tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43088763611200970402024-03-21T07:19:03.929-07:00Dr Kamalroop Singh - Sikh StudiesNihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-80601491205247654632016-04-07T02:34:00.001-07:002016-12-09T04:53:44.078-08:00Desecration of the Dasam Granth Sahib<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span data-offset-key="7hnin-0-0">The following is a link to a book which contains an account of the desecration of the Dasam Granth Sahib. It is titled 'Missī Jātt dī Kartūt (The Deeds of a Hybrid Caste)', where the author states that prakāsh of the DG was taking place at Gurdwara Ramsar Sahib in the 1920s and he describes what took place. Sadly, the same desecration has also been taking place in regards to Adi Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji Maharaj.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="9cnbo-0-0"><a href="https://www.scribd.com/doc/307301947/Miss%C4%AB-J%C4%81tt-D%C4%AB-Kart%C5%ABt">https://www.scribd.com/doc/307301947/Miss%C4%AB-J%C4%81tt-D%C4%AB-Kart%C5%ABt</a></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="9a9oi-0-0">This book was published online at the request of Giani Gurpreet Singh (California) for the Dasam Granth Samagams in the USA (A live broadcast will be at: http://khalsaheritage.us/). This sewa is with the blessings of Baba Prem Singh Ji (Hazur Sahib), head of the Buddha Dal. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="evs0n-0-0">Please share this valuable source which reveals the impact of reformist movements on the Sikh tradition.</span></div>
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Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-44217341914052705912016-01-25T10:59:00.000-08:002016-01-25T10:59:56.487-08:00The Guru’s warrior scripture by Kamalroop Singh and Gurinder Singh Mann<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The scripture known as the Dasam Granth Sahib or the ‘Scripture of the Tenth King,’ has traditionally been attributed to Guru <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095857973" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0099cc; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Gobind Singh</a>. It was composed in a volatile period to inspire the Sikh warriors in the battle against the Moghuls, and many of the compositions were written for the rituals related to the preparation for war (<em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Shastra puja</em>) and for the battlefield. The verses generally consist of battle scenes and equate weapons with God, where the sword symbolises the victory of good over evil. War, according to the Tenth Guru, should only be a righteous war or <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">dharam yudh,</em> and it is true that the Sikhs throughout their history have been noted for their exemplary ethics in warfare. Guru Gobind Singh writes in his epic letter known as the <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Zafarnama</em> that it is only justified to ‘raise the sword once all means have been exhausted.’ The compositions were written in mostly Braj Bhasha, and some smaller compositions are composed in Persian and Punjabi. In contrast to the primary Sikh scripture, the Adi Guru Granth Sahib, which is written in <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Shanti ras</em> or verses that inspire peace, the Dasam Granth has a heroic strain of expression or <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Vir ras</em>.</div>
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<figure class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_116002" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4d4d4d; font-family: liberation-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 9.14286px; margin: 5px auto 18px; width: 601px;"><img alt="dasam granth 1" class="wp-image-116002" height="425" sizes="(max-width: 601px) 100vw, 601px" src="http://blogoup.electricstudiolt.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dasam-granth-1-744x526.jpg" srcset="http://blogoup.electricstudiolt.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dasam-granth-1-120x85.jpg 120w, http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dasam-granth-1-180x127.jpg 180w, http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dasam-granth-1-768x543.jpg 768w, http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dasam-granth-1-744x526.jpg 744w, http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dasam-granth-1-184x130.jpg 184w, http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dasam-granth-1.jpg 1142w" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="601" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1em; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6875; margin-top: 18px; padding-right: 30.0446px;">A portrait of the Tenth Guru hunting from the ‘Anandpuri’ recension of Dasam Granth from 1696 AD by Joginder Singh Ahluwalia. Used with permission.</figcaption></figure><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4d4d4d; direction: ltr; font-family: liberation-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 0.875em; line-height: 1.42857; margin-bottom: 1.25em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
In recent times, the Dasam Granth has been of much interest and volatile debate. This debate has its roots during colonialism in the Sikh reformist movement, known as the Singh Sabha. The most controversial and volatile discussion is that of the authorship, which is the most polemic and opinionated argument that one could ever experience. Rather than being concerned with this issue of authorship, it is better that discussions are based on primary sources, like manuscripts and relics.</div>
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There is an intrinsic relationship of the scripture to the <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">maryada </em>(traditions), which includes the <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">shastra</em>s (weapons), the <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Takhts</em> (thrones of polity), and the warriors known as the <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Akali Nihangs</em>. It is important to consider the historical context that the scripture was written in, and its link with battlefield sciences of the period. Whilst the primary scripture is now predominantly seen in Gurdwaras or Sikh temples across the world, during colonialism the Dasam Granth was removed from its ceremonial role, and it actual contents have been overshadowed by the rhetoric of reformist movements.</div>
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<figure class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_116003" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4d4d4d; font-family: liberation-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 9.14286px; margin: 5px auto 18px; width: 550px;"><img alt="dasam granth 2" class="wp-image-116003" height="493" sizes="(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px" src="http://blogoup.electricstudiolt.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dasam-granth-2-744x666.jpg" srcset="http://blogoup.electricstudiolt.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dasam-granth-2-180x161.jpg 180w, http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dasam-granth-2-768x688.jpg 768w, http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dasam-granth-2-744x666.jpg 744w, http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dasam-granth-2-184x165.jpg 184w, http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dasam-granth-2.jpg 795w" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="550" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1em; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6875; margin-top: 18px; padding-right: 27.5px;">Illuminated frontispiece of the Dasam Granth, a scripture of Sikhism containing many of the texts attributed to tenth Sikh guru, Guru Gobind Singh (16661708). (Image credit: “Dasam Granth” from Or. 6298. © The British Library Board, used with permission.)</figcaption></figure><span style="background-color: white; color: #4d4d4d; font-family: liberation-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 9.14286px;">- See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2016/01/gurus-warrior-scripture/#sthash.eSGXVZPh.dpuf</span></div>
Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-50268287971155918802015-09-30T05:02:00.003-07:002015-09-30T05:02:31.055-07:00THE GRANTH OF GURU GOBIND SINGH: ESSAYS, LECTURES, AND TRANSLATIONS' printed by Oxford Academic (Oxford University Press).<div id="fb-root"></div><script>(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));</script><div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/Dasam.Guru.Ka.Granth/posts/936500326422460" data-width="500"><div class="fb-xfbml-parse-ignore"><blockquote cite="https://www.facebook.com/Dasam.Guru.Ka.Granth/posts/936500326422460">Posted by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Dasam.Guru.Ka.Granth">Sri Dasam Granth The Granth of Khalsa</a> on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Dasam.Guru.Ka.Granth/posts/936500326422460">Thursday, September 24, 2015</a></blockquote></div></div>Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-32342063318359223602015-01-01T07:20:00.000-08:002015-01-01T07:20:28.398-08:00Dasam Granth - Commentry - Part 1 Jaap Sahib<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I had a request from a Singhani, a sister, about delivering some basic Gurbani knowledge. Gurbani is so deep and profound how can we ever do it justice, but saying that the Guru did make it a whole lot easier to understand than compared to other scriptures. I would like to make my first post about the scripture I am humble student of, the Sri Dasam Granth Sahib - 'The Granth of Guru Gobind Singh Ji.' With His grace I completed my PhD at Birmingham University on this scripture<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">.</span></div>
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Guru Ji's scripture is mostly written in a classical idiom of Hindi called Braj Bhasha, which is well understood in the land of his birth, Bihar. Throughout Dasam Granth Sahib we find the title/invocation 'ਤ੍ਵਪ੍ਰਸਾਦਿ ॥.' ਤ੍ਵ means like ਤੇਰੀ in Punjabi, Yours or Thou. Some Taksals pronounce this 'Tau' 'ਤੌ' as they take the 'ਵ' 'vava' on the foot on the conjunct to mean a 'haura' and not a 'vava.' A conjunct is where two letters are combined, and there is no 'mukta'. So in some manuscript copies or Gutkas you will also see the spelling as Tav or 'ਤਵ'.</div>
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The next word is ‘Prasādi’ or ਪ੍ਰਸਾਦਿ. Prasadi is a Sanskrit word (प्रसाद), and has many meanings but here it means grace, kindness, or graciousness. So, both words combined mean ‘Thy Grace.’ Some of you brighter minds would have noticed that the word has an ‘i’ after it, which is there for grammatical purposes, and here it means from, or by. Therefore the translation is [This Gurbani has been written] ‘By Thy Grace.' In Punjabi we would say ਤੇਰੀ ਕਿਰਪਾ ਨਾਲ.</div>
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Let us go back to ਤ੍ਵ, the eagled eyed amongst you would also notice that this also comes as a part of a larger word, ਨਮਸਤ੍ਵੰ. The word ਨਮਸ is also Sanskrit and means to salute or bow. It is where the word or greeting Namaskar (ਨਮਸਕਾਰ) comes from, Namo also means the same (ਨਮੋ). So, ਨਮਸਤ੍ਵੰ means ‘Bow to You’, or ‘I bow to Thou.’ This is a form of poetry called onomatopoeia which imitates the sound associated with something, in his case the TWANG of a bow, when an arrow is fired. Here we even see same in English.</div>
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In the first verse of the ‘Jāp Sāhib’ ਜਾਪ ਸਾਹਿਬ called the ਛਪੈ ਛੰਦ, which means a verse of six lines, Channd means poetic verses, literally a ‘Chant.’, i.e. rhythmically spoken. The Guru says ‘How can Thy name be explained? So with pure intellect I will praise Thy attribute or action names.1. ‘ਤ੍ਵ ਸਰਬ ਨਾਮ ਕਥੈ ਕਵਨ ਕਰਮ ਨਾਮ ਬਰਣਤ ਸੁਮਤਿ ॥੧॥‘. The first word that the Guru expresses Vahiguru by is ਅਕਾਲ, meaning ਕਾਲ Time/Death so the Timeless/Deathless/Immoral. ਨਮਸਤ੍ਵੰ ਅਕਾਲੇ ॥ ‘Salutations to the Timeless.’ We see the same usage of a in English - 'no' or 'not. Like in amorphic - 'no form'.</div>
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The Jaap Sahib was composed at a Gurdwara in Bhagpura at Anandpur Sahib, as the Guru himself did Shastravidia with his Army.</div>
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Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-32834395425724919532014-12-19T08:21:00.000-08:002014-12-19T08:21:18.572-08:00An incomplete list of my papers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://birmingham.academia.edu/KamalroopSingh/Papers">https://birmingham.academia.edu/KamalroopSingh/Papers</a><br />
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Here is an incomplete list of my papers.</div>
Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-41701979361498238932014-06-04T03:18:00.000-07:002014-06-17T17:02:28.251-07:00An entry sent for the Royal Asiatic Society Tod 121: Dasam Granth Sahib<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Dasam Graṅth was
written by the Tenth Guru of the Sikhs, Gobind Singh. Over time the name of the
Graṅth has changed from simply Graṅth Sahib of Guru Gobind Singh (<i>Dasam Pātshāh kā Graṅth</i>), to simply Dasam
Graṅth. The scripture is written in Gurmukhi verses following the tradition of
the previous Gurus. However the language is mainly Braj Bhasha, with small
sections in Persian, and rustic Punjabi. The main leitmotiv of the Dasam Graṅth
is righteous war or <i>dharma yudh</i>, with
a few devotional sections, mainly translated from the Sanskrit <i>Purāṇas</i>. The poetry is rhythmic and
heroic, and intended to rouse the martial spirit of the reader.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> The structure of MSS TOD 121 is as follows:-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The contents folio
begins with:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ik
Oaṅkār Srī Bhagautī jī Sahāi </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">‘The contents of the
Scripture of the Wonderous Tales, spoken by the Tenth King’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Jāpu</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
– ‘Recitation of God’s Attributes’ – folio 1-6<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Akāl
Ustati</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> – ‘Praises of the Timeless Lord’ – <i>f.</i> 6-20<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">3.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Bachitra
Nāṭak</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> – ‘Wonderous Tales’ – <i>f. </i>20-36<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">4.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Chaṅḍī
Charitra</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> – ‘Tales of Chandi’ – <i>f. </i>36-49<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">5.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Chaṅḍī
Charitra II</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> – ‘Tales of Chandi II’– <i>f. </i>49-58<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">6.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Vār
Srī Bhagautī jī kī</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> – ‘Battles of Chandi’– <i>f. </i>59-63<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">7.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Giān
Prabodh</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> – ‘Explanation of Wisdom’– <i>f. </i>63-77<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">8.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Chaubīs
Avatār</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> – ‘The Twenty-Four Incarnations of Sri Vishnu’– <i>f. </i>77-127<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">9.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Krishnā
Avatār</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> – ‘The Incarnations of Sri Krishan’ – <i>f. </i>127-308<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">10.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Brahmā
Avatār</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> – ‘The Incarnations of Sri Brahma’ – <i>f. </i>308-321<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">11.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Rudra
Avatār</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> – ‘The Incarnations of Sri Rudra’– <i>f. </i> 321-358<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">12.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Shastra
Nām Mālā</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> – ‘Rosary of Ancient Weapons’– <i>f. </i>358-404<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">13.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Svaiye</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
– ‘Stanzas of the Khalsa’ – <i>f. </i>404-407<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">14.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Jo
Kich Lekh</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> – ‘Reply to Brahmin Priest by the Guru’– <i>f. </i>407<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">15.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Re
Man Aiso Kar</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> – ‘<i>Shabads</i>
in <i>Rāgas</i>’– <i>f. </i>407-408<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">16.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Pakhiyān
Charitra</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> – ‘Tales of Deceit’– <i>f. </i>408-686<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">17.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Zafarnāmā</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
– ‘Letter of Victory to Emperor Aurangzeb’– <i>f.
</i>686-705<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Contains
<i>Hikāyāts</i> ‘Tales.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">18.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Asfotak
Kabitt</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> – ‘Miscellaneous Poetry’– <i>f. </i>705-708<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Includes
<i>Mājh</i> of the Tenth Guru<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The colophon reads Saṅmat
1895 Bikramī/ 1828/29 <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">ad. </span>In the
binding a glued note reads:-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">‘The Grunth’ a sacred
book of the Sikhs, to the object of their worship. Presented to Lieut Col. His C.M
Wade by Jawahir Singh, a descendent of the one of the Priests of the Sikhs.’ A
loose folio reads, ‘This is not the <i>Adi
Granth</i> but the <i>Dasama Padshah Ka
Granth’</i>, ‘the book of the 10<sup>th</sup> King’ Gur Govind. Presented to
the Royal Asiatic Society in Nov 1842 by Mr Wade (folio 1a). Compositions or portions
of 1, 2, 6 and 16 are used in daily Sikh liturgy.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1h4kSdBX0K9u0bjsHkxPTn7hg9gW1WZ5YWOy8MCTbVIS9V5qN-FcotPuXmIAkqaJBk374I7Bov7YqG_9vkxO6yHV6k3HLLtQRhTiLVlA9ijmHenXqU5bQ3N2opCtPp3DN8FxzYaqOOUI/s1600/Dasam.Granth.Frontispiece.BL.Manuscript.1825-1850.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1h4kSdBX0K9u0bjsHkxPTn7hg9gW1WZ5YWOy8MCTbVIS9V5qN-FcotPuXmIAkqaJBk374I7Bov7YqG_9vkxO6yHV6k3HLLtQRhTiLVlA9ijmHenXqU5bQ3N2opCtPp3DN8FxzYaqOOUI/s1600/Dasam.Granth.Frontispiece.BL.Manuscript.1825-1850.jpg" height="286" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-69713048782295657152014-05-20T09:52:00.000-07:002014-05-20T09:52:29.729-07:00Towards a Narrative Ethics of Sikh Discipleship - Erik W. Resly, MDiv 2012<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.pdf<br />
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<div class="article-content" style="background-color: white;">
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<span style="font-family: times new roman, times; font-size: x-small;"><strong>Abstract:</strong> Inquiries into Sikh ethics emphasize the tension between human agency and divine will, wherein divine grace takes primacy over personal effort. To date, scholars have primarily drawn on passages from the Adi Granth as authoritative pedagogical sources for morally imagining the Good Life. Adopting the hermeneutical tools of reader response theory, I will suggest that the Janamsakhi literary tradition offers a heretofore-overlooked repository of theodical life-worlds that both supplements and complicates conventional teachings on the experience of Sikh discipleship. In particular, I will demonstrate that these stories do real ethical work on the reader by intending an imagined space and refiguratively calling forth ‘a way of dwelling there.’ Drawing on three particular sakhis from the Puratan anthology, I will examine the ways in which these episodes try to reach in front of themselves to shape the reader, thereby equipping her with ‘technologies of the self’ with which to navigate issues of risk, ambivalence and surrender. Finally, I will encourage scholars in the field of Sikh Studies to take this reception-based approach to the Janamsakhi tradition seriously as a middle ground between the contemporary hegemonic voices of etic historical criticism and emic apologetics.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: times new roman, times; font-size: x-small;">“To be a disciple of the Guru is a very subtle activity.”<span class="MsoFootnoteReference"> </span><a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn1" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[i]</span></a></span></div>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: times new roman, times; font-size: x-small;"></span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: times new roman, times; font-size: x-small;">-Bhai Gurdas, <em>Vaar 9, Pauri 2</em></span></div>
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<span style="float: left; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times; font-size: 45px; line-height: 28px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: justify;">N</span><span style="font-family: times new roman, times; font-size: x-small;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: times new roman, times; font-size: x-small;">estled within his tome of coded Sikh moral prescription lies Bhai Gurdas’ telling confession: “Discipleship of the Guru is such a difficult task that only a rare one can understand it.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn2" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[ii]</span></a>Despite all attempts at fixing Sikh ethics as a systematic “doctrine” of values directing human conduct, any gesture towards coherence or transparency necessarily belies the multivocality of the ethical resources available to practitioners.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn3" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[iii]</span></a> Most poignantly, a deep ambivalence regarding the interplay between human agency and divine will riddles these polyvalent texts. To date, Sikh scholars have primarily looked to the authoritative Guru Granth Sahib for answers.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn4" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[iv]</span></a> In so doing, they have restricted themselves to a rich anthology that nevertheless offers few clues as to what a devout Sikh life looks like amidst the messiness of embodied experience.</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: times new roman, times;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
In contrast, I want to suggest that the <em>Janamsakhi</em> tradition represents a heretofore-overlooked repository of ethical life-worlds. Employing the tools of Paul Ricoeur’s textual hermeneutics, I argue further that the <em>Janamsakhi </em>stories equip readers with technologies for ethical self-fashioning. Three episodes drawn from the <em>Puratan</em> collection, in particular, demonstrate the nuance obtained by the <em>Janamsakhi</em> tradition regarding the tension between freedom and determinism. Finally, I submit that this turn towards textual reception clears a middle path between apologetic and historical critical studies of the <em>Janamsakhis</em> more generally.</div>
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1. THE ETHICS OF NARRATIVE</div>
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Before we indulge the <em>Janamsakhis</em> themselves, we first must consider the ethical efficacy of narrative from a theoretical vantage point. To do so, I propose the lens of a reception-based hermeneutic. In reaction to the formalism of New Criticism, which promotes the scientific investigation of a literary artifact’s objective qualities, reader-response theorists and ‘theological’ phenomenologists<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn5" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[v]</span></a> draw on the legacy of Romantic subjectivism to re-focus attention on the effects that literary texts have on their readers. This approach endorses the interpretive activity of the reader over and against authorial intent or internal literary structure. For the purposes of this paper, I will make use of three interpretive strategies documented in Paul Ricoeur’s analysis of Christian holy texts.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn6" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[vi]</span></a></div>
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For one, Ricoeur allows us to approach narrative on its own terms. This is especially relevant in light of the surge in historical criticism now permeating the field of Sikh studies. Rather than parsing texts into fractional fossils of unique literary time-slices, Ricoeur follows Robert Alter in viewing second-order historical considerations as bound up with, and complementary to, the internal coherence of the text itself.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn7" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[vii]</span></a> The world <em>of</em> the text, thus, contains the world <em>behind</em> the text. Further, Ricoeur takes seriously the norm-governed nature of literary production. A unified text sets its own rules. As interpreters, we must place ourselves in “its sense.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn8" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[viii]</span></a> That is not to suggest that interpretation remains captive to an endless repetition of fixed signification. Rather, the very act of reading dynamically prolongs “the itineraries of meaning opened up by the work of interpretation.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn9" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[ix]</span></a> By engaging a text, the reader simultaneously decontextualizes meaning from the specificity of its fictionalized location and recontextualizes it in her contemporary <em>Sitz im Leben</em>. The seeming fluidity of this transition from narrative to human action originates with the inherent temporal relation that binds the two: “time becomes human to the extent that it is organized after the manner of a narrative; narrative, in turn, is meaningful to the extent that it portrays the features of temporal experience.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn10" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[x]</span></a></div>
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In this way, texts can be approached as revelation. Their revelatory power does not rest in the propositional sense of monologically transmitting deposited divine truths, however, but in the performative sense of enacting new meaning through the reciprocity of reader and text. In effect, texts reach out in front of themselves into Husserl’s <em>Lebenswelt</em>, or what Ricoeur terms the world <em>in front of </em>the text. Narrative evinces <em>as if </em>life-worlds that desire inhabitation. Through interpretation, the reader unfolds “a proposed world…wherein [she] might project [her] ownmost possibilities.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn11" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xi]</span></a> In turn, this new modality refigures the subject by empowering her to put on and try out novel ontologies. Beyond description, then, narrative actively shapes and forms readers.</div>
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Thirdly, this experimentation with unfamiliar ontological configurations mirrors the human construction of selfhood. In reality, the reader’s self-identity involves a constant struggle of reinterpretation. She continuously internalizes and embodies possible ways of being-in-the-world. The process of creating a self proves malleable, fluid and context-dependent. She patches together a life-story out of the narrative fragments she has chosen and claimed as her own. In this way, the world <em>of </em>the text functions as a propaedeutic or laboratory for thinking and working through the moral life in the world <em>in front of</em> the text. Or, as Ricoeur intuits, “to understand the world and to change it are fundamentally the same thing.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn12" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xii]</span></a></div>
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For Michel Foucault, the act of refiguring the self requires tools of subjectification. The subject, on his view, must create, as opposed to merely discover, a self. Attending to the multiple patterns of truth that a subject may fashion into an “art of living,” he thus lifts up <em>technologies of the self</em> as one of four practical modalities<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn13" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xiii]</span></a> of subject-formation.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn14" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xiv]</span></a> These technologies of the self, in particular, address the “exercise of oneself on oneself.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn15" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xv]</span></a> As reflexive practices, they inculcate a certain mode of existence in and through power, allowing individuals to work on themselves through bodily, behavioral and intellectual regulation. In short, technologies of the self empower subjects with self-policing tools to mold themselves into ethical agents. </div>
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Putting Ricoeur and Foucault into conversation, we come to understand narrative as a method of deepening the reader’s capacity for selfhood by reorienting her to an ever-enlarging vision of human possibility. In witnessing and engaging the literary other as that stranger navigates the ambiguities of fictional life, she trains herself in the dynamic execution, or creative living-out, of static moral scripts. By implication, she sharpens her technologies of self-fashioning. In the Sikh context, this enabling and constraining of the embodied self resonates with the exhortation: the “field of the body is to be cultivated for truthful life and spiritual advancement.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn16" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xvi]</span></a> Practitioners, thus, strive to harness the virtues of the body, speech and mind using the five organs of perception (<em>gyan-indriyas</em>) and the five organs of action (<em>karma-indriyas</em>). Narrative not only casts characters who model such self-disciplining, but it also provides insight into how the reader might make “sense of time – and, again, of action, and with it, of our freedom.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn17" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xvii]</span></a> This brings us to the domain of Sikh ethics.</div>
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2. DESCRIPTIVE SIKH ETHICS</div>
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The Guru Granth Sahib explains that the Lord indwells in the human subject “through the lifestyle of Truth.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn18" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xviii]</span></a> But what form does that lifestyle take? Scholarship on Sikh ethics sends at best enigmatic, at worst incongruous, messages. I suspect that this ambivalence derives in part from these scholars’ attempts at artificially fitting the Sikh ethical climate into the Western framework of moral philosophy.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn19" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xix]</span></a> Either way, the underlying thematic indeterminacy in this literature coalesces around the tenuous relationship between human autonomy and the <em>hukam</em>, or divine will. In his comprehensive ethical treatment of the Sikh tradition, Surindar Singh Kohli addresses this complexity with candor. On the one hand, the human being appears to lack all agency: “He is a mere puppet in the hands of God.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn20" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xx]</span></a> Yet, Kohli recognizes that such a representation wholly deflates the ethical project. “If we deny any free will to the individual soul,” he notes, “there will be no ethics.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn21" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxi]</span></a> On Kohli’s account, the Sikh tradition falls back on divine grace precisely in such moments of over-determinism. This move is not intellectual artifice, but rather enfolded within the expansive theological tradition. Kohli articulates it in this way: “His grace begins when one makes an effort to move on the right path.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn22" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxii]</span></a> Paradoxically, then, the human subject must exercise agency and adopt a “lifestyle of Truth” in obedience to the <em>hukam</em> in order to summon God’s liberating grace. Discipleship focuses on the nature of that path towards God. By exploring the foundational building blocks of Sikh ethics, we will briefly patch together a mosaic of what discipleship should look like from within the sterile and detached halls of the academy.</div>
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As suggested, the notion of <em>hukam</em> dominates the ethical literature. Nripinder Singh writes: “The moral character of human actions and of human conduct is determined, in Sikh theology, within the framework of God’s <em>hukam.</em>”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn23" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxiii]</span></a> Guru Nanak testifies to this centrality in his <em>japji </em>by recounting the various ways in which “everyone is within Your <em>hukam</em>, no one is outside of it.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn24" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxiv]</span></a>With roots in Islamic thought,<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn25" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxv]</span></a> the term <em>hukam</em> signals God’s law or will, which does not stand independent from the divine. According to Wazir Singh: “The Ordainer (<em>hukami</em>) is not distinct from his Ordinance (<em>hukam</em>). From the concealed, unmanifest state, He springs into the revealed, manifest state.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn26" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxvi]</span></a> In its immanence, <em>hukam</em> reflects the central life principle, which conceives existence, births ego, determines transmigration, offers the promise of truth and encapsulates activity and passivity, among other operations. In other words, <em>hukam </em>comprises creative and destructive tendencies, comforts as well as sorrows. It signals the primal, conscious power at the base of all cosmic phenomena. The universe obeys <em>hukam</em>, for creation depends on and is the outcome of it. In her self-centeredness or egoism (<em>haumai</em>), however, the human being loses sight of divine law. This does not reflect a wrinkle in God’s power, since <em>hukam</em>endows the subject with the “freedom to choose.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn27" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxvii]</span></a> The Guru Granth Sahib teaches that God offers the human this choice so that she may make or unmake herself and move in either “the direction of being ‘regenerate’ or ‘degenerate’.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn28" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxviii]</span></a> Throughout, it must be remembered that the <em>hukam</em> remains “always just.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn29" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxix]</span></a></div>
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Further, the Sikh ethical subject acts under the purview of <em>hukam</em> against the backdrop of <em>karam</em>, or <em>karma</em>. Originating in the Sanskrit as a signifier for action, the term developed out of its Rig Vedic<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn30" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxx]</span></a> and Upanisadic<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn31" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxi]</span></a> contexts into its Sikh definition as a component of divine will. An inherited chain of action from previous lives, <em>karma</em> determines individual birth states against the measure of <em>hukam</em>, which by no means guarantees an equal playing field: “Some are born beggars and some may hold vast courts.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn32" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxii]</span></a> Similarly, that which the subject sows in the present he will reap in the future. Different life positions do not eclipse the possibility of human union with God. Through devotion, a member of any gender or caste can become the model disciple, or<em>gurmukh</em>, one who faces the Guru.<em> </em>Moreover, God may choose to intervene in this process. If God deems the subject worthy, God may reverse the adverse effects of <em>karma</em> through divine grace.</div>
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The Sikh ethical ideal can be glossed under the rubric of God-realization. Bowing before <em>hukam</em>, the disciple aligns her will to the divine Way, sowing the seeds of devotion in the field of action. Accordingly, God’s grace saturates and liberates the devotee in spite of karmic hindrances. Dr. Hardayal adopts a tripartite evaluative framework to track the disciple’s growing alignment with<em>hukam</em>.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn33" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxiii]</span></a> Initially, the practitioner focuses on discipline, negatively controlling impulses and reigning in gratuitous desire. Secondly, she positively unfolds the body, mind and soul, thereby enriching her sense of personhood. Lastly, in dedication, she serves humanity and God with selfless devotion. Notably, this matrix advocates neither hedonistic self-gratification nor ascetic self-negation. The way of the disciple is one of self-blossoming in the muddied waters of temptation: “Both self-indulgence and self-denial lead us nowhere; self-restraint is the proper mode of training.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn34" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxiv]</span></a> Counter-instinctually, then, the devotee’s true spiritual freedom depends on her “transvaluation of ego-consciousness into Universal or Cosmic Consciousness,” which derives from willing submission to <em>hukam</em>.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn35" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxv]</span></a></div>
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The aforementioned ethical précis relies on a descriptive second-order synthesis of Sikh practices and teachings. But where might we turn for first-hand prescriptive advice? As indicated, the Guru Granth Sahib serves as the primary object of scholarly interest to date. Nripinder Singh characterizes the sacrosanct compilation as “the source” of Sikh ethics.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn36" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxvi]</span></a> Steeped in dense metaphor and elaborate symbolism, the ethical directives of the Guru Granth Sahib are admittedly “very often only felt vaguely,” requiring a prolonged and concerted effort on behalf of the devotee.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn37" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxvii]</span></a> In contrast, the <em>rahits</em>, or codes of conduct, address quotidian concerns in a matter-of-fact fashion. Although it can be argued that inchoate <em>rahit </em>injunctions found their way into earlier Sikh writings,<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn38" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxviii]</span></a> W.H. McLeod contends that the majority of <em>rahit </em>literature took shape several decades after the inauguration of the Khalsa on the Baisakhi festival day in 1699.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn39" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxix]</span></a> Most notably, the <em>Rahit Maryada</em> details normative attitudes towards personal practice and ritual, panthic discipline and the order of Khalsa initiation. Concise and didactic in tone, the<em>rahit</em> manuscripts tend to narrowly focus on so-called “baptized” Sikh life.</div>
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Two other collections are of note. Guru Arjan reportedly hailed the <em>Vaaran</em> of Sikh scribe Bhai Gurdas as the key to the Guru Granth Sahib. In the Sikh imaginary, Bhai Gurdas comes to represent “the very first apostle who expatiated, for the followers of a nascent faith, on moral principles which he saw derived from the authority of his Gurus.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn40" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xl]</span></a> Much like the Guru Granth Sahib, the<em>Vaaran</em> consists of propositional assertions couched in a poetic register. In the late sixteenth century, around the time Bhai Gurdas composed his anthology, another substantial body of literature surfaced. Referred to as the birth stories or <em>janamsakhis</em>, these narrative accounts of Guru Nanak’s travels record miraculous events offensive to modern sensibilities. Yet, according to Nripinder Singh, the <em>janamsakhis</em> played a “pivotal role” in early Sikh tradition, enshrining “virtue and obligation through anecdote.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn41" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xli]</span></a> Even today, the stories are “still widely read…[and] endlessly related to Sikhs of all ages.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn42" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xlii]</span></a></div>
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3. THREE JANAM SAKHIS</div>
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I have chosen three discrete birth stories out of the <em>Puratan</em> collection for closer examination. Although the <em>Puratan</em> anthology does not enjoy the popularity claimed by Bhai Bala’s<em>janamsakhi</em>, it presents a “coherent travel itinerary” acceptable to “educated opinion.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn43" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xliii]</span></a> Given the inscribed audience of this paper, I therefore esteem the selection to be appropriate. As we will soon discover, however, the stories still carry vestiges of the supernatural. In fact, Ernest Trumpp, whose translation I will use,<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn44" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xliv]</span></a> brazenly remarked: “The whole story is so mixed up with the miraculous, that it bears the stamp of fable on its front.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn45" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xlv]</span></a></div>
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The first <em>sakhi</em> reads:</div>
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The Baba departed thence and went on … In that village one Khatri was attached (to Nanak). He came one day to have an interview, and after having had the interview he came continually to do service … One of his neighbouring shopkeepers asked: "Brother, why art thou continually going, to what rendezvous art thou going?" That disciple replied: "Brother, some pious man has come, I go to meet him." That one said: "Sir, let me also have an interview with him!" One day that one also came with him; (but) coming and coming he attached himself to a slave-girl. Thence they were always going together from home, but that one went to the whore's house, and the other, who had been coming before, went to do service to the Guru, the Lord. One day that one said: " O brother, I go to do a bad work and thou art going to render service to the holy man. To-day let us make an agreement between ourselves, that we will see, what will accrue to me and what will happen to thee. If thou wilt come first, sit down here, and if I should come first, I will sit down here. To-day we will go together away." When that one went, he found the slave-girl not at home. Being vexed he rose and came to the (appointed) place and sat down there. In his stray thoughts he began to dig up the ground; when he looked on, it was a gold coin. Then having drawn out his knife he began to dig (more). When he looked, they were charcoals, a whole jar full. The other, after he had fallen down at the foot of the Guru, went away. Outside the door a thorn pierced his foot. Having bound up his foot with a cloth he came (to the appointed place), with one shoe drawn off and one being put on. That one asked: "O brother, why hast thou drawn off one of thy shoes?" He replied: " O brother, a thorn has pierced my foot." That one said: " O brother, to-day I have found a gold muhar and thee a thorn has pierced; we must ask about this matter. For thou goest to do service to the Guru and I go to commit sin." Then both came and told the whole truth. The Guru said: "Be silent!" They replied: "Sir, may an explanation be given (to us)!" Then the Guru said: "The jar of charcoals were gold muhars; it is what he has sown in his former birth. He had given one muhar to a holy man, these his alms had become muhars. But in proportion as he ran after wickedness, the muhars became charcoals. And in thy destiny an impaling-stake was written. In proportion as thou wast coming to do service (to me), the impaling-stake decreased, of the impaling-stake became a thorn, as the result of service rendered (to me)." Then they rose and fell down at his feet and became devotees of the name; they began to mutter: "Guru, Guru!"<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn46" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xlvi]</span></a></div>
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The second <em>sakhi </em>reads:</div>
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In Singhala-dipa they went to the Raja Siv-nabhi and took up their abode in his garden on the other side of the ocean … The Raja Siv-nabhi sent slave-girls of exquisite beauty, who, having arrived there, began to dance. They sang many Rags and made many sports, but the Baba did not say anything, he remained sunk in meditation. Afterwards the Raja Siv-nabhi came (himself) … When the Baba had concluded (this verse), the Raja came and fell down at his feet, humbly begging and saying: "Sir, be so kind as to come to my house." The Baba replied: "I do not go on foot." Raja Siv-nabhi said: "'Sir, all is given to thee. If it be thy wish, mount a horse or an elephant! or mount also a traveling-throne!" The Baba replied: "We will ride on men." The King said: "Sir, there are also many men (at thy disposal), mount!" The Baba replied: "Your honour, if there be such a man, who is a Raja (or) a prince, and if there be the Raja of the city, on his back I will mount." The Raja said: "O King, I am thy creature, the Raja am I, mount!" The Baba mounted on the back of the Raja. The people (seeing this) began to say, that the Raja had run mad. When he (the Baba) had come, he sat down. The Rani Candkala and the Raja Siv-nabhi joined their hands (in supplication) and stood before him, humbly saying: "Do you wish to eat, Sir?" The Baba answered: <em>"I </em>am keeping a fast." The Raja said: "Sir, how may we bestow any benefit (on you)?" The Guru answered: "If there would be some flesh of man, I would eat it." The Raja Siv-nabhi said: "Sir, many men also are a sacrifice for you." The Baba replied: "Your honour, if there would be such a man, a son in the house of the Raja, a prince of twelve years, his flesh I would eat." On this the Raja and the Rani became thoughtful; then the Raja said: "O Lord, perhaps there is a son in the house of some Raja." The Rani said then: "How shall I give him up by thy order?" A fight ensued with her; when she was overcome, she gave her son up. The Rani said then: "Your honour, there is a son in our house, look at his janam-patri!" When the janam-patri was examined, it was found, that he was twelve years old." The Raja said then: "O son, thy body is required for the Guru! what is thy desire?" The boy replied: "O father, what benefit is derived from this, that my body should be required for the Guru?" The Raja said: "As this one has been married seven days, his wife also should be asked." Then the Rani and the Raja went and sat down at the side of their daughter-in-law. The Raja said: " O daughter, the body of thy husband is required for the Guru, what is thy pleasure?" The girl replied: "O father, this one's body is required for the Guru, and my widowhood is sacrificed to the Guru, what other benefit is derived from this?" Then the four came to the Guru and stood before him. The Raja Siv-nabhi said: "Sir, here is the boy!" The Baba replied: "Your honour, thus he is of no use to me. The mother should seize his arms and his wife should seize his feet and thou shouldst take a knife into thy hand and slaughter him, then he will be of use to me." The Raja Siv-nabhi obeyed the order of the Guru; taking a knife into his hand he slaughtered his son. Having boiled (the flesh) he brought it and put it before him. Then the Baba said: "You three, closing the eyes and saying: ‘Vah Guru!' put (it) into your mouth!" The Raja and the Rani and the Raja's daughter-in-law closed their eyes and said: ‘Vah Guru!’ When they put it into their mouth, the four were sitting there, but when they opened their eyes, the Guru Baba was not there. The Raja became distressed and went to the wilderness; he stood on his feet bare-headed and wandered about saying: "Guru, Guru!" Then after twelve months he (the Guru) came and gave him an interview and applied him to his feet; the regeneration and dying of the Raja Siv-nabhi was cut off, he became a disciple … all the people of Singhala-dipa became disciples, they began to mutter: "Guru, Guru!" the whole region was pardoned after the Raja Siv-nabhi.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn47" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xlvii]</span></a></div>
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The third <em>sakhi </em>reads:</div>
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Then by the order (of the Lord) Gorakhnath came to the Baba and said: "A wide diffusion (of thy name) is made." The Baba replied: "O Gorakhnath, if any one will belong to us, you will see yourself." Then the Baba went out of the house and many people, votaries of the name, followed him. By the order (of the Lord) copper coins were laid on the ground; many people took the copper coins, rose and went away. When they went further on, Rupees were laid on the ground; many people taking the Rupees went away. When they went further on, gold muhars were laid down. Whoever had remained with him took the gold muhars and went away. Two disciples remained as yet with him. When they went further on, there was a funeral pyre, upon which four lamps were burning; a sheet was spread over it, (under which) a dead one was lying, but a stench was coming (from him). The Baba said: "Is there any one who will eat this one?" The other disciple, who was (with him), turned away his face and spit out, and having spit out walked away. Guru Angad alone came on, and having received a promise stood there and said: "O Sir, from which side shall I apply my mouth?" It was said: "From the side of the feet the mouth should be applied." When Guru Angad lifted up the sheet, Guru Nanak was lying there asleep. Then Gorakh pronounced the word: "O Nanak, he is thy Guru, who will be produced from thy body." Then his name was changed from Lahana to Guru Angad. Gorakhnath departed and Nanak returned to his house. Then the people began to repent very much (of what they had done). Those who had taken the copper coins said: "If we had gone further on, we would have brought Rupees," and those, who had taken the Rupees, said: "If we had gone further on, we would have got gold muhars."<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn48" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xlviii]</span></a></div>
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Independently, these three narrative episodes invite us into the world <em>in</em> the text using a variety of literary techniques. The first <em>sakhi</em> commands our attention through its anthropomorphic dramatization of two natural human instincts. Initially, we eagerly cozy up to the devout disciple, whose steadfast commitment to “some pious man” proves worthy of our veneration. Conversely, we can also readily relate to the inquiring neighbor, whose preference for instant gratification supercedes his passing curiosity about the mysterious figure offering interviews. Recognizing these two personified human tendencies, we enter into the narrative with prefigured expectations about the respective consequences of each character’s actions. The power of the episode lies precisely in its refusal to accommodate these anticipations. Accordingly, we, too, find ourselves running to the Guru in search of an explanation.</div>
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In the second <em>sakhi</em>, we encounter an uncharacteristically removed and pertinacious image of Guru Nanak, who oscillates between meditative numbness and exigent authoritarianism. The seeming ease with which he caters the specificity of his requests to the unique conditions and possessions of the Raja works to both draw us into his emerging machinations and push us away out of disgust. Nanak borders on the fearful and fascinating mystery. The feeling of antipathy climaxes with the Guru’s abrupt character reversal: formerly a detached religious spectator immersed in meditation and fasting, he suddenly develops an appetite for the “flesh of man,” insisting on the slaughter of a young boy. The sheer incongruity of this grotesque demand with our prefigured admiration of the Guru confronts us with a “new, ‘opaque’ reality that no longer allows itself to be understood from a pregiven horizon of expectations.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn49" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xlix]</span></a></div>
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The third <em>sakhi</em> extends the cannibalistic theme but recasts it in more familiar terms. Here, we confront Nanak in the process of discerning his true disciples by tempting them with riches. Eagerly anticipating the next ordeal, we invest ourselves in the competition, right up until the final trial. Again, the episode’s uncanny barbarity startles us through its disruption of Lahana’s perceived ascension from the material to spiritual plane. The raw fleshliness of Nanak’s demand tears our prefigured loyalty to the Guru in two: part of us wants to follow the “other disciple” who nobly “turned away his face and spit out,” while another part of us remains committed to Lahana’s arduous path of discipleship. It only becomes clear at the cathartic moment of lifting the sheet that the latter’s steadfastness was preferable. </div>
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Standing alone, then, each of the three <em>sakhis</em> comprises “itself an itinerary of meaning” with a plurality of voices, perspectives and significations.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn50" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[l]</span></a> Yet, it should be remembered that each story remains embedded in an encompassing narrative by means of intertextual quotation – both in the local sense of characterological consistency and in the more expansive sense of scriptural citation.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn51" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[li]</span></a> In this way, “the text interprets before having been interpreted.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn52" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lii]</span></a> The three excerpts under discussion lean on and interpenetrate one another through their shared <em>topos</em> of movement. In each episode, the disciples journey to the holy. Whether “continually going” to his teacher, sending “slave-girls of exquisite beauty” before making his own way to the Guru, or following the Baba “alone,” each protagonist must embark on a pilgrimage of differing length and frequency. The very act of traveling opens up the possibility of disclosure, which occurs orally, visually or as a combination of the two. In every case, this revelation sheds new light on past occurrences, as well as on the decisions and events unfolding in the other <em>sakhis</em>. The reader is left wondering: how might the slave-girl-courting disciple of the first episode respond to the allure of the copper coins? Would Lahana have agreed to eat the corpse if it had been that of his own son? Why was the Raja not granted guruship? The ambivalence of these intertextual inquiries mirrors the indeterminate outcome the <em>sakhis</em> themselves: in the first story, both men end up disciples despite their radically different natures; in the second, “all the people of Singhala-dipa” convert and are “pardoned” on account of one man’s favorable interview; in the third, a successor is chosen but his community remains ignorant of the Guru’s intended message. Thus, the immediate import of discipleship remains unclear.</div>
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4. PRESCRIPTIVE SIKH ETHICS</div>
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This irresolution nuances the second-order descriptive ethics presented above. It complicates programmatic assertions about the relationship between human agency and divine will. Further, through the method of narration, it outfits readers with technologies of self-fashioning. To illustrate the ethical significance of the <em>janamsakhi</em> tradition, I now want to turn away from narrative’s configurative ability to organize a diversity of “agents, goals, means, interactions, circumstances, unexpected results” into an “intelligible whole,” to the “intersection of the world of the text and the world of the hearer or reader.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn53" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[liii]</span></a> Following Ricoeur, I submit that “what a reader receives [by engaging a <em>sakhi</em>] is not just the sense of the work, but…the world and the temporality it unfolds.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn54" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[liv]</span></a></div>
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In Bhai Gurdas’ <em>Vaaran</em>, we read: “One reaps what one sows and receives the fruit of seeds offered to earth.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn55" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lv]</span></a> This theological prescription evinces a certain foundational causality that should guide ethical action. On this logic, the Sikh must vigilantly attend to the seeds that she plants and expect lush fruit in return. To a large extent, the first <em>sakhi</em> confirms this rule. Whereas the lustful disciple loses money on account of his impropriety, the loyal disciple is rewarded for his faithfulness with his life. Both reap what they sow. At the same time, however, the story obscures this linearity in important ways. For one, it dramatizes the degree to which the disciple always finds herself thrown into a world with an unknowable chain of <em>karma</em>. Seemingly free acts are necessarily unpredictable, because “the character of the agent is partially formed and partially reformed [through karmic accumulation] in the moment of free decision.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn56" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lvi]</span></a> Secondly, the Guru introduces an additional element of uncertainty into this already fraught autonomy. <em>Karma</em> itself is subject to divine will, further distorting the logical, inexorable principle of cause and effect. The disciple, thus, always acts against the opaque backdrop of past actions under the scrutiny of the divine, whose own enigmatic dispensation of grace may alter that karmic trail. What does this philosophically dense picture look like in practice? The first <em>sakhi</em> offers some clues: it prescribes, above all, an ethic of trust. Living into the experience of faithful devotion exemplified by the fictional pilgrim, the reader is equipped with the tools to build a discipleship of confidence in the unknown and unpredictable ways of the world. The world <em>in </em>the text draws the reader into a life-world to which she may at any time return and from which she extracts concrete, lived images of a trusting disposition. After all, without the Guru’s intervention, the faithful practitioner in the <em>sakhi </em>would have little reason to maintain his devotional posture. What is more, even after having understood his blessing, the disciple is worse off than when he set out on his journey! Not only does he suffer from the pain of the thorn’s incision, but his reward remains intangible. He has nothing to show for his faith. Reaching into the world of the reader, then, this episode models the insecurity a disciple must come to accept.</div>
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The second <em>sakhi</em> enlarges this ethic of trust to encompass an ethic of self-sacrifice. Again, in Bhai Gurdas’ <em>Vaaran</em>, we read: “One could be such a person [i.e. disciple] only after getting sacrificed for truth and contentment and by eschewing delusions and fears.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn57" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lvii]</span></a> As an abstract conceptual proposition, this utterance drops few clues as to what form this act must take. Questions abound: what is being sacrificed? Who performs the sacrifice? How often must this sacrifice be repeated, if at all? The dramatic narrative unfolding of the deeply disturbing second<em>sakhi</em> testifies to the symbolic complexity of this ethical injunction. On one level, discipleship involves an initial act of selfless renunciation. In the case of the Raja, the humiliating event of carrying another man on his back represents the first of multiple demands made by the Guru on the disciple’s normative expectations. In this way, the very first move towards discipleship entails a transposition of authority. It means obeying the divine will and submitting to its perfect justice. Thus, in compliance with the Guru’s request, the Raja must summon his family and oversee the slaughter of his son. The symbolic force of this act should not go unnoticed. By sacrificing his heir, the Raja sacrifices himself, his legacy. Further, the <em>sakhi</em> prescribes a trust permeated by risk. At the end of the episode, the Guru provisionally disappears – any recompense is indefinitely deferred. Was it all an illusion? Driven to madness, the Raja sacrifices his sanity, social status, causal understanding of the world. It is not even clear whether or not he remains obedient to divine precept while exiled to the wilderness. Eventually, erratically, the Guru intervenes and extends his grace. Hence, the story works on the reader by reframing her prefigured understanding of autonomy. Not only does she learn to reinscribe her freedom within a web of relationality (the sacrifice of another as a sacrifice of self), but she refashions her definition of “contentment,” as intimated by Bhai Gurdas. Contentment no longer signals instant gratification or concrete reward, but rather the very unpredictability of discipleship. Is self-sacrifice worth the cost? Eschewing fear, the disciple must risk not always knowing.</div>
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The third <em>sakhi</em> draws on this careful interplay between freedom and determinism, enthroning the virtues of trust and self-sacrifice within an ethic of devotion. Lahana, in one sense, determines his own fate. In contradistinction to the greed and weak-willed opportunism guiding his companions, he perseveres in trust, sacrificing effortless contentment and cheap grace for the audacity of risk. However, Lahana only exercises his agency insofar as he submits to the divine will. The story, thus, complicates Bhai Gurdas’ call to “walk the path of Truth.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn58" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lviii]</span></a> Lahana models for the reader the ethical paradox identified by Wazir Singh, namely that an individual’s freedom from <em>hukam</em> lies in direct proportion to the “degree he knows and comprehends” it.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn59" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lix]</span></a> The final scene typifies this tension. Through absolute obedience to divine command, Lahana gains the sovereignty of guruship. He moves from disciple to teacher, from passive recipient to active giver. That is not to say that he escapes the matrix of <em>hukam</em> and arrives at an absolute, pure autonomy. But through “obedience to, and adoration of, God,” identified by Nripinder Singh as the “core” of Sikh ethics, Lahana opens the path for the reader to the realization of true spiritual freedom.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn60" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lx]</span></a> The concluding cannibalistic trope<em> </em>poignantly illustrates this truth. Lahana’s devotion affords him the opportunity to physically consume the Guru, to ingest the sacred, to put on his face (<em>gurmukh</em>). The act creatively illuminates Bhai Gurdas’ perplexing observation: “The Guru and the disciple are two identities but one shabad, Word permeates through both of them. When the Guru is disciple and the disciple Guru, who can make the other understand.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn61" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxi]</span></a> This ontological difference-in-unity gains further significance in light of Guru Nanak’s injunction to devour the feet, which reframes Bhai Gurdas’ observation that “the feet carry the burden of mouth, eyes, nose, ears, hands and the whole body.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn62" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxii]</span></a> The disciple is enjoined to walk the way of God, as well as welcome other students at her feet – companions with whom to see, hear, speak and do the work of the divine. Blowing life into inert ethical principles, the <em>sakhi</em> reaches into the world of the reader to help her fashion a life of bodily devotion, so that she may move beyond the selfish stop-gap of “If we had gone further on, we would have got gold muhars.”</div>
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In sum, the three <em>sakhis</em> equip the reader with the necessary tools to cultivate a way-of-being marked by trust, self-sacrifice and devotion. In contrast with the poetic, at times prescriptive, flavor of the Guru Granth Sahib, <em>rahit </em>literature and <em>Vaaran</em> of Bhai Gurdas, the narrational genre of the <em>janamsakhi </em>collection produces moral life-worlds that readers are encouraged to try on and live out. Regardless of age, individuals easily access and relate to the <em>sakhis</em> from different angles, in different social locations and with different interpretive strategies. The stories, thus, represent a form of <em>ethical drag</em>. They offer at once the possibility of performatively reanimating and subverting rigid ethical norms, as well as self-reflexively reappropriating power for ethical subjectivation. The <em>sakhis</em> clear space for the reader, temporarily estranged from her locatedness, to play with the dynamic and open-ended ontological attire offered by narrative. Returning to the world <em>in front of</em> the text, she thereby gains a novel perspective on and practice in what it means to be a Sikh ethical subject.</div>
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6. TOWARDS A READER RESPONSE HERMENEUTIC</div>
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With the introduction of the historical critical method, scholarship on the <em>janamsakhi</em> tradition has shifted its focus to a preoccupation with questions of historical accuracy. Esteemed Western scholar W. H. McLeod, for example, exemplifies this new wave of etic investigation, classifying the <em>janamsakhis</em> as “hagiographic accounts” wholly “unsatisfactory” to the rigorous historian.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn63" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxiii]</span></a> Perturbed by their unreliability, McLeod therefore undertakes the task of excavating the “superstructure of legend” for vestiges of historical fact, which he manages to gloss in a single paragraph.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn64" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxiv]</span></a> Taking note of this “intrinsic zeal for historical investigation,” emic apologists, in contrast, insist that the <em>janamsakhis </em>remain “the most important source of information on Guru Nanak if we study them carefully and intensively.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn65" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxv]</span></a> Even if such scholars push back against certain conclusions educed by the historical critical hermeneutic, their attempts at a “more fruitful and objective study” rarely escape the parameters and intentions of the “quest” they bemoan.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn66" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxvi]</span></a> With notable exceptions,<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn67" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxvii]</span></a> thus, contemporary study enslaves the <em>janamsakhis</em> to issues of historical authenticity.</div>
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I hope that this paper has demonstrated the efficacy of a reception based hermeneutic, which shifts our attention away from the text and onto the reader. This narratological approach is, of course, by no means a recent invention. With roots in Heidegger’s depiction of poetry as a vehicle for the “setting-into-work of truth,” reader response theory traces its heritage through a variety of thinkers who expanded and exploded Heidegger’s intuition that art functions as a history-(re)making act.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn68" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxviii]</span></a> Other important voices in this lineage include Hans Robert Jauss, for whom literature does not objectively represent empirical fact but rather socially forms the subject,<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn69" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxix]</span></a> as well as Jauss’ colleague at the University of Constance, Wolfgang Iser, who advocates a “dynamic reading” in which the reader weaves connections between sentences and images into a “particular world” that frustrates expectations.<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn70" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxx]</span></a> Heidegger, Jauss and Iser emphasize the power of texts to inspire and help readers to change their lives. Approaching the <em>janamsakhi</em> corpus in this way should not eclipse valuable inquiries into the nature of the texts themselves or the historical backdrop coloring their rhetoric and structure. Rather, the reception based hermeneutic endows Sikh scholars with a novel methodology for taking seriously the dominant use of the <em>janamsakhis</em> in popular practice as stories describing and prescribing the value of Sikh discipleship.</div>
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The aforementioned argument that the <em>janamsakhi</em> literary corpus exhibits profound ethical impulses always circles back to the deep ambivalence knitted into these popular tales themselves. Whereas the Adi Granth communicates ethical truth through the continual repetition of aesthetically moving if, at times, admittedly opaque poetics, while second-order scholarly treatises resort to didactic prose, Guru Nanak’s birth stories employ the technique of narrative illustration. In so doing, they preview a human world necessarily fraught with paradox, indeterminacy and the lack of satisfying closure. At its core, this irresolution points to the unique function of these stories as modalities of identity experimentation – as ethical drag. And yet, the reader’s agency is marked not by self-inflated hyperactivity, but by awakened passivity – an engaged and vulnerable patiency that allows the stories to shape her. Narratives like the <em>janamsakhis</em> neither prescribe the good life conclusively nor explain away suffering on their own. They do not gift the reader pre-packaged truths for her to unwrap and enact. Rather, these narrative life-worlds morally educate the reader through the pedagogy of experiential learning. The reader works in and through them, much as they work on her, to discover her <em>own</em> solutions to the internal conflicts and external pressures that confront her in the messiness of existence.</div>
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In this vein, the <em>janamsakhi </em>tradition represents an invaluable ethical resource for Sikh practitioners. Scholarship must therefore come to embrace these texts not as replacements for, but as supplements to, other sources of Sikh ethical instruction. If ethics function like a musical score that requires execution, the subversive nuance of the <em>janamsakhis</em> may serve as the very best teacher of that “very subtle activity” known as discipleship, akin to the “licking of the tasteless stone.”<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_edn71" name="_ednref" style="color: #333333;" title="_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxxi]</span></a></div>
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<strong>NOTES</strong></div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn1" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn1"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[i]</span></a> I wish to express my gratitude to Sutopa Dasgupta and Harpreet Singh for their insight, guidance and inspiration. Through their direction and friendship I have learned to rejoice in the subtle activity of discipleship.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn2" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn2"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[ii]</span></a> See Vaar 13, Pauri 1 of Bhai Gurdas’ <em>Vaaran</em></div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn3" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn3"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[iii]</span></a> Avtar Singh, <em>Ethics of the Sikhs</em> (Delhi: Punjabi University Patalia, 1970): 1.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn4" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn4"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[iv]</span></a> Surinder Singh Kohli, for example, unapologetically states that his inquiry into Sikh ethics entirely derives from the “main Sikh scripture.” See Surindar Singh Kohli, <em>Sikh Ethics</em> (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharial Publishers, 1975): 66. Avtar Singh allows space for both the Guru Granth Sahib and “allied” literature, yet heavily privileges the former as the “principal repertory” of the unchanged didactic “fundamentals” informing Sikh thought. See Singh, <em>Ethics of the Sikhs</em>, 3, 10, 17.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn5" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn5"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[v]</span></a> In <em>Phenomenology and the Theological Turn</em>, Dominique Janicaud places Ricoeur in the camp of phenomenologists militating against the supposition that “phenomenology and theology make two.” Dominique Janicaud et al. <em>Phenomenology and the Theological Turn</em> (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000: 3.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn6" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn6"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[vi]</span></a> Paul Ricoeur, <em>Figuring the Sacred</em> (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1995)</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn7" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn7"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[vii]</span></a> Robert Alter coins the term ‘narrative art’ to describe the way in which apparently disparate material is creatively woven together into a narrative whole that achieves coherency. See Robert Alter, <em>The Art of Biblical Narrative</em> (New York: Basic Books, 1983): 11.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn8" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn8"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[viii]</span></a> Ricoeur, <em>Figuring the Sacred</em>, 140.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn9" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn9"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[ix]</span></a> <em>Ibid</em>, 145.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn10" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn10"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[x]</span></a> Paul Ricoeur, <em>Time and Narrative</em>, vol. 1 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984): 3.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn11" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn11"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xi]</span></a> Ricoeur, <em>Figuring the Sacred</em>, 43.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn12" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn12"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xii]</span></a> Ricoeur, <em>Time and Narrative</em>, 234.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn13" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn13"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xiii]</span></a> Foucault identifies four different types of technologies: that of production, which permits the subject to produce, transform and manipulate objects; that of sign systems, which involves the production of signs and meaning; that of power, which determines conduct and objectivizes the subject; and that of the self, discussed above. See Michel Foucault, <em>Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault</em> (London: Tavistock, 1988).</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn14" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn14"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xiv]</span></a> Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France 1981-1982 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005): 332.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn15" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn15"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xv]</span></a> <em>Ibid.</em></div>
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<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn16" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn16"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xvi]</span></a> Kohli, <em>Sikh Ethics</em>, 32.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn17" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn17"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xvii]</span></a> David Pellauer, “Foreword: Recounting Narrative” in <em>Paul Ricoeur and Narrative</em>, ed. Morny Joy (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1997): xvi.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn18" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn18"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xviii]</span></a> See page 831 of the Guru Granth Sahib.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn19" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn19"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xix]</span></a> The Western tradition of moral philosophy is often parsed into the three sub-genres of meta-ethics, normative ethics and applied ethics, out of which philosophers systematize, defend and recommend certain standards of behavior. One should not assume that this mode of ethical reflection adequately maps onto the Indian context.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn20" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn20"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xx]</span></a> Kohli, <em>Sikh Ethics</em>, 13</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn21" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn21"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxi]</span></a> <em>Ibid</em>, 14.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn22" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn22"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxii]</span></a> <em>Ibid</em>, 15.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn23" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn23"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxiii]</span></a> Nripinder Singh, <em>The Sikh Moral Tradition</em> (New Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1990): 28.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn24" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn24"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxiv]</span></a> See Pauri 2 of the Japji Sahib.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn25" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn25"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxv]</span></a> Mark Horowitz traces the developmental continuities and discontinuities of <em>hukam</em> from its original Qur’anic context through Kabir into the thought of Guru Nanak. See Mark Horowitz, “(Dis)Continuity Between Sikhism and Islam: The Development of Hukam Across Religions” (M.A. thesis, University of South Florida, 2007). In its Arabic usage, the term connotes the divine wisdom and judgment that is immanent within creation.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn26" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn26"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxvi]</span></a> Wazir Singh, “Hukam: A Comparative Perspective,” <em>Journal of Sikh Studies</em> 8 (1986): 5.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn27" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn27"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxvii]</span></a> Kohli, <em>Sikh Ethics</em>, 12</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn28" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn28"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxviii]</span></a> Singh, “Hukam: A Comparative Perspective,” 3.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn29" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn29"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxix]</span></a> Surindar Singh Kohli, <em>Real Sikhism</em> (New Delhi: Harman Publishing House, 1994): 145.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn30" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn30"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxx]</span></a> In the Rig Veda, the term <em>karma</em> applied to the ritual acts of sacrificing goats or pressing soma in hopes of obtaining a transactional reward from the divine interlocutor. </div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn31" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn31"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxi]</span></a> In the Upanisads, <em>karma</em> is efficized and assigned moral valence as a term denoting the repercussions of action in past, present or future lives.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn32" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn32"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxii]</span></a> Nirmal Singh, “Suffering: The Sikh Understanding, Experience and Response,” <em>Sikh Review </em>51 (2003): 16.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn33" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn33"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxiii]</span></a> Kohli, <em>Sikh Ethics</em>, 52.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn34" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn34"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxiv]</span></a> Kohli, <em>Sikh Ethics</em>, 17.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn35" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn35"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxv]</span></a> Sashi Bala, “Hukam: The Divine Will and Human Freedom,” <em>The Sikh Review</em> 44 (1996): 511.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn36" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn36"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxvi]</span></a> Singh, <em>The Sikh Moral Tradition</em>, 210.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn37" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn37"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxvii]</span></a> Singh, <em>Ethics of the Sikhs</em>, 9.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn38" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn38"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxviii]</span></a> W. H. McLeod cities Sainapati’s <em>Gur Sobha</em> as an example. See W. H. McLeod, <em>Textual Sources for the Study of Sikhism</em> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984): 74.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn39" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn39"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xxxix]</span></a> Admittedly, this fact remains contentious, as internal textual evidence points to traces of Guru Gobind Singh in the process of composition.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn40" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn40"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xl]</span></a> Singh, <em>The Sikh Moral Tradition</em>, 23-24</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn41" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn41"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xli]</span></a> <em>Ibid</em>., 31</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn42" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn42"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xlii]</span></a> W. H. McLeod, <em>Essays in Sikh History, Tradition and Society</em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007): 37.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn43" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn43"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xliii]</span></a> McLeod, <em>Essays in Sikh History, Tradition and Society</em>, 40.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn44" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn44"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xliv]</span></a> In 1869, the India Office commissioned linguist Ernest Trumpp to translate the Guru Granth Sahib into English, which he undertook upon returning to his native Germany the following year. By 1876, Trumpp had completed major sections of the Guru Granth Sahib, as well as a translation of the <em>Puratan </em>birth stories that he came across in the India Office's Library in 1872. His legacy remains mixed, however. Perhaps the authors of <em>SikhiWiki</em> say it best: “Gifted scholar and self-righteous bigot.” </div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn45" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn45"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xlv]</span></a> Ernest Trumpp, <em>The Adi Granth</em> (London: Allen & Trübner, 1877): v.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn46" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn46"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xlvi]</span></a> <em>Ibid.</em>, xviii.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn47" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn47"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xlvii]</span></a> <em>Ibid.</em>, xxxvii-xxxviii. According to a footnote, this episode underwent significant alteration in subsequent collections: “The story of Raja Siv-nabhi is also contained in the later Janam-Sakhis, but totally changed…It was thought too offensive, as it borders on madness.”</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn48" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn48"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xlviii]</span></a> <em>Ibid.</em>, xliii-xliv.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn49" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn49"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xlix]</span></a> Hans Robert Jauss, “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory,” in <em>Toward an Aesthetic of Reception</em> (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982): 44.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn50" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn50"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[l]</span></a> Ricoeur, <em>Figuring the Sacred</em>, 147.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn51" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn51"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[li]</span></a> Frequently, the <em>sakhis</em> cite passages from the Guru Granth Sahib, even as translators and commentators tend to omit or make passing reference to them. </div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn52" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn52"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lii]</span></a> Ricoeur, <em>Figuring the Sacred</em>, 161.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn53" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn53"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[liii]</span></a> Ricoeur, <em>Time and Narrative</em>, 65, 71.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn54" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn54"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[liv]</span></a> <em>Ibid</em>., 78-79.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn55" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn55"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lv]</span></a> See Vaar 16, Pauri 1. Bhai Gurdas, here, draws on and reformulates a common <em>topos</em> found in other Sikh sacred literature.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn56" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn56"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lvi]</span></a> Bala, “Hukam: The Divine Will and Human Freedom,” 10.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn57" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn57"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lvii]</span></a> See Vaar 3, Pauri 18.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn58" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn58"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lviii]</span></a> See Vaar 9, Pauri 17.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn59" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn59"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lix]</span></a> Singh, “Hukam: A Comparative Perspective,” 3.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn60" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn60"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lx]</span></a> Singh, <em>The Sikh Moral Tradition</em>, 27.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn61" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn61"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxi]</span></a> See Vaar 9, Pauri 16.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn62" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn62"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxii]</span></a> See Vaar 9, Pauri 18.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn63" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn63"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxiii]</span></a> W. H. McLeod, <em>Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion</em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996): 8.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn64" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn64"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxiv]</span></a> <em>Ibid</em>., 9, 5.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn65" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn65"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxv]</span></a> Kirpal Singh, <em>Janamsakhi Tradition: An Analytical Study</em> (Amritsar: Singh Brothers, 2004): 21, 11.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn66" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn66"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxvi]</span></a> <em>Ibid</em>., 24, 15.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn67" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn67"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxvii]</span></a> Feminist scholar Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, for example, plumbs the <em>janamsakhis</em> for a “poetic synthesis” that testifies to Guru Nanak’s holistic panorama of the universe. See Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, <em>The Feminine Principle in the Sikh Vision of the Transcendent</em> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993): 39.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn68" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn68"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxviii]</span></a> Martin Heidegger, <em>Poetry, Language, Thought</em>, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1975): 74-78.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn69" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn69"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxix]</span></a> Hans Robert Jauss, “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory,” in <em>Toward an Aesthetic of Reception</em> (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982).</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn70" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn70"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxx]</span></a> Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978): 277.</div>
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<a href="http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/22-culture-2011-spring-issue/51-towards-a-narrative-ethics-of-sikh-discipleship.html#_ednref" name="_edn71" style="color: #333333;" title="_edn71"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[lxxi]</span></a> See Pauri 2, Vaar 3.</div>
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<strong>Erik Resly</strong> has completed two of his three years at Harvard Divinity School in preparation for ordination in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. Having grown up overseas, he returned to the United States to pursue undergraduate work at Brown University. Vocationally committed to the faith of his upbringing, Resly also finds great spiritual and intellectual sustenance in Sikh theologies and practices.</div>
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Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-42526295635412760772014-03-31T11:45:00.002-07:002014-03-31T11:45:59.282-07:00The Textual History of the Dasam Granth Sahib - Dr Kamalroop Singh<iframe width="100%" height="450" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/142378921&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&visual=true"></iframe>Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-61314446167446125392014-03-27T03:45:00.002-07:002014-03-27T03:45:54.160-07:00A paper on 'The Textual History of the Dasam Granth Sahib' on Thursday, April 3rd at 3:40 pm - 5:30 pm, at UCR, INTN 3043. <div id="fb-root"></div> <script>(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));</script>
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Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-51948065665427050452014-02-10T01:14:00.002-08:002014-03-07T10:47:25.871-08:00Hanuman Natak in Gurmukhi by Hirdaya Ram Bhalla<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Proxima Nova', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;">Complete text with introduction by Dr Kamalroop Singh.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Proxima Nova', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;">I have been painstakingly typing this text over of the years. This is the first edition of the Hanūmān Nāṭak, the second edition will contain the transliteration, and the third a translation. I have proof read it, but I am sure there are mistakes, so if you find any please be kind enough to send me a message with the details.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Proxima Nova', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;">What is Hanūmān Nāṭak?</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Proxima Nova', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;">Guru Gobind Singh and the Hanūmān Nāṭak </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Proxima Nova', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;">The Dasam Granth Sahib and Hanūmān Nāṭak</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Proxima Nova', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;">Hanūmān Nāṭak and the Pre-colonial Education System in the Punjab</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Proxima Nova', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;">The Buddha Dal and Hanūmān Nāṭak</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Proxima Nova', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;">Complete Text of Hanūmān Nāṭak by Hirdaya Ram Bhalla</span></div>
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Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-25051435314852699592013-11-10T05:14:00.003-08:002013-11-10T06:14:51.069-08:00Arati-Arata by Dr Kamalroop Singh (Akali Nihang)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Vahiguru ji ka Khalsa Vahiguru ji ki fateh! I just finished writing about the Āratī-Āratā, I put in a eight hours a day for the last week or so, not to boast, but some people don't understand how much goes into just writing forty pages! With Guru Nanak's kirpa, I offer the first full English translation, transliteration, and original text of the Āratī-Āratā, along with a discussion of this devotional bani. Āratī-Āratā is an evening prayer that is a part of the purātan nitnem of the Sikhs. Most Sikhs have heard of the Āratī of Guru Nanak and the Bhagats, but few have heard the full version that includes many inspiring verses by Guru Gobind Singh. The Singh Sabha under the influence of Giani Ditt Singh edited the practice of using lamps or deve, and cut down the length of the piece by removing most of Guru Gobind Singh's bani from it. The unedited version remains the preserve of the Akali Nihang Singh Khalsa. This is discussed in this document, as well as showing that this is one of the only bania to have the writings of Adi Guru, Dasam and Sarbloh within it. Please read at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/183005595/Arati-Arata-by-Dr-Kamalroop-Singh-Akali-Nihang-pdf We will be looking at making some printed copies in the near future, so people can read from them during the ceremony. If you like this document please read my small article on the nitnem, http://www.scribd.com/doc/130906016/The-History-of-the-Nitnem-BĀņiĀ-Akali-Dr-Kamalroop-Singh-Nihang My next article will be on the puratan Rahiras Sahib, as Karen Kaur Bansal requested it! I have not forgotten. Many thanks to Gavin Singh who requested this document, and his initial help with finding files for me, and to Indy Saggu who proof read this document. Could some translate these into Punjabi please? Please pray that I can continue doing your seva, and please share this document so people 1. Read the Bani and understand it 2. So they know how our traditions have been changed. Bhul chuk maffi, das Kamalroop Singh
Āratī-Āratā is an evening prayer that is a part of the purātan nitnem of the Sikhs. Most Sikhs have heard of the Āratī of Guru Nanak and the Bhagats, but few have heard the full version that includes many inspiring verses by Guru Gobind Singh. The unedited version remains the preserve of the Akali Nihang Singh Khalsa.
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<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/183005595/Arati-Arata-by-Dr-Kamalroop-Singh-Akali-Nihang-pdf" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View Arati-Arata by Dr Kamalroop Singh (Akali Nihang).pdf on Scribd">Arati-Arata by Dr Kamalroop Singh (Akali Nihang).pdf</a> by <a href="http://www.scribd.com/KamalroopSingh" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View Dr. Kamalroop Singh's profile on Scribd">Dr. Kamalroop Singh</a></div>
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Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-49535355906090190122013-11-01T11:18:00.002-07:002013-11-01T11:18:57.832-07:00THE SWORD AND THE TURBAN: ARMED FORCE IN SIKH THOUGHT - A. WalterDorn* and Stephen Gucciardi<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p style=" margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;"> <a title="View THE SWORDANDTHETURBAN:ARMED FORCEINSIKHTHOUGHTA. WalterDorn* and Stephen Gucciardi*** on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/180816891/THE-SWORDANDTHETURBAN-ARMED-FORCEINSIKHTHOUGHTA-WalterDorn-and-Stephen-Gucciardi" style="text-decoration: underline;" >THE SWORDANDTHETURBAN:ARMED FORCEINSIKHTHOUGHTA. WalterDorn* and Stephen Gucciardi***</a> by <a title="View Dr. Kamalroop Singh's profile on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/KamalroopSingh" style="text-decoration: underline;" >Dr. Kamalroop Singh</a></p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" src="//www.scribd.com/embeds/180816891/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-ofmc1tu1y6xvs5txcwp&show_recommendations=true" data-auto-height="false" data-aspect-ratio="0.701399688958009" scrolling="no" id="doc_72724" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-43322337246257503972013-09-25T16:00:00.001-07:002013-09-25T16:00:31.551-07:00Bhai Jaitas Epic Sri Gur Katha -Hofstra<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It is one of the strange ironies of the Sikh tradition that its otherwise vibrant scholarship has hardly taken note of a magnificent text by Bhai Jaita (c.1657-1704), viz. Sri Gur Katha, even when it has been in the public domain in print for the past two decades.i This irony gets a sharper relief with the appearance of the latest comprehensive, brilliant and insightful essay on the sources pertaining to Guru Gobind Singh and his times by Gurinder Singh Mann.ii It is quite dismaying that Bhai Jaita‟s composition available in at least 6 books by then should have escaped the attention of Mann, a meticulous researcher and indefatigable fieldworker of Sikh studies. Sri Gur Katha is a powerful and evocative epic, a „story‟ of Guru Gobind Singh‟s life which has potential of settling a few important controversies generated by contentious interpretations of the Sikh tradition. Produced by a Khalsa Sikh unlike most of the early poets and writers, it lends a ring of proximity and authenticity to the central events of the tradition. It emerges as the first contemporary source to talk explicitly about the 5Ks (panj kakkars), a detailed description of „amrit bidhi‟ (khande di pahul), the initiation rite, and the „rahit’ (code of conduct) as enunciated by the Tenth Master. Being a record by the closest of witnesses, it does not mention any devi puja by the Guru while narrating the Khalsa event. Coming from a dalit Sikh (rechristened by Guru Gobind Singh as Jeevan Singh) in the lifetime of the Guru, it offers an unpolluted version of some of the central concerns to the Sikh tradition in general and the Khalsa tradition in particular as compared to the later brahmanical or brahmanised-Sikh interpolations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Written in the prevalent old Punjabi (sadh bhasha) of the Sikh tradition, Sri Gur Katha is a testimony of Bhai Jaita as a master poet besides an accomplished warrior. Rather than exploring all nuances of the long poem the paper has a limited purpose: to analyze Sri Gur Katha to suggest correction of dates respecting Guru Gobind‟s birth and the creation of the Khalsa. While highlighting the details about amrit-bidhi and rahit the paper also argues that it turns out to be the first unambiguous source on the innovative measures introduced by Guru Gobind Singh including the five symbols of the Khalsa.
<p style=" margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;"> <a title="View Bhai Jaitas Epic Sri Gur Katha -Hofstra on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/171034305/Bhai-Jaitas-Epic-Sri-Gur-Katha-Hofstra" style="text-decoration: underline;" >Bhai Jaitas Epic Sri Gur Katha -Hofstra</a></p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" src="//www.scribd.com/embeds/171034305/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&show_recommendations=true" data-auto-height="false" data-aspect-ratio="undefined" scrolling="no" id="doc_29933" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-75786421007604233712013-09-24T13:55:00.002-07:002013-09-24T13:55:59.730-07:00The Birth of the Khalsa - A Feminist Re-memory of Sikh Identity by Nikky-Gurinder Kaur Singh - A must read for all Sikh Scholars<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.vidhia.com/Historical%20and%20Political/Nikky-Gurinder_Kaur_Singh_-_Birth_of_the_Khalsa.pdf">http://www.vidhia.com/Historical%20and%20Political/Nikky-Gurinder_Kaur_Singh_-_Birth_of_the_Khalsa.pdf</a><br />
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The birth of the Khalsa (from the Arabic khalis, meaning “pure”) by Guru Gobind Singh is a pivotal event in the psyche and imagination of the Sikhs. During the Baisakhi festivities of 1699 the guru and his wife prepared amrit, and five men from different castes sipped it from the same bowl. Their drink purified them of all mental defilements. Ending centuries of hereditary oppressions of caste, class and profession, the five were born into the egalitarian family of the Khalsa. Over time “Khalsa” and “Sikh” have become synonymous terms, and even though only a minority of Sikhs are formally initiated into the Khalsa order, all Sikh men and women trace their personality, name, religious rites, and prayers—what they do, what they wear, how they identify themselves—to this liberating Baisakhi of 1699.</div>
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<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/170695947/The-Birth-of-the-Khalsa-A-Feminist-Re-memory-of-Sikh-Identity" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View The Birth of the Khalsa - A Feminist Re-memory of Sikh Identity on Scribd">The Birth of the Khalsa - A Feminist Re-memory of Sikh Identity</a> by <a href="http://www.scribd.com/KamalroopSingh" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View Dr. Kamalroop Singh's profile on Scribd">Dr. Kamalroop Singh</a></div>
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Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-73712879663325185482013-08-29T08:27:00.001-07:002013-08-29T08:28:39.059-07:00New book of Kailash Puri and Eleanor Nesbitt: POOL OF LIFE: the autobiography of a Punjabi agony Aunt<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Dear all,</div>
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The new book of Kailash Puri and Eleanor Nesbitt: POOL OF LIFE: the autobiography of a Punjabi agony aunt is now out (even though websites give an October publication date).</div>
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More info on the book can be found here:</div>
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<a href="http://www.sussex-academic.com/sa/titles/biography/PurlNesbitt.htm" style="color: #0068cf; cursor: pointer; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;" target="_blank">http://www.sussex-academic.com/sa/titles/biography/PurlNesbitt.htm</a></div>
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Pre-Partition life; Guru Nanak's descendants; experiences as a Punjabi woman; Punjabi journalism; postbag of diaspora Asians' problems; community relations in UK; life in Africa; travel in Europe; return to roots in Pakistan - it's all there... </div>
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Books can be ordered from the distributor: <a href="http://www.gazellebookservices.co.uk/GazelleBooks/REQEMAIL1.pgm?BIBEAN=9781845196028" style="color: #0068cf; cursor: pointer; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;" target="_blank">http://www.gazellebookservices.co.uk/GazelleBooks/REQEMAIL1.pgm?BIBEAN=9781845196028</a></div>
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Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-15487609348476538972013-08-28T06:19:00.003-07:002013-08-28T06:19:30.342-07:00The Punjabis in British Columbia - Location, Labour, First Nations, and Multiculturalism - By Kamala Elizabeth Nayar <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Verdana; font-size: large;">The Punjabis in British Columbia</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #3a3f44; font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #3a3f44; font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><i style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;">Location, Labour, First Nations, and Multiculturalism </i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #3a3f44; font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #3a3f44; font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;">By Kamala Elizabeth Nayar</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Verdana; font-size: large;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #3a3f44; font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #3a3f44; font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"> </span><a href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001daFVNrXAPi_G1q9nfu-kJnqmZ2-1nSWk7UhsKS0m6R-CcTih4OKDWPT5hFkspXaY2_S9yW5qtzYS8sRpPrcDBv14d0Fa8R6kffgBWqLKIaYTBa_cE6TNv5kEQbuWID6FkYjJQhoOtxOe4w5y0C1gjSIj3VwhHVZng9DTwtPAyhJyEN8p-8-kOw==" id="Body" style="background-color: white; color: #0068cf; cursor: pointer; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;" target="_blank" title="Body"></a><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #3a3f44; font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;">In this richly detailed study, Kamala Nayar documents the social and cultural transformation of the Punjabi community in British Columbia. From their initial settlement in the rural Skeena region to the communities that later developed in larger urban centres, The Punjabis in British Columbia illustrates the complex and diverse experiences of an immigrant community that merits greater attention.<br style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;" /><br style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;" />Exploring themes of gender, employment, rural and urban migrant life, and the relationships between the Punjabis and surrounding First Nations and other immigrant groups, Nayar creates a portrait of a community in transition. Shedding light on the ways in which economic circumstances affect immigrant communities, Nayar presents findings from interviews conducted with over one hundred participants. She details the relocation of Punjabi populations from the Skeena region to British Columbia's lower mainland during the decline of the forestry and fishery industries, how their second migration changed their professional and personal lives, and how their history continues to shape the identities and experiences of Punjabis in Canada today.<br style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;" /><br style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;" />A nuanced look at the complexities of social and cultural adaptation, The Punjabis in British Columbia adds an essential perspective to what it means to be Canadian. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #3a3f44; font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"><i style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;"> </i></span><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;" /><a href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001daFVNrXAPi_G1q9nfu-kJnqmZ2-1nSWk7UhsKS0m6R-CcTih4OKDWPT5hFkspXaY2_S9yW5qtzYS8sRpPrcDBv14d0Fa8R6kffgBWqLKIaYTBa_cE6TNv5kEQbuWID6FkYjJQhoOtxOe4w5y0C1gjSIj3VwhHVZng9DTwtPAyhJyEN8p-8-kOw==" style="background-color: white; color: #0068cf; cursor: pointer; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #3a3f44; font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small; line-height: normal;"><u style="line-height: 14.399999618530273px;">Click here to learn more or order a copy of the book</u></span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #3a3f44; font-family: Verdana; font-size: xx-small;"> </span></div>
Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-53531277264171075722013-03-19T15:56:00.002-07:002013-03-19T15:56:11.553-07:00Sikh and Punjabi Studies, (Re-)Building Punjab: Political Economy, Society and Values.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px;">Dear Friends and Colleagues:</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px; line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px; line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px;">We are very pleased to invite you to UCSC's next conference in Sikh and Punjabi Studies, (Re-)Building Punjab: Political Economy, Society and Values.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px; line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px; line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px;">The URL for the conference, with abstracts, registration information, and other details, is at</span><a href="http://ihr.ucsc.edu/rebuilding-punjab" style="background-color: white; color: #0068cf; cursor: pointer; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px; line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" target="_blank">http://ihr.ucsc.edu/rebuilding-punjab</a><br style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px; line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px; line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px;">Hoping to see you in Santa Cruz</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px; line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px; line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px;">Sincerely,</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px; line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px;">Professor Nirvikar Singh and Dr. Inderjit N. Kaur, Conference Organizers</span><br clear="all" style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px; line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px; line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px;">Program Summary</span><br />
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Friday, March 29</h3>
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<b style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;">Session 1: Sikh Values and Punjab Society in Historical Perspective</b><br style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" />Presenter: Prof. Pashaura Singh, Religious Studies, UC Riverside<br style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" />Discussant: Dr. Harpreet Singh, South Asian Studies, Harvard University</div>
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<b style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;">Session 2: </b><b style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;">A Case Study of Sikh Diaspora Philanthropy in Punjab</b><br style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" />Presenter: Prof. Verne A. Dusenbery, Anthropology, Hamline University<br style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" />Discussant: Prof. Supreet Kaur, Economics, Columbia University</div>
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<b style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;">Session 3: Punjab Politics and Society</b></div>
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Presenter: Prof. Pritam Singh, Accounting, Finance and Economics, Oxford Brookes University<br style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" />Discussant: Prof. Jugdep S. Chima, Political Science, Hiram College</div>
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<b style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;">Session 4: The Punjab Economy: Problems and Prospects</b></div>
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Presenter: Prof. Lakhwinder Singh, Economics, Punjabi University<br style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" />Discussant: Prof. Nirvikar Singh, Economics, UC Santa Cruz</div>
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<b style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;">Dinner & Lecture: Reflections on the Columbia/UC Santa Barbara Punjab Summer Program</b><br style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" />Prof. Gurinder Mann, Religious Studies, UC Santa Barbara</div>
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Saturday, March 30</h3>
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<b style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;">Session 5: Groundwater in Punjab: Environmental Challenges</b><br style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" />Presenter: Prof. Rajinder Singh Sidhu, Punjab Agricultural University<br style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" />Discussant: Prof. Upmanu Lall, Engineering, Columbia University</div>
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<b style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;">Session 6: </b><b style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;">Punjab's Ethical Soundscapes: From Asa ki Var to Dhadi Var and Hip Hop</b>Presenter: Dr. Inderjit Kaur, Music, UC Santa Cruz<br style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" />Discussion and demonstration: Mr. Mandeep S. Sethi, Hip-hop artist</div>
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<b style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;">Session 7: Lunch Panel: Punjab’s Future – What’s to be Done?</b><br style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" />Dr. Narinder Kapany, Sikh Foundation<br style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" />Dr. Ajit Singh, Artiman Ventures and Stanford University<br style="line-height: 17.600000381469727px;" />Mr. Michael Singh, Filmmaker</div>
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Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-90535968033835652222013-03-17T13:20:00.001-07:002013-03-17T13:20:07.056-07:00The History of the Nitnem BĀņiĀ - Akali Dr Kamalroop Singh Nihang<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-28748952310536835942013-03-01T17:51:00.000-08:002013-03-01T17:51:52.759-08:00“Dialogues with/in Sikh Studies: Texts, Practices and Performances” (May 10-12, 2013)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE</div>
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3rd Dr. Jasbir Singh Saini Endowed Chair in Sikh Studies Conference</div>
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“Dialogues with/in Sikh Studies: Texts, Practices and Performances”</div>
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(May 10-12, 2013)</div>
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http://www.religiousstudies.ucr.edu/SPS/events/Abstracts-3rdSikhStudiesConference-May2013.pdf<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">The main purpose of this conference is to explore interdisciplinary approaches, resulting from academic inquiries into Sikh texts, as well as the practices that surround them and their performance. The dialogues to be explored are made possible by the environment of the university, which serves as a place where scholars from many fields and disciplines come together to pursue critical inquiries and comparisons. In many ways the Sikh community has been very supportive of academic inquires – though, at times, they have voiced outright criticism. Our hope for this conference is to provide a forum that focuses on how academic discussions and those arising in the community at large can complement one another, rather than being at odds</span><br />
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8. “The Textual History of the Dasam Granth Sahib”</div>
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Dr. Kamalroop Singh, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK</div>
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W.H. McLeod (1979/2007) states that ‘Research on the Dasam Granth has been very </div>
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limited, with the result that most of the major questions which it raises cannot be </div>
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answered at present.’ The previous research has been limited to the examination of its </div>
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poetry, with the exception of one detailed study of Dasam Granth manuscripts (Jaggi </div>
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1966). Very little research has been undertaken on the development of the Dasam </div>
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Granth (DG) in the lifetime of the Tenth Guru, and therefore this paper addresses this </div>
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gap. This paper begins with an examination of the editing and dating of primary </div>
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sources, so that an accurate chronology can be constructed of the textual history. This </div>
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has been explored in reference to late seventeenth and eighteenth century hagiographies</div>
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which are examined alongside several extant seventeenth century DG manuscripts; and </div>
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with supplementation from later secondary sources. A major development in the textual history </div>
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of the DG was its standardisation and subsequent printing in 1897, however </div>
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some original manuscripts contain extra ‘apocrypha’ which are absent from the printed </div>
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edition. The compositions in the standard version of the DG will be discussed, along </div>
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with new translations and discussion of the ‘apocrypha.’ By re-examining the earliest </div>
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sources, it is clear that the Scripture of Guru Gobind Singh was compiled in his Court. </div>
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The juxtaposition against later sources brings the modern Singh Sabha theory that the </div>
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compilation of the DG was compiled by Bhai Mani Singh into question.</div>
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Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-36578695060754448482013-03-01T04:21:00.005-08:002013-03-01T14:52:29.719-08:00UCSC Conference in Sikh and Punjabi Studies, March 29-30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">UCSC Conference in Sikh and Punjabi Studies, March 29-30<br /><em style="color: #1122cc; cursor: pointer; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; white-space: nowrap;"><a class="l" href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&ved=0CEQQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ucsc.edu%2F&ei=jJwwUZvjCtC20QXGiYHgCg&usg=AFQjCNF34vrnIBThuEiPFLXOrELN4jHf1Q&sig2=1Fgw7M3QHIzUve-Ne6VMrA&bvm=bv.43148975,d.d2k" style="color: #1122cc; cursor: pointer;">University of California, Santa Cruz</a></em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #1122cc;"><span style="white-space: nowrap;"><b><br /></b></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a;">The conference program is below.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a;">For logistical details, please contact Courtney Mahaney, Institute for Humanities Research, UCSC.<span style="line-height: 17.265625px;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a;">Hoping to see you here in Santa Cruz</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 17.27272605895996px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a;">Regards,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a;">Professor Nirvikar Singh and Dr. Inderjit N. Kaur, Conference Organizers</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Friday, March 29</b><br />Presenter: Prof. Pashaura Singh, Religious Studies, UC Riverside<br />Discussant: Dr. Harpreet Singh, South Asian Studies, Harvard University<br />Presenter: Prof. Verne A. Dusenbery, Anthropology, Hamline University<br />Discussant: Prof. Supreet Kaur, Economics, Columbia University<br />Discussant: Prof. Jugdep S. Chima, Political Science, Hiram College<br />Discussant: Prof. Nirvikar Singh, Economics, UC Santa Cruz<br />Prof. Gurinder Mann, Religious Studies, UC Santa Barbara</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Saturday, March 30</b><br />Presenter: Prof. Rajinder Singh Sidhu, Punjab Agricultural University<br />Discussant: Prof. Upmanu Lall, Engineering, Columbia University<br />Presenter: Dr. Inderjit Kaur, Music, UC Santa Cruz<br />Discussion and demonstration: Mr. Mandeep S. Sethi, Rapper<br />Dr. Narinder Kapany, Sikh Foundation<br />Dr. Ajit Singh, Artiman Ventures and Stanford University<br />Mr. Michael Singh, Filmmaker</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="line-height: 17.27272605895996px;">Session 1: Sikh Values and Punjab Society in Historical Perspective</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="line-height: 17.27272605895996px;">Session 2: </strong><b style="line-height: 17.27272605895996px;">A Case Study of Sikh Diaspora Philanthropy in Punjab</b></span></div>
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<strong style="line-height: 17.27272605895996px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Session 3: Punjab Politics and Society</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Presenter: Prof. Pritam Singh, Accounting, Finance and Economics, Oxford Brookes University</span></div>
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<strong style="line-height: 17.27272605895996px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Session 4: The Punjab Economy: Problems and Prospects</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Presenter: Prof. Lakhwinder Singh, Economics, Punjabi University</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="line-height: 17.27272605895996px;">Dinner & Lecture: Reflections on the Columbia/UC Santa Barbara Punjab Summer Program</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="line-height: 17.27272605895996px;">Session 5: Groundwater in Punjab: Environmental Challenges</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="line-height: 17.27272605895996px;">Session 6: </strong><b style="line-height: 17.27272605895996px;">Punjab's Ethical Soundscapes: From Asa ki Var to Dhadi Var and Hip Hop</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="line-height: 17.27272605895996px;">Session 7: Lunch Panel: Punjab’s Future – What’s to be Done?</strong></span></div>
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Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-86140944261849640652013-02-19T04:12:00.001-08:002013-02-19T04:22:10.787-08:00Presentation “Online Authorities? Young British Sikhs, Religious Transmission and the Internet” by Jasjit Singh of the University of Leeds<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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SPEL Conference Jasjit Singh</h1>
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09 May 12 </div>
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Presentation “Online Authorities? Young British Sikhs, Religious Transmission and the Internet” by Jasjit Singh of the University of Leeds, about the collaborative studentship <a href="http://www.leeds.ac.uk/sikhs/" target="_self"><em>Keeping the Faith: The Transmission of Sikhism among young British Sikhs</em></a> funded by Religion and Society. Introduction by Professor Kim Knott of Lancaster University. Access the accompanying slides below. Recorded at the conference <a href="http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/events/programme_events/show/sacred_practices_of_everyday_life">“Sacred Practices in Everyday Life”</a>, held in Edinburgh May 9<sup>th</sup>-11<sup>th</sup> 2012, by the Religion and Society Programme.</div>
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Associated file:</h3>
<a class="pdf" href="http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/uploads/docs/2012_05/1337617186_SinghEdinburghFINALPPTS.pdf">SinghEdinburghFINALPPTS.pdf</a>
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Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-58217938572303463732013-02-19T02:15:00.000-08:002013-02-19T02:15:00.801-08:00FROM BHINDRANWALE TO BIN LADEN - Mark Juergensmeyer<p style=" margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;"> <a title="View FROM BHINDRANWALETO BIN LADEN - A search for understanding religious violence - Mark Juergensmeyer on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/126179648" style="text-decoration: underline;" >FROM BHINDRANWALETO BIN LADEN - A search for understanding religious violence - Mark Juergensmeyer</a> by <a title="View 's profile on Scribd" href="undefined" style="text-decoration: underline;" ></a> </p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" src="http://www.scribd.com/embeds/126179648/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll" data-auto-height="false" data-aspect-ratio="undefined" scrolling="no" id="doc_54143" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>
An interesting account about the events after 1984, but is it fair to compare Sant Jarnail Singh to Bin Laden, and Al Qaida to the Khalistan movement?Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-70449277253701475462013-02-19T02:07:00.002-08:002013-02-19T02:07:42.149-08:00Measurement of time in Adi Guru Granth Sahib<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The correspondence of traditional Indian units of time to the modern western units of time is given below. We can find the names of some of the Indian time period in the second Shabad of Sohila Sahib: <i>ਵਿਸੁਏ ਚਸਿਆ ਘੜੀਆ ਪਹਰਾ ਥਿਤੀ ਵਾਰੀ ਮਾਹੁ ਹੋਆ ॥ </i>(Guru Granth Sahib, p. 12) Day = 8 Pahars = 24 hrs 1 Pahar = 8 Gharis = 3hrs 1 Ghari = 60 Pal = 22.5 minutes = 1350 secs 1Pal = 3 Chassa = 22.5 secs 1 Chassa = 15 Visuas = 7.5 secs 1 Visua = 15 Nimakh = 0.5 secs 1 Nimakh = 0.0333 secs. Hindus and Sikhs by convention take a day to begin at sunrise to sunset. Muslims on the other hand consider period on a day to begin at sunset and end at the next sunset. The Christian day begins at midnight and ends at the following midnight."</div>
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Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-51963245352213039912013-02-07T00:09:00.003-08:002013-02-07T00:09:43.860-08:00The Concept of Sahaj in Guru Nanak’s Theology - Prof. Nihar Ranjan Ray<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Excerpt
from "The Sikh Gurus & The Sikh Society - A Study in Social
Analysis." [Punjabi University, Patiala 1970] This may be read in the
continuation of Professor Ray’s article "One Message, One Mission : A
Study in Social Analysis from Guru Nanak to Guru Gobind Singhji"- SR
Feb 1999.</span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">All knowledgeable Sikhs and students of Sikhism recognize that the
ultimate goal which the religious and spiritual discipline laid down by
Guru Nanak was supposed to lead to, was the experience of Sahaj. Sahaj,
according to him, was indeed the last reach of human experience, beyond
which lay the realm of formlessness, of inarticulation. What is this
Sahaj experience, what is its nature and character? Howdoes one achieve it, how
does one recognize it? In common with Kabir and other sants of
medieval India, Guru Nanak came to recognize and accept that religious and
spiritual quest was a matter which was altogether internal to man.
Negatively speaking, it was not a matter of external practices and
observances of traditional forms and prescriptions of religion.
Positively, it was a matter, first, of cleansing and purifying one’s heart
and mind; secondly, of filling them with an intense love for -
and devotion to - God, the Ultimate and the Absolute, and waiting cravingly
for His grace (kirpa, prasad, daya etc.,), and thirdly, striving
unceasingly for a complete, unalloyed and absolute blending of one’s
individual self, or atma, with the Universal Self or Paramatma who is none
other than God Himself. For each one of these stages Guru Nanak laid down
certain discipline which each individual aspirant was called upon to go
through to prepare himself for the final merger or blending. An analysis
of these disciplines seems to indicate that what Guru Nanak was aiming at
was a transformation of the individual psyche and will, by bending and
directing both towards the ultimate goal of achieving the merger with the
Ultimate Absolute. It was only when the soil of life was made ready that
the final ascent could be made. This ascent too, wasin several khands, or
stages, in spiritual progress, as Guru Nanakdescribed them; they were five in
number, namely, Dharam Khand, Gian Khand, SaramKhand, Karam Khand and Sach
Khand. For the purpose of this essay it is notnecessary to go into an
explanation and analysis of these khands; itwould be enough to indicate that
neither God’s grace nor the merger or blendingwith Him was any matter of
accident, happening as if in a sudden flash. Toreach upto the ultimate state of
Sahaj or absolute union, merger orblending, one had to prepare himself through
a rigorous process of sadhana or discipline and proceed stage by stage.How does
one recognize that one has reached the state of Sahaj; whatis the nature and
character of Sahaj experience?Ascent of Spirit: Sach Khand, the last of the
five khands or stages is the realm of Truth, the ultimate stage of human
aspiration andexperience in which one reaches a state of blending with the
Absolute, a statewhich is beyond words, beyond articulation and can be known
only in experience.It is beyond the three gunas; tamas, rajas and sattva, and
ishence called the chautha pad, the fourth state. It is also called the sahaj
pad, turia pad or avastha, that is, the supreme state, the parampad, the
absolute state, the amara pad, the deathless state. It is astate of absolute
peace and tranquillity, of changelessness since it liesbeyond the cycle of
birth and death, and of eternal wonder and bliss; it isalso a state of
ineffable glory and light radiating beyond the dasam duar or the tenth door.
The Sahaj blending or merger is like the blending ofthe light of the individual
with the light of God, like that of a drop of waterin the ocean. It is a state
of existence in which the atma of theindividual is dissolved and absorbed in
the Paramatma, and the innerduality dies within. It is variously described as
sunn (sunya) samadhi,sahaj samadhi, sahaj yog, for instance, and the experience
itself as mahasukh,param sukh, param anand. Indeed, the Sahaj state is not
merely theUltimate Reality, it is the Lord (Prabhu), the ultimate in-dwelling
Beloved inwhom one is merged or absorbed. One who achieves this state of being
isdescribed by Guru Nanak as jivanmukta, and the state itself is describedas
that of jivanmukti.Unity of Spirit: The word in which this absorption or
blending ormerger is characterised is a very significant one; it is either
samati or samauna as in sahaji samati, sahaji samauna, joti-joti samauna,sabadi
samauna, sachi-samauna, for instance, the root verb in each casebeing sam which
literally means to equalise, merge, blend, absorb, fill,pervade, unify. But
from the context in which the word samati or samauna is used it is clear that
what is meant is absolute absorption, unification,merger or blending in a
manner so as to leave no trace or consciousness ofduality or separate identity.Apart
from the characteristics of peace and tranquillity, of wonderment andbliss and
of ineffable radiance by which one recognized the Sahaj stateof being, Guru Nanak
recognized another, that of anahad sabad, anunstuck sound which he used to
experience within himself at that ultimate stateof being.All said and done, the
fact remains that in whichever manner one seeks todescribe the Sahaj
experience, its real nature must elude understandingin humanly communicable
language. The articulation of an experience which wasessentially a mystical one
and, hence, according to Guru Nanak himself, wasincapable of being translated
in communicable terms, was indeed beyond humanexpression, had necessarily to be
in traditional mystical terms made currentand somewhat understandable by his
predecessors belonging to various mysticorders of sants and sadhus, and in
well-known traditional symbolsand images that had some meaning, howsoever vague
and generalized, to thosewhom his words were addressed.Sabad, the Holy Word:
What I have just essayed to do is to present,as faithfully and as briefly as
possible, the nature and character of Sahaj as was sought to be articulated by
Guru Nanak himself at different places ofhis enormous corpus of sabads, or
dohas and slokas. Yet ismust be recognised that, the ultimate analysis, the
essential nature of theexperience lay in the experience of the actual
absorption or union itself byone who experienced it in the lineaments of his
being. That Guru Nanak wasconvinced that one did so by one’s senses and the
mind - all physical entities- there is no scope for doubt. He is very clear,
precise and definite when hesays: "This body is the abode of God, His
palace where-in He shines ininfinite radiance. By Guru’s word one is ushered
into the palace. There aloneone comes face to face with God."Was Guru
Nanak absolutely original in what he said about Sahaj, itsnature and character?
Were the terms and concepts like sahaj, anahad sabad,samati and samauna,
mahasukh, sahaj samadhi, jivanmukti, etc. and thenature of the description of
the experience of Sahaj entirely his own?There are many points of similarity
and divergence between Guru Nanak on theone hand, and the totality of the
Indian medieval protestant and non-conformistmystic tradition, and the
individual mystics belonging to this tradition, onthe other. But for the
purpose of this paper I shall confine myself to oneconcept alone, that of
Sahaj, and its nature and character, of theIndian medieval mystics, considered
individually and collectively, and try tofind out answers to the questions I
have put to myself in respect of this oneparticular concept.Synthesis: One of
the tallest of Guru Nanak’s predecessors, perhapsan elder contemporary, in the
line of mystic sants and sadhus,and the greatest representative of what is
called the Sant synthesis, wasKabir, and it was Kabir’s way of life and thought
that seems to have had animpact on the life and mind of Guru Nanak, the
Nathapanthi and Kanphata yogis and the leaders of the Bhakti movement, figures
like those of Ramanand andNamdev, for instance, being the next formative
influences on him.But in so far as the concept of Sahaj is concerned it would
be enoughif we turn to Kabir and the Nathapanthi yogis in the first instance,
andin the second, to the Sahajayani Buddhists and their spiritual descendants,
theSahajiya Vaishnavas and Bauls of Bengal, since all these sects and cults
cameto accept Sahaja as the Ultimate and Absolute reality. The Sufi saintsdid
not accept the term, but they too conceived the Ultimate Reality in termsof the
Supreme Beloved, just as Kabir and Dadu, even Guru Nanak, the SahajiyaVaishnavas
and Bauls of Bengal and other devotional sects and cults did underthe impact of
the Bhakti movement. The sants and sadhus ofNorthern India seem to have had
already achieved a kind of synthesis betweenthe Sahaja and Sufi ideas when Guru
Nanak emerged on the scene ofmedieval Indian religious thought and activities.
It must be pointed out atonce that the sants and sadhus, including Kabir and
Guru Nanak,were never tired of asserting that Rama or Krshna was not any
historical oreven a mythological person, not any incarnation of God nor even of
Rama orKrshna himself; indeed he had no anthropomorphic form whatsoever. As a
matterof fact they conceived their Rama or Krshna as an in-dwelling principle
which was the Ultimate, formless, colorless reality immanent in man; it wasnone
other than God himself. Sahaj experience was indeed with them Godexperience
itself.Kabir characterises the experience of Sahaj as the ultimate human
experienceof bliss and peace; he calls it sahaj samadhi which one can attain byfinally
arresting all the functions of the mind and hence by creating anabsolute
vacuity within. He therefore characterises Sahaj as suni(sunya) sahaj which he
describes, just as Guru Nanak does, a state ofsupreme peace and bliss, of
mahasukha. It was a state of absolute mergerin which there was left no trace of
duality. What is significant is that theterm for merger or blending or union
that Kabir uses is samana which is thesame as in Guru Nanak. Speaking of Sahaj
Kabir says : "Everybodyspeaks of Sahaj, but nobody knows what Sahaj really
is. Sahaj really is when one gives up all his desires, keeps his senses under
his fullcontrol, when his son, wife, wealth and desire are all kept aside and whenKabir
becomes the maid of Rama; that is real Sahaj when one is unitedwith Rama, that
is, with the Lord, in a natural manner.Guru’s Role: It is perhaps necessary to
mention the elements thatwere the pre-conditions of the Sahaj experience, that
is, these elementsconstituted the stages of preparation and of the
psychological pre-conditionwhich led to the experience of that state of peace
and bliss, happiness andradiance which was called Sahaj. Negatively speaking,
these were (a)sharp criticism and rejection of all external formalities in
regard toreligious practices and spiritual quests, and (b) protest against and
rejectionof priestly and scriptural authority, celibacy, penances, austerities
and thelike. Positively, the most important elements were (a) recognition of
the Guru as essential for any spiritual exercise and quest, (b) recognition of
the humanbody as the seat and habitat of all religious and spiritual
experience, indeedof the Truth or Ultimate Reality and hence rejection of any
transcendentalreality external to man, and finally, (c) recognition of the
experience of theUltimate Reality as one of inexpressible happin ess and
ineffable radiance,waveless equipoise, absolute peace and tranquillity, and of
absolute non-dualityor complete unity. The Sahajayani Buddhists, the saintly
poets of the Santtradition, Kabir and Guru Nanak knew thi s experience of the
Ultimate Reality as Sahaj; indeed the sants and Guru Nanak seemed to have
receivedthe term and concept as an inheritance from the Sahajayani Buddhists
who intheir turn seem to have received - not the term but - the concept of theresolution
of the duality through an absolute union of two principles, one maleand another
female; as well as the nature and character of the ultimateexperience, from the
older Mahayana-Vajrayana Buddhist tradition. TheSahajayanis too, knew this
experience as one of mahasukha.Judging by the north Indian regional literatures
on the Nathasiddha yogis and the variety of myths and legends connected with
them, it would seem thatthe Natha movement was at least a pan-north Indian one,
and if Matsyendranathais regarded as one of the originators of the cult, its
antiquity must be atleast as old as that of the Sahajayana. Apart from a
general predilectiontowards occult practices and acquisition of supernatural
powers, theNathasiddhas owed their religious affiliation to the Siva-Sakti
cult, but theirreligious discipline was that of Hathayoga, which was almost an
articleof faith with them. Yogic practices, some-what of the nature and
character ofthose of the Natha yogis, were common to the Sahajayani Buddhists
andother esoteric sects, but with the Natha-yogis these were the mostimportant
means of achieving their goal, while with the others theseconstituted only one
of the disciplines. With the former it was altogetherphysiological, while with
the latter it was also a psychological discipline.Final Goal: The most
important difference lay in the ultimate goalitself. The ultimate objective of
Guru Nanak was the achievement of Sahaj experience which the Sahajayanis
identified with mahasukha, but theNatha-yogi objective was to attain the state
of jivanmukti orimmortality in life, according to their own way of life and its
interpretation.How did they propose to achieve this end? Bereft of esoteric
complexitiesand scholastic niceties as recorded in relevant texts their
position may bestated, for our present purpose, as follows:This ordinary human
body is a raw, indeed a very imperfect, a mostinadequate object for the
achievement of jivanmukti, that is, forfreedom from bondage of decay and death,
in other words, of immortality. Butthrough the yogic processes of ulta-sadhana,
that is, by making thevital fluid flow upwards instead of downwards, which is
the natural physicallaw, and of kaya-sadhana, that is, by the disciplining of
the muscles,sinews, ducts, nerves and nerve centres, as well as of the mind,
throughperfect control of the vital wind, this raw, imperfect body can be
transformedfirst, into a pakkva deha or ripe body and then transsubstantiatedsteadily
into a divya deha or divine body, which was the only way toovercome decay,
destruction and death. This disciplining of the body and themind involved, a
detailed classification and analysis of the entire humanphysiological system so
well-known in Hathayoga; it also involved according toNathayogic
interpretation, a number of theoretical postulates and actualphysiological
processes which have all been studied, analysed and described insome detail by
competent scholars.For our purpose, I need not go into any of these very
intricate details; Ineed only point out that the conception of the sun and the
moon - identifiedrespectively with Sakti and Siva on the one hand and with
womanand man on the other, had an important role to play in the yogic scheme ofthings
of the Natha-yogis.Their attitude towards - and aversion of - women was
unacceptable. EvenKabir refers to women as tigresses who were always seeking
men to prey upon tosuck their vitality out of them. Guru N anak derided such
attitude, holdingwomen as deserving of respect.Sahaj & Amrit: Guru Nanak
uses the term amrit, in thesense of nectar of immortality. His use of the term
is found in associationwith the Naam, the na me of God, His name being the
Truth. "WhateverGod has made is the manifestation of His Naam" says
the Guru."There is nothing in creation which is not such a
manifestation".This Naam is veritably the amrit (=namamrita) the nectar ofimmortality,
and it is in this sense and in this context that the word amrit is more often
than not used. Nowhere do I find any yogic meaning of the term.In common with
the Sahajayani Buddhists Guru Nanak used the term mahasukha to describe the
nature of the experience of the sahaj state of being,which may at once suggest
a very close and intimate association with Sahajayaniyogic practices,
especially because he also uses the phrase sahaj yog inthis context. But here
too, one must take into consideration the fact that heuses the term mahasukh -
not in its technical Tantric yogic meaning -but synonymously with paramsukh and
paramanand, that is, in itsliteral sense of supreme pleasure, supreme joy and
bliss. A technical term isnot interchangeable, but Guru Nanak seems to have
admitted theinterchangeability of mahasukh with param sukh and param anand,and
- by and through - this simple means he seems to have divested the term andconcept
of mahasukha of all its exclusive Tantric yogic significance.Guru Nanak also
uses the term and concept of jivanmukti. But heretoo, if one has to go by the
context, he seems to have used the term in its literal sense of liberation
from bondage in one’s temporal existence, and not in the Tantric sense in
which the Nathapanthis used the term. Indeed, with the latter jivanmukti,
which they interpreted in terms of immortality, was the ultimate objective
of their spiritual pursuits, while with Guru Nanakjivanmukti was but another
name of what was the Sahaj state of experience.</span></div>
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Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4308876361120097040.post-67253938878869515122013-01-29T03:13:00.000-08:002013-01-29T04:52:12.481-08:00 The 'Path of Love' - Prem Sumarag Granth - Patshahi 10·<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One of the oldest dated <em>Rahitname</em> is the 'Prem Sumarag Granth', the oldest manuscript copy I have seen of it is from 1701 AD, therefore in the lifetime of Guru Gobind Singh ji. The Nihang Singhs, and Sant Khalsa i.e Nirmale and Namdharis, consider this Granth to be very important. Dr Leyden was the first person to translate the Prem Sumarag Granth into English, he travelled to India in the 18th Century, and his translation is in the British Library.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Please visit</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.drleyden.co.uk%2F%23%2Fprem-sumarag-granth%2F4556172689&h=uAQFmJibg&s=1" rel="nofollow" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: initial;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">http://www.drleyden.co.uk/#/prem-sumarag-granth/4556172689</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The 'Tat Khalsa' Singh Sabha found this Granth to be quite controversial and side-linded it. The purpose of this note is not to talk about those sections, but concentrate on others of profound beauty and depth. You can see an original copy of the first chapter on the Panjab Digital Library.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The following was translated by the ex-Christian priest, the scholar W. H. McLeod, Prem Sumarag, :</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">[My] son, I have fashioned you from my own being [ and I have created] a Panth to serve as witness to the world. What kind of Panth [ have I created]? One in which <em>dharam </em>has made its abode, [one in which], error is destroyed and true wisdom exalted. I am the Supreme one. Know none save me, for I have set forth the Panth [as a witness to the truth]. To the people [of the world] I have delivered the message of the divine Word through succession of 10 incarnations. To the shame of all who inhabit the world error still remains. That which I have performed I have imprinted on [every] person. I, the Supreme One, dwell within every heart. Is anything hidden from me?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next section can be summarised as. the first rahit is to wake up at Amritvela, to relieve one's self, bathe, then do <em>nam simran </em>and the second rahit is to read Gurbani. The third rahit is Rahiras Sahib and the forth is read bani from both the Adi Guru Granth Sahib and Dasam Granth Sahib in the evening, recite Kirtan Sohila, then:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">'Breath <strong><em>Vahi</em> </strong>from your navel as you inhale and <strong><em>Guru</em></strong> as you exhale.'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then you will repeat Vahiguru and your deep consciousness will remain ever awake.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A Singh should be humble but always with his weapons! Accept the Guru's bani as Guru.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Let those who are Sikhs of the Khalsa show affection towards each other. Let them remain united, regardless of the good or evil each may perform. If any Sikh is attacked all others should be prepared to join in his defence. Thus shall they earn the merit conferred on those who believe in the Sikh Faith and they will see Guru Baba Sri Akal Purakh come to their instant aid.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A man must not keep the company of another man's wife. Do not act possesively. Do not act out of anger and pride. Do not be attached to mundane concerns and avoid vilifying others. Do not lie - but do not speak the truth that will harm another. Act graciously remembering this human body will one day perish. Live in the awareness that this very breath may be your last. Do not waste your breaths idly. Harm no one. Speak to bring happiness. If your are abused do not take it to heart. Let nothing grieve you, see respect and insults as the same. Do not live of charity, work your <em>dharam ki kirati. </em>The only giver is Guru Baba Akal Purakh. To fulfill your desires do not visit tombs, temples of deities (gods/goddesses), fast, idol worship, magic, or ritually bath. Do do not go to the Brahmins. Do not follow empty ritualism. Instead meditate on the Lotus Feet of Sri Akal Purakh.</span></div>
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Nihang Singh and othershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17583559404392393536noreply@blogger.com6