INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

When Sikhs are rendering gurbani they should always remain faithful to the
stylistic and content-based features of the sacred texts. The enunciator is not composing
but monologically reproducing or quoting the Gurus’ speech without adding any
subjective characteristics. Quotation helps to establish and maintain a clear separation
between the words of the original speakers – the Gurus ‒ from the voices of reciters in
a contemporary time and place. In a discourse analysis, Goffman (1981) distinguishes
between the various speakers’ roles involved in a speech event when a person is
speaking on behalf of someone else. Goffman decomposes the concept of a “speaker”
in a “production format” which consists of animator, author, and principal. The animator
assumes a functional role to produce utterances of words, but he or she is not
responsible for the words uttered. The author selects and compiles words in structures
and will direct the responsibility of words to someone else. Only the principal
assumes responsibility for what is being said and his or her position will be established
by the words spoken. 754 Elaborations on the speaker’s roles may help understand
some of the ways by which religious people invoke sources of otherworldly
authority and agency.
To keep the original revelation greater and authoritative, Sikh discourses try to
uphold the boundary between the Sikh Gurus (including the Guru Granth Sahib) as
the authors of gurbani, and devotees as animators, while both categories are historically
manifested actors who stand in relation to the divine principal from which the
divine words emanated. Recitations and other means of channeling gurbani imply a
shift of locus of authority from the animator to the author and principal speaker of
the sacred words. In performance, the deictic grounding of utterances, which otherwise
could link the recited text to the subjective state and volitional agency of the
human animator, is intentionally played down to create an autonomous character
and hierarchical eminence of the Guru’s words. 755 Renditions of gurbani shift control
from, what Du Bois (1986) has termed, the “proximate speaker”, producing utterances,
to a spatially and temporally more distant agent or the “prime speaker”. This
process restricts the human actor’s intentionality and responsibility for the words
being said. 756
To establish this reorientation away from the animator ‒ who still remains the
human agent enacting quotations in speech ‒ to a prior and higher origin of gurbani,
recitations often display some marked-out performance features. Prior to any rendering
of gurbani the reciter usually utters the name of God (Satnam Vahiguru) or the
mulmantra, the initial verse of the scripture, and performs reverential gestures, like
bowing. All public performances will conclude with the Khalsa ovation (Vahiguru ji ka
Khalsa, Vahiguru ji ki Fateh) and thereafter the Sikh jaikara (Jo bole so nihal, Sat Sri
Akal). 757 When a Sikh performer seated before the Guru Granth Sahib begins to chant
754
Goffman 1981: 226.
755
Keane 1997a: 53.
756
Du Bois 1986, 1992.
757
The Khalsa ovation and the Sikh salutation frame almost any kind of verbal action in the
presence of Guru Granth Sahib, even speech of thanks and propaganda.
470
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008