The Gold of the Sikhs: Splendor and Universality of the Granth

Trans­lated from French • Eng­lish (anglais)

One of the holy ponds of In­dia is the “lake of im­mor­tal­i­ty” (Am­rita Sara), at Am­rit­sar¹Re­jected forms:
“Pool of im­mor­tal­i­ty.”
“Pond of im­mor­tal­i­ty.”
“Basin of im­mor­tal­i­ty.”
“Basin of the draught of im­mor­tal­i­ty.”
“Basin of nec­tar.”
“Lake of nec­tar.”
“Ex­cel­lent am­brosi­a.”
Am­rita Saras.
Umrita-sara.
Umritsar.
Umritsir.
Umretsir.
Amretsir.
Amritsir.
Umbritsir.
Amritsur.
Umritsur.
Umritzer.
Umbritzir.
Amretseyr., where the heart of the Sikh faith beats. Who­ever goes there is swept along by a hu­man crowd amid the scents of flow­ers and in­cense and ar­rives with it be­fore a mar­vel: a golden tem­ple en­throned, like a pre­cious jew­el, in the midst of the wa­ters. One ex­pects to be charmed and is daz­zled in­stead. An in­de­scrib­able throng of trav­el­ers, pil­grims, and cu­ri­ous on­look­ers of “all the races of In­dia” jos­tles and calls out “in sonorous di­alects that strike the ear like a blare of fan­fares,” while chil­dren, run­ning, make the cir­cuit of the mar­ble quays. This tem­ple wel­comes all with­out dis­tinc­tion of sex or re­li­gion. In­side, no idol. The sole ob­ject of ven­er­a­tion, set in the great hall be­neath a canopy of bro­cade, is the Granth, orig­i­nally com­piled by Ar­jan, the fifth Gu­ru, and his faith­ful scribe Bhai Gur­das. “Day and night with­out respite, as if to achieve a kind of per­pet­ual ado­ra­tion, granthi [of­fi­ciants] sing, be­neath these revered vaults, pas­sages from the holy book, ac­com­pa­ny­ing them­selves on stringed in­stru­ments.”

Half a Millennium of Scattered Poetry

The Sikhs des­ig­nate their sa­cred book as the Adi Granth (the First Book) or the Sri Guru Granth Sahib (the Ven­er­ated Mas­ter Book)²Re­jected forms:
Sri Guru Granth Sa­heb.
Siri Guru Granth Sahid.
Shri Guru Grant Sahib.
Śrī Guru Grantha Sāhib., but more of­ten still by the vague name of Granth (the Book)³Re­jected forms:
Grantha.
Grant.
Grântah.
Grandth., just as Chris­tians call theirs the Bible (the Books). Now, the Granth is a work en­tirely unique com­pared to the canons of other re­li­gions: a fas­ci­nat­ing po­etic an­thol­ogy con­tain­ing not only the hymns and can­ti­cles of its Gu­rus, but those of ear­lier mys­tics, such as Sheikh Faridud­din, known as Baba Farid, born around 1175. The Gu­rus them­selves hav­ing lived be­tween 1469 and 1708, here is half a mil­len­nium of scat­tered In­dian po­et­ry, whose un­in­ter­rupted recita­tion (ak­hand path) re­quires two days and two nights of granthi re­lay­ing one an­other with­out rest. That is why, on his deathbed, the tenth and last Gu­ru, Gob­ind Singh, rather than nam­ing a suc­ces­sor, de­creed that this col­lec­tion would hence­forth be the eter­nal di­rec­tor of souls: “Af­ter my death, you must in all cir­cum­stances ad­dress your­selves to the Granth Sahib; it is he who shall be your Gu­ru; what­ever you ask of him, he will show you.”

The Common Kitchen of Brotherhood

The phi­los­o­phy of the Granth is an ed­u­ca­tion of love and benev­o­lence, cast be­tween the Hindu world and the Mus­lim world. From the first, it adopts de­vo­tion (bhakti) with­out idols or the yoke of castes. From the sec­ond — monothe­ism and the Sufi im­pulse with­out the sharia. By avail­ing it­self of high po­et­ry, it gives the idea of what a life worth liv­ing can be, a true life; which raises it to the rank of a uni­ver­sal re­li­gion. Its prayer in­vari­ably closes with these wishes for all hu­man­i­ty: “May Thy will, O Lord, bring peace and hap­pi­ness to each and to all, through­out the world.” Bhai Gur­das, al­ready men­tioned, ex­plains:

“He [the Sikh] truly lives a life of sac­ri­fice, the life of a slave of the Lord whom he loves. […] In his love, he for­gets hunger and sleep. His hands are cease­lessly oc­cu­pied in help­ing those in need and in com­fort­ing those who are cast down. […] Mag­nan­i­mous, tol­er­ant, and serene, he lives to serve hu­man­i­ty.”

Ladame, Paul-Alex­is, « Les Sikhs » (The Sikhs), Cahiers d’é­tudes cathares, no. 147, Au­tumn 1995, pp. 3–38.

The Gu­rus preached an ab­so­lute equal­i­ty, which finds its most con­crete ex­pres­sion in the langar. This word des­ig­nates the re­fec­tory ad­joined to the tem­ples and the com­mu­nal meal served there, open to all. “The langar, launched by the first Gu­ru, […] Nanak, was par­tic­u­larly orig­i­nal and rad­i­cal in In­dia where, for cen­turies, […] there were, and still are, pro­hi­bi­tions con­cern­ing the per­sons with whom one eats.” It is said that Em­peror Ak­bar him­self, the most tol­er­ant of the Mughal sovereigns, sub­mit­ted to this un­con­di­tional hos­pi­tal­i­ty, sit­ting in the ranks of the hum­ble to break bread with them⁴Ac­cord­ing to an un­re­li­able tra­di­tion, this episode pro­duced such an im­pres­sion upon the monarch that he do­nated the land where the Sikhs would dig the “lake of im­mor­tal­i­ty.”.

“Build the raft of con­tem­pla­tion; upon it you shall cross with­out ob­struc­tion,
And you shall strike nei­ther the ocean nor the tide. […]
He who sub­dues his ego, strips him­self of the ’self,’ and adorns him­self in this fash­ion. […]
One parts no more if one truly unites with the Lord.
Then, the com­ing and go­ing ceas­es, and one per­ceives the Lord ev­ery­where.”⁵Sri Gourou Granth Sahib (Sri Guru Granth Sahib), vol. III, trans. from Pun­jabi, Hindi, Per­sian, and sev­eral In­dian di­alects by Jar­nail Singh, p. 869.

In highly sym­bolic lan­guage, this poem ad­mirably sum­ma­rizes the [Sikh] teach­ing. Man’s ego (haumai, “me-I”) […] is pris­oner of ma­te­rial life and its faults, rep­re­sented by the ocean and the tide. Be­cause of them, […] he can­not reach the other shore, that of fi­nal eman­ci­pa­tion (nirvanu) […]. Man must there­fore pu­rify his spir­i­tual essence (manu), free it from the gangue of the “me-I,” and thereby ren­der him­self pleas­ing to God.“

Ma­tringe, Denis, Les Sikhs : his­toire et tra­di­tion des « Li­ons du Pan­jab » (The Sikhs: His­tory and Tra­di­tion of the ”Lions of the Pun­jab“), Paris: Al­bin Michel, ”Planète In­de“ se­ries, 2008.

An Earthly Jerusalem

Evening falls over the Pun­jab, and the golden tem­ple is haloed with gar­lands of oil lamps ”whose re­flec­tions in the wa­ter make it shim­mer with the scin­til­la­tions of a trea­sure“ (Mircea Eli­ade). The con­tem­pla­tor then muses that this place is far more than it ap­pears. It is the vi­sion of a city ever ”bril­liant […] nobly pre­sent­ing to the gaze […] its thou­sands of re­splen­dent domes, upon which the light […] falls and re­bounds in daz­zling va­por“ (La­martine). It is the prom­ise of a city that rec­on­ciles man with his fel­low, as with him­self, and from which the orig­i­nal Jerusalem seems to me to drift fur­ther with each pass­ing day:

”For a Chris­tian, the tem­ple of Am­rit­sar seems to pre­fig­ure the heav­enly Jerusalem, a city whose gates, the Book of Rev­e­la­tion says, shall never be closed, so as to wel­come all peo­ples⁶Et am­bu­la­bunt gentes in lu­mine ejus, et reges terræ af­fer­ent glo­riam suam et hon­orem in il­lam. Et portæ ejus non clau­den­tur per diem; nox enim non erit il­lic (The na­tions shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory into it. Day af­ter day, the gates shall never be closed; for there shall be no night there). Rev. 21:24–25 (La Bible : tra­duc­tion of­fi­cielle liturgique (The Bible: Of­fi­cial Litur­gi­cal Trans­la­tion)). be­fore the throne of God and of the Lamb. In­deed, there is in this place the her­ald of a rec­on­ciled hu­man­i­ty, all the more mov­ing when one knows the painful his­tory of the Pun­jab and of Sikhism.“

Vagneux, Yann, « Le Tem­ple d’or » (The Golden Tem­ple), La Croix, Jan­u­ary 12, 2024.

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Further Reading

Around Sri Gourou Granth Sahib (Sri Guru Granth Sahib), vol. I

Quotations

”At the age of ten, one is a child,
Youth shows it­self at twen­ty;
And at thir­ty, one takes pride in one’s beau­ty.
One blos­soms at forty,
At fifty, one’s foot­ing is un­sure,
And at six­ty, old age over­takes the man.
At sev­en­ty, the in­tel­lect weak­ens,
At eighty, one is un­able to work.
At nine­ty, one is bedrid­den forever,
And strength fails us ut­ter­ly.
Nanak, I have searched ev­ery­where,
I have un­der­stood that the world is but a cas­tle of smoke.“

Sri Gourou Granth Sahib (Sri Guru Granth Sahib), vol. I, trans. from Pun­jabi, Hindi, Per­sian, and sev­eral In­dian di­alects by Jar­nail Singh, Prov­i­den­ciales: In­tel­lec­tual Ser­vices In­ter­na­tion­al, 1996.

Downloads

Sound Recordings

• De­nis Ma­tringe à pro­pos des sikhs (De­nis Ma­tringe on the Sikhs). (France Cul­ture).

Printed Works

• Tra­duc­tion de Sri Gourou Granth Sahib, t. I par Jar­nail Singh (1996) (Trans­la­tion of Sri Guru Granth Sahib, vol. I by Jar­nail Singh (1996)). (Sikh Book Club).

Around Sri Gourou Granth Sahib (Sri Guru Granth Sahib), vol. II

Quotations

”The rich take pride in their rich­es;
The landown­ers take pride in their lands;
The king takes pride in his ter­ri­to­ry;
But for the devo­tee, it is His sup­port that is ev­ery­thing.
If one re­lies on the True One, the Lord,
The Mas­ter helps him with all His pow­er, and he knows no de­feat.
When one aban­dons ev­ery other sup­port and seeks the refuge of the Lord,
[…] the Lord comes to dwell in our mind.“

Sri Gourou Granth Sahib (Sri Guru Granth Sahib), vol. II, trans. from Pun­jabi, Hindi, Per­sian, and sev­eral In­dian di­alects by Jar­nail Singh, Prov­i­den­ciales: In­tel­lec­tual Ser­vices In­ter­na­tion­al, 1996.

Downloads

Sound Recordings

• De­nis Ma­tringe à pro­pos des sikhs (De­nis Ma­tringe on the Sikhs). (France Cul­ture).

Printed Works

• Tra­duc­tion de Sri Gourou Granth Sahib, t. II par Jar­nail Singh (1996) (Trans­la­tion of Sri Guru Granth Sahib, vol. II by Jar­nail Singh (1996)). (Sikh Book Club).

Around Sri Gourou Granth Sahib (Sri Guru Granth Sahib), vol. III

Quotations

”Death reigns in the world; truly it is like a cas­tle of sand.
This cas­tle van­ishes sud­den­ly, like pa­per in the rain.
O my wa­ver­ing mind, re­flect well upon the truth!
Sid­dhas, yo­gis, adepts, house­hold­ers — in the end, all de­part from here.
Ephemeral as the dream of the night is the world,
All that we see shall dis­ap­pear one day,
There­fore, O ig­no­rant one, why do you cling to the mi­rage?
Where are your broth­ers? Where are your friends? Look well!
Some have gone, oth­ers shall go, each in turn. […]
Nanak is Thy ser­vant, O Lord, save my hon­or!“

Sri Gourou Granth Sahib (Sri Guru Granth Sahib), vol. III, trans. from Pun­jabi, Hindi, Per­sian, and sev­eral In­dian di­alects by Jar­nail Singh, Prov­i­den­ciales: In­tel­lec­tual Ser­vices In­ter­na­tion­al, 1996.

Downloads

Sound Recordings

• De­nis Ma­tringe à pro­pos des sikhs (De­nis Ma­tringe on the Sikhs). (France Cul­ture).

Printed Works

• Tra­duc­tion de Sri Gourou Granth Sahib, t. III par Jar­nail Singh (1996) (Trans­la­tion of Sri Guru Granth Sahib, vol. III by Jar­nail Singh (1996)). (Sikh Book Club).

Around Sri Gourou Granth Sahib (Sri Guru Granth Sahib), vol. IV

Quotations

”One laments and one com­plains; it is the daily rou­tine,
One re­mem­bers one’s (de­ceased) re­la­tions be­cause of what they brought us.
But if one con­sciously de­taches one­self from the world,
One dies no more, one is born no more, and one suf­fers no sor­row.
All con­flict arises from the en­tan­gle­ment of Maya [Il­lu­sion],
Rare is the per­son who re­lies on the Name [of the Lord].
Maya with three qual­i­ties⁷This refers to what Hindu cos­mol­ogy calls the triguna or the three qual­i­ties of Maya: good­ness, pas­sion, dark­ness. “These qual­i­ties ex­ist in God as ap­par­ent rather than real phe­nom­e­na, for [we] are told to the point of sati­ety: ’God has no qual­i­ties,’ He has no guna [at­tributes], since noth­ing lim­its Him, since He can­not be in one way rather than an­oth­er, but is in ev­ery way, ’ab­so­lute­ly’” (Al­fred Rous­sel). con­trols the whole world,
Who­ever clings to it suf­fers sor­row.“

Sri Gourou Granth Sahib (Sri Guru Granth Sahib), vol. IV, trans. from Pun­jabi, Hindi, Per­sian, and sev­eral In­dian di­alects by Jar­nail Singh, Prov­i­den­ciales: In­tel­lec­tual Ser­vices In­ter­na­tion­al, 1996.

Downloads

Sound Recordings

• De­nis Ma­tringe à pro­pos des sikhs (De­nis Ma­tringe on the Sikhs). (France Cul­ture).

Printed Works

• Tra­duc­tion de Sri Gourou Granth Sahib, t. IV par Jar­nail Singh (1996) (Trans­la­tion of Sri Guru Granth Sahib, vol. IV by Jar­nail Singh (1996)). (Sikh Book Club).

Bibliography

• Basil, Priya, Be my guest : cuisine, hos­pi­tal­ité et générosité (Be My Guest: Cook­ing, Hos­pi­tal­i­ty, and Gen­eros­i­ty), trans. from Eng­lish by Ca­r­ole Han­na, Paris: Del­court, 2020.
• Eli­ade, Mircea, L’Inde (In­di­a), trans. from Ro­ma­nian by Alain Paruit, Paris: l’H­erne, ”Méan­dres“ se­ries, 1988.
• Har­bans Singh and De­la­houtre, Michel, Le Sikhisme : an­tholo­gie de la poésie re­ligieuse sikhe. Le « Guru Granth » • Bhâî Vîr Singh (Sikhism: An­thol­ogy of Sikh Re­li­gious Po­et­ry. The ”Guru Granth“ • Bhai Vir Singh), pref. by Olivier La­combe, Lou­vain-la-Neu­ve: Cen­tre d’his­toire des re­li­gions, ”Homo re­li­gio­sus“ se­ries, 1985.
• Ladame, Paul-Alex­is, « Les Sikhs » (The Sikhs), Cahiers d’é­tudes cathares, no. 147, Au­tumn 1995, pp. 3–38.
• Ma­tringe, Denis, Les Sikhs : his­toire et tra­di­tion des « Li­ons du Pan­jab » (The Sikhs: His­tory and Tra­di­tion of the ”Lions of the Pun­jab“), Paris: Al­bin Michel, ”Planète In­de“ se­ries, 2008.
• Réville, Al­bert, « Les Sikhs » (The Sikhs), Re­vue poli­tique et lit­téraire (Re­vue bleue), July to De­cem­ber 1883. (Google Book­s).
• Ro­bie, Jean, « Am­rit­sir [Am­rit­sar] et le Tem­ple d’or » (Am­rit­sar and the Golden Tem­ple), Bul­letin de la Classe des let­tres et des sci­ences morales et poli­tiques et de la Classe des beaux-arts, Brus­sels: Académie royale de Bel­gique, 1900, pp. 801–809. (Google Book­s).
• Singh Kalsi, Se­wa, Le Sikhisme : le sabre à dou­ble tran­chant et l’u­nic­ité de Dieu (Sikhism: The Dou­ble-Edged Sword and the One­ness of God), trans. from En­glish, adap­ta­tion and up­dat­ing by Alain Sain­te-Marie, Ar­les: Actes Sud, ”Le souf­fle de l’e­sprit“ se­ries, 2019.
• Vagneux, Yann, « Le Tem­ple d’or » (The Golden Tem­ple), La Croix, Jan­u­ary 12, 2024.