INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

The ultimate learning of gurbani is to memorize the sacred verses and to know
them “by heart”. Hymns of the Sikh scripture should ideally be read, heard and repeated
until they are internalized. In both Hindi and Punjabi languages the idiom for
memorizing text is “to place in the throat” (kanth karna). 424 To know texts is to memorize
and make them “situated in the throat” (kanthasth). In Punjabi folklore the memorization
of verses from the Guru Granth Sahib is envisaged as material possessions
that are safely tied to the human body and can be brought anywhere. According to
the popular aphorism “Bani kanth rupaya ganth” gurbani committed to memory is
like having money stored and readily available for use.
When I inquired informants in the semi-structured interviews if they personally
considered memorization of gurbani important seventy-four percent answered in the
affirmative. The remaining part of the respondents emphasized that Sikhism does not
prescribe any strict rules regarding memorized knowledge and readings of scripts
will generate the same benefits as recitations from memory. Those who conceived
memorization of gurbani important to a Sikh way of life regarded it an effective
means to appropriate, internalize, and move with ease in the realm of gurbani. Many
of my interlocutors paid attention to both practical and religious aspects. To know
hymns by heart creates independence from prayer-books (gutka) that are otherwise
required for readings and which always entail a set of regulative rules that serves to
honour the sacred words. Amritdhari Sikhs, who should recite daily prayers irrespective
of physical location, do not consider it proper to bring gurbani in writing to certain
environments, such as public trains, marriage parties, and other social milieus
where people may consume alcohol and smoke cigarettes. But “if gurbani is within
you, you can always do recitations immediately and everywhere. When traveling you
can mediate on gurbani within yourself”, a younger Sikh man said. Memorization
provides human resources that make it easier to conduct and adjust recitations to
social life. The processes of learning and remembering texts are by many viewed as
acts to imbue and impregnate the human interior with the teaching and words of the
Gurus. A young man argued, “The Guru Granth Sahib is our Guru, so if we memorize
gurbani the Guru is within us”. Through intimate appropriation of sacred hymns
the human body and mind will become a vessel of the Guru. As some would say,
gurbani stored in memory has capacities to pacify the mind/heart in times of joy and
sorrow and will follow the human soul, even after the event of death.
The significations that local Sikhs may ascribe to recitations are many, considering
that people tend to explain recitations in terms of procurred results from personal
engagements with the Guru-scripture ‒ a lovable husband or wife, healthy children, a
decent home, a prosperous business, and so on ‒ rather than articulating wellreasoned
definitions of an emic performance genre. These responses, however, set out
from a basic presumption that recitation is an act of worshipping God through the
agency of the Gurus’ compositions in Guru Granth Sahib. People seldom say they
“read” or “recite” (parna) the scripture or gurbani hymns, but to perform recitations is
424
Gill & Joshi 1999: 182, McGreggor 1997: 153.
237
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008