INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

clients are expected to be physically present at the beginning and end of the performance,
and preferably take time out to listen to the words mediated. Even if the organization
of Akhand path and other readings of Guru Granth Sahib have become a specialist
activity, people do not believe it reduces the expected benefit of the sponsor.
As one interlocutor reasoned, offering money for a devotional cause is always a meritorious
act, while accepting payment for a reading job is worldly attachment and thus
the major benefit will go to the paying sponsor. At the end of a program the sponsor’s
name will be publicly announced and he or she will be given a robe of honor (siropa)
as a mark of respect from the Guru’s house. If they for some reason are absent the
expected results of a reading will nevertheless accrue to him or her. 466
This does not imply that clients are discharged from all liabilities, especially not
if Akhand path is performed in a domestic setting. The public gurdwaras render assistance
in lending scriptures to families for unbroken readings in connection with lifecycle
rituals or inaugurations of a new house or a shop. The family is then obligated
to offer the scripture an honourable seat in a room that has been cleaned and cleared
of larger furniture to provide open spaces for gatherings and furnish all the obligatory
ritual paraphernalia, such as clothes, cushions and whisk. Newly purchased
cotton carpets and sheets will be covering the floor. When a team of paid reciters are
hired from outside the family is expected to supply them with food, tea, hot water for
ablutions, and sometimes shelter. 467 The sponsor is also held responsible for the
preparation of karah prashad, the blessed pudding, which will be offered to Guru
Granth Sahib at three times during the forty-eight hours period. Some families may
feed a brass oil lamp with clarified butter or oil to keep it burning beside the throne
throughout the performance. Apart from these practical and spatial arrangements, a
sponsorship generally presumes devotion and confidence in the Sikh teaching, which
the staging of Akhand path is itself sufficient proof of. Unlike professional reciters, the
individual or family does not have to observe the Khalsa discipline in any strict sense,
although they should refrain from meat and alcoholic drinks for as long as the reading
continues in order to uphold a degree of purity of their bodies and the space in
which the Guru Granth Sahib resides. Altogether these preparations symbolically cast
the Guru-scripture as a noble and honoured guest who is temporarily visiting the
house to be heard and shown hospitality.
The performance of Akhand path is far more elaborate than just a forty-eight
hour cover-to-cover reading of the Guru Granth Sahib and involves a set of regulative
rules. Since Akhand path should be unbroken and each word of scripture enunciated
in a low or loud voice, the reading is divided into shifts and will passed from one
reciter to the next without any break. In general a skilled pathi can recite thirty pages
466
More rarely sponsoring clients may lodge complaints with professional reciters, although
these objections more often mirror concerns about sincerity conditions and the probability of
improper conducts when reciters are paid, rather than being protests based on actual faults
committed.
467
One woman also alleged this as a reason why people choose Akhand path instead of weekly or
monthly path: they only need to do seva, selfless service, to the reciters for three days.
268
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008