The Sikh Bulletin

The Sikh Bulletin m`Gr- poh 544 nwnkSwhI November-December 20122. kvwau2 (Kavao) means ‘sound’ not ‘word’ or ‘note’.3. drIAwau3 (Daryao) has been literally interpreted asrivers by many scholars as above. Keeping in view themethodology used by Guru Nanak to express hisphilosophy ‘drIAwau’ has been used as a metaphor for‘things’. What are those things? Scientifically whatappeared after the ‘Big Bang’ was a large number ofgalaxies each composed of a large number of stars(suns) and their planets? Therefore, the ‘lK drIAwau’has been used to represent ‘many things’ because oflimited vocabulary available at that time. However, onemust understand that no water was formed immediatelyafter the Big Bang. It took billions of years to formwater on the Earth. Therefore, ‘lK drIAwau’ (rivers) is ametaphoric expression of ‘many things’ (that meansstarting from elemantry particles to nucleosynthesis tonucler to atoms which give rise to many galaxies, Fig.15-1).The concept of ‘drIAwau’ (Daryao ) in NanakianPhilosophy as ‘things’ has been strengthened andexplained by Guru Arjan so that the metaphor, ‘drIAwau’(Daryao), may not be literally misunderstood as‘Rivers’ as has been done by some scholars in theabove phrase of Guru Nanak:eyk 1 kvwvY 2 qy siB 3 hoAw 4 ]Aggs, m: 5, pMnw 1003.With one 1 sound 2 (bang) everything 3 was created 4 .AGGS, M 5, p 1003.Note: ‘eyk kvwvY’ in the above phrase is same as ‘eykokvwau’ of Guru Nanak’s previous phrase.It means Guru Nanak’s concept of origin ofUniverse of 15 th century is almost similar to thatwhich has been theorized by scientists of the 20 thcentury as ‘Big Bang’. Although similar informationof formation of Universe with one ‘word’ is available inother religious scriptures, Guru Nanak has gone quitefurther in explaining the origin of Universe, which iscomparable to the scientific information availabletoday.ii) Infiniteness of UniverseThe Universe is still expanding since the Big Bangoccurred [27]. And no limit has been establishedaccording to the present day knowledge of science.Guru Nanak explains infiniteness of Universe asfollows:pwqwlw 1 pwqwl 1 lK Awgwsw 2 Awgws 2 ]EVk EVk Bwil Qky vyd khin iek vwq ]shs ATwrh 3 khin kqybw AsulU ieku Dwqu 4 ]lyKw 5 hoie q ilKIAY lyKY hoie ivxwsu ]nwnk vfw AwKIAY Awpy 6 jwxY Awpu ]22]Aggs, jpu 22, pMnw 5.There are hundreds of thousands of nether worlds 1 ,and hundreds of thousands of skies 2 .After great research the Vedas have said it definitelyas above.The Semitic books say that there are eighteenthousand 3 worlds and that is the fact 4 .However, Nanak says:It cannot be possible to count 5 (number of the celestialbodies in the Universe) because the accounting personmay reach the end of his life during counting, it willstill be incomplete.Guru Nanak further says:That God 6 is the Great who knows the account (of thecelestial bodies in the Universe).22.AGGS, Jap 22, p 5.In this stanza Guru Nanak is referring to that theVedas say that there are hundreds of thousands ofPatal (nether worlds) and hundreds of thousands ofskies and on the other hand Semitic books say thatthere are 18,000 worlds. This is the information ofVedas and Semitic books but not the views of GuruNanak. However, some scholars and preacherserroneously interpret that it is Guru Nanak who saysthat there are lacs (hundreds of thousands) of Patal(nether worlds) and lacs of skies.Scientifically there is no nether world. It is an ancientmyth. Similarly, there is no sky. The blue color we seeis the color due to the depth of the air around the Earththrough which the sunlight passes before coming to us.In fact, it is a void or space.After quoting the information available or the acceptedconcept at that time, Guru Nanak gives his ownobservations. He says that the cosmos (Universe)contains countless number of celestial bodies. The realnumber would be known only to the God.K. T. F. of N. A. Inc. 3524 Rocky Ridge Way, El Dorado Hills, CA. 95762 14