INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

PERSONIFYING A TEXT
For students of religion who have been fostered in a secular Western tradition governed
by an objectivist epistemology, the Sikh ministration of the Guru Granth Sahib
as a living Guru endowed with habits of the human culture may at first appear irrational
or even mysterious. In the daily liturgy of the gurdwara they attend the scripture
like a royalty granting audience: they present it with prayers, food, clothes, and
offerings to be blessed; put it to sleep in a human bed at night; and recite and listen to
its words as if the Guru continued to give verbal instructions to disciples. It is easy to
relegate these conducts to a symbolic field of religious beliefs and practices, but much
harder to understand the emic ontology underlying the uses and treatment of the
text. From the objectivist presupposition of what a book can or cannot be, the Sikh
scripture remains a manmade object, inscribed with written signs, that serves to
communicate a semantically comprehensible content. The book can metaphorically be
likened to a person because it shares many characteristic with humans, as the corporeal
presence in the world, but would still be objectified as a silent “thing” made of
paper and ink, which is granted sanctification as “holy” because of the teaching it
contains but is otherwise “dead” and spiritless without possibilities to bear any human-like
traits. Another ethos seems to predominate in the local Sikh culture. Although
Sikhs know that a book and a person are two separate categories, and that a
book cannot be human in any biological sense, they still treat and speak of the Guru
Granth Sahib as if it was an agentive entity endued with “personhood” and humanlike
habits. Instead of objectifying the Guru Granth Sahib to merely a thing, Sikhs
seem to personify and adduct a maximum of social agency to the text.
In general terms personification refers to the common tendency to endow nonhuman
entities with qualities of personal traits, sometimes particular human properties,
in concept and figuratively in language. The object personified will be treated as
if it was a “person”, or “superperson”, 289 imbued with extra powers and status of
higher rank, which/who may demonstrate varying degrees of intentionality and social
agency. The thing-person may indeed be animated, that is, regarded as if it inhabits
a soul, is socially alive, and possesses capacities to communicate ideas, exchange
gifts with humans and in other ways expresses the underlying relationality that defines
its position. 290 In instances of what Ellen (1988) calls “active personification”, or
a high degree of attribution of personal qualities,”[o]bjects are frequently represented
as if they were human, are involved in processes which are recognisably human, are
treated in ways that human are treated ‒ and in particular are in themselves subject of
rites of passage, other rituals and attitudes, which are usually reserved for humans.”
291 As many anthropologists emphasize, personification of objects occurs in the
289
The term ”superperson” is derived from Bird-David’s (1999) paper on personification of
devaru spirits among the Nayaka people in South India.
290
See e.g. De Castro 2004, Harvey 2006: xvii.
291
Ellen 1988: 225.
141
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008