Bilaval is a morning measure of contented rather than yearning character, and a section of considerable size. It gives its name to the reference scale of the Hindustani classical system, the one against which the other scales are described, which makes its presence here a small piece of musical history in itself.
The section carries a composition ordered on the days of the lunar month, one of several calendrical forms the Granth uses. Each day supplies an occasion for a teaching, and what the form does is quietly polemical: a lunar calendar in the surrounding culture carried a dense freight of auspicious and inauspicious days, and a composition that takes each day in turn and finds the same thing to say about all of them is making an argument without stating one.
The Granth uses this device more than once. Alongside the lunar days there are compositions ordered on the days of the week and on the months of the year, and in every case the frame is a system for distinguishing times and the content refuses the distinction. The teaching is that no day is better than another for the thing that matters.
The section also carries a var. Its size and the range of Gurus represented in it place it among the more heavily worked measures in the second half of the volume.