INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

lar contexts confer dignity and power, the words darbar and divan are employed interchangeably
to implicate a spatial and temporal presence of the spiritual authority
manifested in Guru Granth Sahib, the assembly of devoted Sikhs and their acts of
mediating gurbani ‒ all of which represent agents by which individual Sikhs may
quest for spiritual progress and the divine. In popular speech the idiom of court more
specifically denotes the daily liturgical framework of worship acts that convey gurbani
and are carried out in presence of Guru Granth Sahib by the attending congregation.
The morning and evening services in the public gurdwaras of Varanasi consist
of a number of acts that are framed by the ritualized enthronement and restoration of
Guru Granth Sahib (See Figure 9). Each morning begins with Prakash or ”the light”,
which is the installation and opening ceremony of Guru Granth Sahib on the royal
throne, and every day is concluded at nightfall by Sukhasan, “the comfortable posture”,
339 when the Guru-scripture assumes a closed position and leaves the throne for
rest in the bedroom. The daily enactment of these two ceremonies activates and passivates
the Guru-scripture and creates the framework of courtly sessions and congregational
worship in the gurdwara. After the scripture has been installed before sunrise
the “court” starts operating and continues to do so until all the discrete parts of
the morning liturgy – recitations, musical performances, prayer, offering and distribution
of blessed food ‒ have been completed and the court is accordingly “over” or
“closed”. Normally the morning session will span over three and a half hours in total,
whereas the evening service usually takes about two hours to complete. In the local
setting the Prakash and Sukhasan are typical “liturgy-oriented” ceremonies, 340 in the
sense that they consist of sequences of stipulated acts to be enacted with exactitude
and which progress in a similar order. The performance of these acts follow a preordained
pattern and display only minor variations depending upon individual ability
and style of the officiating person, usually the granthi, who by years of practice learns
how to refine the separate acts within a liturgical structure. To understand the ways
by which the Sikhs establish an authoritative presence of Guru Granth Sahib and
court sessions for the attending congregation it is to these stipulated acts we must
turn our attention.
THE MORNING LITURGY
There is no fixed time prescribed for the Prakash ceremony, more than it should be
accomplished before dawn and within the framework of amritvela, or the ambrosial
hours, which span between 2 and 6 in the morning. In order to complete the full
ceremony and the subsequent recitations prior to the rising of the sun, the scripture is
usually inducted on its seat at 4.30 in the morning on ordinary days, and one hour
earlier when morning-processions (prabhatferis) are going on before the festivals sol-
339
In yoga traditions sukhasan refers to the comfortable body posture of sitting on the ground
with the legs crossed.
340
See Atkinson’s (1989) distinction between liturgy-oriented and performance-oriented rituals.
168
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008