INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

But far from all appreciate the custody of historical texts and will lay greater
store by the custom of keeping the Guru at home for worship and ministration. When
an elderly Sikh man in Varanasi said “We are having Guru Granth Sahib ji from generations”,
he referred to the family tradition of providing the scripture custody at the
house. The man had inherited an old handwritten copy of Guru Granth Sahib from
his own father, but handed over the folio to the gurdwara for proper disposal. People
will instead use a printed edition of Guru Granth Sahib for the daily readings and
when the pages are getting old exchange it with a new. The majority of my interlocutors
had obtained new editions from the Gurubagh Gurdwara, which regularly supplies
texts from Amritsar and sometimes arranges for the ceremonial transportation
to the house. Others ordered the scripture directly from the SPGC, private publishers
at Amritsar, or via friends and
relatives in the Punjab, who by
conventional means would convey
the text to Varanasi. A Sikh
man told of a train journey he
and his wife made to Amritsar
only for obtaining a scripture. On
the way back home he booked
three seats for himself, his wife,
and the Guru Granth Sahib.
When a new text is received
in a family they might pay a visit
A miniature scripture from the First World War to the public gurdwara to do
matha tekna and present offerings,
and then return home to formally induct the Guru at the house. This installation
usually goes by the same name as the daily morning ceremony – Prakash ‒ and celebrates
the moment when the Guru enters a new space to be activated and incorporated
in the social sphere of a community. 407 At the new abode the text will be offered
an honorable seat and then ceremonially opened in line with the routine of the morning
liturgy, including the taking and reading of the Hukam and distribution of consecrated
food (karah prashad). Characteristic of this event is the custom of reading either
the whole or the first five stanzas of the composition JapJi Sahib, the opening hymn of
Guru Granth Sahib. In this context the recitation does not merely aim to render the
content of the hymn, but generates an illucutionary force from its placement within
the particular setting: the recitation creates the symbolic stage of the scripture’s entrance
and incorporation into a new social sphere. The scripture is no longer a text to
be used by any assembly of devotees but will be subject to ministration and devotion
within the social spaces and activities of a particular community. The recitation of
JapJi Sahib thus evokes the framework of a formal inauguration of the scripture and
407
Another indigenous term used for the ceremony is sathapna, or “installation”.
222
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008