INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

At the same time an oral transmission of the sacred utterances of the Sikh Gurus
(gurbani) seems to run parallel with a textual tradition in Sikh history, even after the
Gurus’ compositions were scriptualized. The engagement in oral performances of the
sacred words, such as reading, reciting, and singing, was a primary means of religious
devotion in the Gurus’ teaching. For centuries Sikh devotees would also narrate
stories about the Gurus’ deeds and sing heroic folk-songs praising their grandeur. 32
Even when the Sikh community gathered for worship in presence of standardized
printed versions of the Guru Granth Sahib, oral renditions of the sacred teaching
remained at the core. The oral dimensions of Sikh worship will be mentioned in textualist
scholarship, 33 but the prime concern has so far been the collective history and
religious beliefs as largely defined by a written tradition.
Treading on the path of scholarly dichotomies (like sound/written word) a few
attempts have been made to highlight the importance of sound in the transmission of
holy words from Guru Granth Sahib. 34 The Sikh tradition, it has been argued, presents
a “Janus head” which challenges the traditional dichotomy between traditions
that privileged sound and those which privileged inscriptions of sacred words. 35 The
Sikhs gather around a written scripture without subordinating sound and oral uses of
the sacred text. Unlike the predominantly Western “dualistic ideology of language”,
which privileges referential messages of language and texts, the Sikhs have adopted a
“nondualistic ideology” that recognizes semantic meanings as well as sound and
material properties of the sacred language. 36
Anthropological and sociological scholarships have also looked into Sikh and
Punjabi practices from much broader social perspectives. The growing interest for
village studies from the 1950s resulted in several important ethnographies on social
behaviors and ritual performances in Sikh villages of the Punjab. 37 A considerable
array of scholarly data was accumulated on the social and economical aspects of
particular “life-cycle” events, especially marriage practices in different parts of the
32
McLeod 1980a, Nijhawan 2006b.
33
See particularly Chapter 9 in Pashaura Singh 2000.
34
Goa & Coward 1986, Coward 1988.
35
Staal 1979b.
36
Dusenbery 1992. My spontaneous objection to these theories is the strong emphasis on the
media for rendering sacred words and theoretical claims of universal applicability. Many Sikhs,
I believe, perceive both sound and written inscriptions of gurbani as important vehicles to mediate
sacred words, but what provides these media sacredness and an infinite number of properties
is what they contain: gurbani. The reluctance to use translated version of Guru Granth Sahib
in worship does not merely reflect different language ideologies between South Asia and the
West, but it involves ontological questions concerning the nature and origin of gurbani. To retain
oral uses of the Guru Granth Sahib in the Gurmukhi script is to preserve the original form of
ontologically divine words that materialized in the speech and writings of the Gurus.
37
See e.g. Indera P. Singh 1959, Mathur 1964, Leaf 1972, Gheerdyal Singh 1974.
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008