The short version: some of the Dasam Granth is almost certainly Guru Gobind Singh’s, some of it is argued over, and no historian can settle the whole book in one answer, because it was not made as one. It is a collection, which most historians date after the Guru’s death in 1708, of compositions in Braj, Punjabi and Persian, and its early manuscripts do not agree on what belongs in it.[1][2] Majority What follows is what is in the book, what the evidence for each part is, and why the question is fought over.
The Dasam Granth is not the Guru Granth Sāhib. The Guru Granth Sāhib, compiled by Guru Arjan in 1604, holds the hymns of the Gurus and the bhagats and is installed as the Guru (§3); by tradition its final recension, with Guru Tegh Bahādur’s hymns added, was prepared at Damdamā in about 1706.[3][4][5] Consensus on the compilation; Majority on the tradition. The Dasam Granth, “the book of the tenth [Guru]”, is a second book, of about 1,400 pages in its printed form (§0).[2] Majority
How the book was made
Tradition credits the compilation to Bhāī Manī Singh, the companion of Guru Gobind Singh who kept the Harmandir at Amritsar for the Guru’s widow Mātā Sundarī after 1708, and who was executed at Lahore, by tradition cut apart joint by joint, in 1734, 1737 or 1738 (the year is disputed) (§6).[6][1] Majority that this is the tradition’s account.
The manuscripts give a harder picture. The earliest are from the early eighteenth century; some carry earlier dates; and they differ in their contents and their order. The printed volume took its standard form only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.[2] Majority So the book’s authorship is a question about each composition in it, and about who chose to put them together.
The court it came from
Guru Gobind Singh was a poet himself and a patron of poets. Louis Fenech’s study of his court at Anandpur, and for a few years at Pāoṇṭā, describes a Persianate court like those of the Rajput and Mughal nobility, with poets writing in Braj and Persian, hunting and music. The tradition counts fifty-two poets there; the names of a smaller number are known from their works.[7] Majority That court is the setting for every position in the debate. On one view the Guru wrote everything in the book; on another, he wrote some of it and kept or commissioned the rest from his poets (§5).[7][2] Contested
The parts on firmest ground
- The Jāp. The opening hymn, in praise of the formless God, is recited in the morning prayers and widely accepted as the Guru’s.[1][2] Majority
- The Zafarnāmā. The Persian “letter of victory” to Aurangzeb, written about 1705–1706 after the fall of Anandpur, accuses the emperor’s commanders of breaking their oaths and defends the resort to arms: “When every other means has failed, it is lawful to take the sword in hand.” Most scholars accept it as the Guru’s; Fenech reads it as a courtly Persian composition steeped in the Shāhnāma and Saʿdī.[8][9] Majority
- The Bachitar Nāṭak. The Guru’s story in his own voice: a previous life as an ascetic in the Himalayas, God’s command to spread dharam, and the battles of Bhaṅgāṇī (about 1688) and Nādauṇ (about 1690). Its account of his father, Guru Tegh Bahādur, who “gave his head, but not his resolve”, is the earliest Sikh account of that execution (§4).[10][11][12] Majority that the text is the Guru’s or his court’s.
ਹਮ ਇਹ ਕਾਜ ਜਗਤ ਮੋ ਆਏ ॥ ਧਰਮ ਹੇਤ ਗੁਰਦੇਵ ਪਠਾਏ ॥
ham ih kāj jagat mo āe | dharam het guradev paṭhāe ||
“For this purpose I came into the world: the divine Guru sent me for the sake of dharma.”[10]
The parts in dispute
The long mythological retellings, of Chaṇḍī’s battles and of the twenty-four avatars of Viṣṇu, and above all the Charitropākhyān, about four hundred stories of the tricks of women and men, many of them sexual, are where the argument concentrates.[1][2] Consensus on the contents. Three positions are held:[2][13]
- All of it is the Guru’s. The traditional position of many Khālsā Sikhs and of the eighteenth-century tradition, which treated the whole collection as scripture beside the Granth. Its fullest modern statement is by Kamalroop Singh, whose Birmingham doctoral thesis (2012) on the text’s history concluded that the book was compiled in the Guru’s lifetime; with Gurinder Singh Mann he traces the authorship quarrel to the Singh Sabhā.[14] Contested; Political
- Some of it is the Guru’s, the rest by poets of his court. The hymns, the Bachitar Nāṭak and the Zafarnāmā are his; the retellings and the Charitropākhyān are court poetry he commissioned or kept. This is the most common view among historians.
- Little of it is the Guru’s. Some Sikh reformers and scholars argue that most of the book, especially the Charitropākhyān and its stories of women, cannot be his, and some that parts were added later.
Contested; Political The Charitropākhyān also enters other arguments. Pashaura Singh points out that it already uses shahīd, “martyr”, in the late seventeenth century, against Louis Fenech’s view that Sikh sources call Guru Arjan a martyr only much later.[15][16][1] Contested
Why it matters: the daily prayers
The argument is fierce because the book is both a text and a liturgy. Khālsā Sikhs recite prayers from it every morning and at the initiation: the morning prayers include the Jāp and the Tav-Prasād Savaiyye from the Akāl Ustat, and one prayer, the Chaupaī, comes from the end of the Charitropākhyān. The opening of the Ardās, the daily prayer, invokes the goddess as Bhagautī, the sword, in words from the Vār Durgā kī. To say the book contains court poetry about Hindu gods is to say something about the daily prayers.[2] Consensus on why it matters.
One line shows the problem in miniature. The prayer near the end of the Chaṇḍī Charitra, sung as a Khālsā anthem, begins:
ਦੇਹ ਸਿਵਾ ਬਰੁ ਮੋਹਿ ਇਹੈ ਸੁਭ ਕਰਮਨ ਤੇ ਕਬਹੂੰ ਨ ਟਰੋ ॥
deh sivā baru mohi ihai subh karaman te kabahūṅ na ṭaro ||
“Grant me this boon, O Śivā: that I never turn back from righteous deeds.”[17]
In the poem it comes from, Śivā is the goddess, Chaṇḍī; many Sikhs read the word as a name of God, “the auspicious one”. Both readings are argued.[2] Contested The book’s place also differs among Sikhs today: the Nihaṅgs give it more weight than the SGPC does (§11).[6] Majority
Common misconceptions
- “The Dasam Granth is part of the Guru Granth Sāhib.” It is a separate book, compiled, most historians hold, after 1708; only the Guru Granth Sāhib is installed as the Guru. Consensus
- “Scholars think none of it is the Guru’s.” The most common view among historians is that some of it is, including the Jāp, the Bachitar Nāṭak and the Zafarnāmā. Majority
- “The question is only academic.” Prayers from the book are recited daily and at the Khālsā initiation, which is why the argument is political as well as textual. Consensus
- “The book has always had the same contents.” The early manuscripts differ; the printed standard is of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Majority
What the evidence cannot settle
Historians can date the manuscripts, compare their contents, and weigh the style and language of each composition against the court the Guru kept. They cannot prove from the manuscripts alone whose pen wrote each of the disputed parts; and whether the disputed parts belong in the liturgy is a question for the Panth, not for the archive. Contested
References
- ^ a b c d e Dasam Granth — The Book of the Tenth Guru. compiled early 18th c. CE. Braj, Punjabi and Persian in Gurmukhi. Compositions attributed to Gobind Singh and his court: the Jāp, Akāl Ustat, Bachitar Nāṭak, Chaṇḍī Charitra, Chaubīs Avatār, Charitropākhyān and the Zafarnāmā. Who wrote which parts is the field's most heated textual argument.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Robin Rinehart Debating the Dasam Granth. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011.
- ^ Pashaura Singh The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and Authority. Oxford University Press, 2000. doi The formation of the Sikh canon, from the 1604 Ādi Granth to its installation as Guru.
- ^ Damdamā recension of the Ādi Granth — The text with Guru Tegh Bahādur's hymns added. c. 1706 CE (tradition). Punjabi in Gurmukhi. The form of the scripture installed as Guru; tradition says Gobind Singh had it prepared at Talvaṇḍī Sābo.
- ^ Gurinder Singh Mann The Making of Sikh Scripture. Oxford University Press, New York, 2001. The manuscripts from the Goindvāl pothīs to the Damdamā recension.
- ^ a b Harbans Singh, ed. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism. Punjabi University, Patiala, 4 vols, 1992. open access Published 1992–1998; the standard reference, with signed entries reporting both tradition and sources.
- ^ a b Louis E. Fenech The Darbar of the Sikh Gurus: The Court of God in the World of Men. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2008. Gobind Singh's court, its poets and its Persianate culture.
- ^ Zafarnāmā, couplet 22 — Letter of Guru Gobind Singh to Aurangzeb. c. 1705–1706 CE. Persian. "When every other means has failed, it is lawful to take the sword in hand."
- ^ Louis E. Fenech The Sikh Zafar-namah of Guru Gobind Singh: A Discursive Blade in the Heart of the Mughal Empire. Oxford University Press, New York, 2013.
- ^ a b Bachitar Nāṭak 6.42 — Dasam Granth. late 17th c. CE. Braj in Gurmukhi. Gobind Singh, in the work's autobiographical voice: "For this purpose I came into the world: the Guru sent me for the sake of dharma."
- ^ Bachitar Nāṭak 5.13–14 — Dasam Granth. late 17th c. CE. Braj in Gurmukhi. The tenth Guru's account of his father's death: Tegh Bahādur "protected their tilak and sacred thread" and "gave his head, but not his resolve".
- ^ J. S. Grewal The Sikhs of the Punjab. The New Cambridge History of India II.3, Cambridge University Press, 1990. The standard narrative history; revised edition 1998.
- ^ W. H. McLeod Sikhs of the Khalsa: A History of the Khalsa Rahit. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2003. The code of conduct from the rahitnāmās to the Sikh Rahit Maryādā; the main source for dating the Five Ks.
- ^ Kamalroop Singh and Gurinder Singh Mann "The Guru's warrior scripture". OUPblog (Oxford University Press), 24 January 2016, 2016. open library The authors of The Granth of Guru Gobind Singh: Essays, Lectures and Translations (OUP, New Delhi, 2015) on the Dasam Granth as a warrior scripture tied to the weapons, the Takhts and the Akālī Nihaṅgs; Kamalroop Singh's thesis (Birmingham, 2012) concluded it was compiled in the Guru's lifetime. Gurinder Singh Mann here is the director of the UK Sikh Museum Initiative, not the historian G. S. Mann.
- ^ Pashaura Singh Understanding the Martyrdom of Guru Arjan. Journal of Punjab Studies 12.1, 29–62, 2005. open access Jahāṅgīr, Xavier, the Dabistān, Sirhindī's letter and the Chandū Shāh tradition, set side by side.
- ^ Louis E. Fenech Martyrdom in the Sikh Tradition: Playing the "Game of Love". Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2000.
- ^ Chaṇḍī Charitra (Ukti Bilās) 231 — Dasam Granth. late 17th c. CE. Braj in Gurmukhi. "Deh sivā bar mohi ihai": a prayer for the courage never to turn from righteous deeds. Whether Śivā is the goddess or God is itself debated.
