collecting devotional hymns by like-minded others during his extensive travels. 266
Guru Nanak is said to have ensured the preservation of his compositions in manuscripts
which came to be known as Harshahi pothi (1530). By the time of the third Guru
Amar Das the divinely inspired poetry of the first three Gurus was collected in the
Goindwal pothis (1570). 267 When the fifth Guru Arjan, in beginning of the seventeenth
264
See e.g. GGS: 1226.
265
See e.g. GGS: 16, 930.
266
References are found in the Puratan Janam Sakhi and the Varan of Bhai Gurdas.
267
For an extensive analysis of the different manuscripts, consult Mann 2001: 32 ‒ 50.
127
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008