INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

When SGPC released the first one-volume edition of Guru Granth Sahib in the 1950s
the text was based on the Kartarpur pothi, the manuscript compiled by Guru Arjan,
and the later Damdama bir, the manuscript ascribed to Guru Gobind Singh. In the
storm of debates that followed this publication the status of the early manuscripts
came into focus and continued to be a matter of dispute among Sikh intellectuals for
an extended period of time. Sikh reformers opposing the SGPC editions were of the
opinion that solely the Damdama manuscript, sanctioned by Guru Gobind Singh, was
the Guru to be consulted for the production of an authoritative printed text. The
SGPC, however, continued to print new editions of the scripture based on the two
key sources. 395
The second one-volume edition of Guru Granth Sahib published by the SGPC in
the 1970s was accompanied with similarly heated debates. This time the printing
system of the Gurmukhi script was the bone of contention. The widely practiced
writing method in the manuscript culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth century
was to write down words joined to one another in continuous lines without any
breaks. Up to the twentieth century, this writing system was used for handwritten
manuscripts and the earliest printed versions of the Guru Granth Sahib. At first the
SGPC decided to preserve the original chain-script, but later approved to release the
scripture in padchhed, or the “break-word” system. Traditionalists considered the new
system of separating words a sacrilegious undertaking, equivalent to a dissection of
the Guru’s “body”, whereas modernists perceived it as a necessary adjustment of an
antiquated scribal tradition that would facilitate easier and more accurate readings of
the text among all literate Sikhs. The later position came to gain public currency and
today most scriptures installed and used in homes and gurdwaras follow the padchhed
format with separated words.
Another important development of Guru Granth Sahib in print was the standard
pagination of 1430 which private publishing houses and the SGPC adopted
during the twentieth century. The consecutive numbering of pages in handwritten
manuscripts and the earliest printed editions of the Sikh scripture had varied considerably
between different reproductions. 396 As Pashuara Singh (2000) suggests, the
copy of the Kartarpur pothi which was rejected by the Guru because of textual discrepancies.
Already in 1881 the Banno version was printed in Gujranwala, however the edition did not win
approval among the Sikh masses. For details on this manuscript, consult Pashaura Singh 2000:
231, and Mann 2001: 69 ‒ 70, 127.
395
Mann 2001: 126.
396
Four handwritten manuscripts preserved in Nichibagh Gurdwara at Varanasi, for instance,
have different paginations: one undated manuscript amounts to 814 pages; another folio dated
to 1872 (samvat 1929) comprises 848 pages; a third undated manuscript, which has Jap Sahib
included at the end, spans over 860 pages; and the last manuscript, which local Sikhs claim to be
of seventeenth century origin, encompasses 945 pages. As noted in the cover of the two latter
manuscripts, the texts were provided with a new binding in 1965 and had obviously been in
ritual use since one opens with a swastika painted with sandal paste and the other with the ik
omkar sign.
209
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008