INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

IMPLICATIONS OF SCRIPTURAL SUCCESSION
Given the historical background of the canonization and succession of the Guru
Granth Sahib to the office of the Guru, what are consequences of having scripture
invested authority that traditionally was endowed to Gurus in human form? The
simplest answer to this question among locals would read “no more will a person
who has a human body be the Guru”, as one interlocutor confirmed the eternal authority
of the scripture. Considering the notion of a spiritual relationship between the
human Gurus, the Guru Granth Sahib is believed to have been empowered with the
same intra-spirit of the agentive Guru and continues to embody a collective spirit of
all the historical Gurus. Frequently Sikhs will say that Guru Granth Sahib is the sarup,
or the assumed “form, shape, configuration, appearance” of ten Gurus, 273 meaning
that the total knowledge and power conveyed by all the human predecessors forever
abides in the text.
It is noteworthy that two thirds of my interviewees confidently stressed a continued
ideological and spiritual unity between the human Gurus and the scripture,
and were of the strong opinion that each line, word, and hymn of the text was equally
important and powerful independent of the individual author. 274 The Guru Granth
Sahib is regarded a complete whole and no ontological distinction is made between
the agency and authority of the Guru enshrined in a human or a text. Both of the
categories encapsulate and communicate the true Guru of gurbani. At the succession
of Guru Granth Sahib the outer appearance of the Guru was merely transformed,
whereas the interior “spirit” remained the same. The spiritual unity was part of the
order given by Guru Gobind Singh.
Comparing Sikh conceptualizations about scripture to other Indian religions it
may be interesting to observe Buddhist textual models and theories about the multiple
levels of Buddha’s embodiment after his death. Legends in the Theravada tradition
relate how Buddha instructed his followers to hold his “truths” and “rules of
order” as the spiritual teacher and hand over his remains to wise men for cremation
and erection of stupas in his memory. 275 The Buddhist tradition came to incorporate
the two legacies of Buddha’s embodiment in rupakaya, which is the body of physical
form, and dharmakaya, or the body of dharma which came to be identified with a
scriptural tradition. As Gray (2005) writes:
Buddhists developed the concept of the two bodies of a Buddha, his
physical “form body” (rupakaya) and his “body of Dharma” (dharmakaya),
which consisted of the records of his teachings or collections
of his enlightened qualities. While the former was, at his death, cre-
273
Gill & Joshi 1999: 99.
274
The remaining part of the interlocutors gave greater importance to separate compositions,
like Sukhmani Sahib and JapJi Sahib, which they personally liked and considered extraordinarily
powerful in comparison with other hymns of the scripture.
275
Reynolds 1977: 375 ‒ 376.
131
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008