INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

their parents are requested to stand up while the granthi presents an Ardas in which
he asks the Guru permission to conduct the wedding. Afterwards the granthi takes a
guiding Hukam for the couple to be wedded.
The ragi gives a short sermon addressed to the couple about their mutual duties
and obligations according to the Guru’s teaching. He emphasizes that marriage is not
merely a social contract but should be seen as the merging of two souls which complete
humans. They enter the householder life which is the ideal state of seeking union
with God. The boy should regard his wife-to-be as his better half and protect and
honor her. The girl should remain loyal to her husband and serve him in times of joy
and sorrow. Together they should base their life and relationship on love, respect,
and compromises.
The assumed responsbility of the couple is further reinforced in the following
act called Pale ki rasam, during which the father of the bride passes a pink or red
shawl over the groom’s shoulder and places the hem of it in the hands of the bride. At
the same time the ragi sings two lines of a gurbani hymn especially addressed to the
bride:
From my mind, O Nanak, I have wholly banished praising and slandering
others and have forsaken and abandoned all other worldly affairs.
I have seen all the kinsmen to be false; then have I attached myself
to Thine skirt, O my Lord. 617
Patrilocal traditions make the bride a member of the groom’s family with whom she
will live. According to a local ragi, when the bride listens to these words and the expositions
that follow “she makes a promise in front of God that she is giving up all
her good and bad things, she will leave her parents to be united with a man. Her
responsibility is with her husband now, not with her native family.”
The core act of the wedding ceremony is the recitation of the Char lavan and
the couple’s four circumambulations around the Guru Granth Sahib. The granthi will
read the first verse from the enthroned scripture. The ragi may then explicate the
verse in speech and then repeat the same verse in a singing style. Meanwhile the
couple performs matha tekna and offers money before the scripture, after which the
groom will slowly lead the bride around the scripture in a clockwise direction. When
the couple have completed a circle they do matha tekna again and resume their seats.
The same pattern with recitation, singing and circumambulation will be repeated for
each verse of Char lavan. By making the circular movements around the physical body
of the text the boy and the girl confirm to themselves, the congregration and the Guru
embodied in the scripture, their new relation.
Like other Sikh ceremonies the wedding ends with the singing of an abbreviated
form of the composition Anand Sahib, a reading of Ardas in which the granthi
presents the couple and the acts performed, and a repetition of the Hukam. As a final
617
GGS: 963.
373
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008