INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

tation practices, which from a religious point of view is to submit oneself and remain
clinging to the Guru’s feet as a true disciple.
DUTIES AND QUALIFICATIONS
In the semi- structured interviews I asked the respondents to ponder over the duties
and qualifications of the various specialists working inside the gurdwara, and the
granthis in particular. What credentials and responsibilities do people ascribe to these
performers? From my side the inquiry was an attempt to get an idea of the competence
expected from performers and their performances, and by which norms this
competence was evaluated by community members. I also wanted to understand the
mediating role of granthi. Why, for instance, would so many Sikhs, well acquainted
with sacred texts, go to the gurdwara as clients and in exchange for monetary donations
let the granthi perform an Ardas on behalf of their family instead of just reading
the text themselves? In the following I will illustrate how laypeople in Varanasi associated
the profession of a granthi with the possession of linguistic and ritual knowledge
as well as his moral disposition and ethical conducts.
In the first place the profession and skill of a granthi is evaluated by the linguistic
proficiency, that is, his ability to read and recite gurbani accurately and fluently.
All gurbani hymns rendered in the daily liturgies of a gurdwara are always reproduced
in verbatim since the words are perceived as the Guru’s utterances transmitted
directly through the reciter. The profession of a granthi is more located in the field of
enunciation, that is, he should utter and articulate the sacred gurbani words. He is
expected to have internalized gurbani and other texts used in Sikh liturgies to such an
extant that he can more or less tap verses and hymns from his memory whenever the
need for recitations occurs. Another aspect of the linguistic knowledge relates to the
qualities of his recitations. Many informants emphasized that recitations of a granthi
should be shuddh, “correct” and “pure”, which in these conversational contexts had
dual meanings: the external qualities of recitations and the internal devotional stance
of the granthi when he is performing the texts. Learning to become a granthi is to acquire
the technique of enunciating and intoning the words and powerful rhythms
within gurbani texts. In order to evaluate a recitation as shuddh the granthi is expected
to articulate each word in a clear and correct manner, without contaminating the
words by mispronunciations. The emphasis on correct enunciation of gurbani is referred
back to the exalted status of gurbani, but also to the communicative function of
recitations: listeners should be able to hear and follow each word of the recited
verses. Shuddh path is furthermore evaluated by the granthi’s ability to perform hymns
in an aesthetically appealing way. Almost all religious texts to be recited or sung in
Sikh ceremonies follow specific patterns of intonation and melodies that have become
conventional in the Sikh society. The oft-employed “singing” style of recitations is a
way “to bring stress and pitch and pause into a fixed relationship to the words”. 375
375
Tedlock 1983: 234.
199
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008