INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

sacred space for the contemplative recitation. Under each of the 108 gurbani hymns
quoted in Sankat Mochan the compilers then clarify for which purpose the individual
verse will suit and specify the ritual procedure, usually by deciding how many times
each hymn is to be recited consecutively for a fixed time period. One version of Sankat
Mochan compiled by Gurcharan Singh, for instance, instructs the readers to pick out
the hymn which agrees with the experienced trouble or need, and recite it from beginning
to end 108 times daily for forty days. 447 Another edition by Narain Singh is
more circumstantial, advising recitation periods ranging between 21 to 51 days, during
which the chosen hymn should be recited from 51 to 5000 times. 448 As a ritual
manual, Sankat Mochan gives an idea of the powers and effects Sikhs may ascribe to
single verses of Guru Granth Sahib and the most diversified spiritual and mundane
motives that can induce them to conduct recitations of gurbani – all from seeking
salvation and truth to resolve court cases, domestic disputes or meet a lover.
In Varanasi, several of my interviewees used to commit themselves to disciplined
recitations whenever they met adversities or experienced disorders in social
life. For those not following Khalsa regulations, this commitment implicated daily
baths and abstinence from meat and intoxicants. Some would sleep on the ground
and not visit other people’s houses for as long as the recitation was going. The austerities
would have a purifying effect on their body and mind, and generated internal
powers to achieve the desired goals. Every day during a recitation period they would
light an oil lamp near their chosen seat and keep a pot with water beside it. After the
reading was completed they sprinkled the water in the house and onto family members,
and if the recitation was undertaken to seek remedy for a sick person they
washed the sufferer with the nectar-water. To keep the two elements with purifying
potential ‒ fire and water ‒ is a part of the performance and may represent the spiritual
refinement achieved by these devotional practices. In this context, however, the
water is believed to be nectar-water permeated with the transformative agency of
gurbani and thereby possesses power to purify and benefit the reciter and sufferer in a
tangible manner.
Besides Sankat Mochan, some will daily repeat the entire Sukhmani Sahib and
Chaupai Sahib five or seven times, or recourse to the verses recorded in Dukh Bhanjani
Sahib, or “the destroyer of suffering,” which is another anthology comprising thirtyfour
different gurbani stanzas. These readings are systematized according to an auspicious
numerical value of individual choice, usually repeated daily for an odd number
of times during an odd number of days, since even numbers are considered inauspicious.
A more popular method for regular readings is to undertake the discipline of a
chilla, meaning “forty”, and which is the aggregate of recitations for a total period of
forty days. 449 In Punjabi folklore, as well as other religious and musical traditions in
447
Sankat Mochan Shabad, Giani Gurcharan Singh.
448
Sankat Mochan Shabad, Giani Narain Singh.
449
The term chilla derives from the Persian word for number forty (chelle). The practice of chilla is
apparently a heritage of Persian Sufi orders in which a forty day period of seclusion and ascetism
was the initation rite. In the Punjab there are several places, such as Sirsa and Tilla Jogian,
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008