The tradition, and the custodian family, hold that the Kartarpur Bir is the very manuscript dictated by Guru Arjan and penned by Bhai Gurdas in 1604, a claim supported by features such as a Guru's attestation, the arrangement of the hymns, and the volume's documented descent. The Sikh scholar Rattan Singh Jaggi is among those who have affirmed its authenticity on these grounds.
Other scholars have questioned the identification. Working from the text, the hand, corrections and codicology, G. B. Singh and Piar Singh argued that the Kartarpur manuscript does not straightforwardly match what an original 1604 volume should be, pointing to features they read as later. A separate tradition, recorded by Harjinder Singh Dilgeer, holds that the genuine original was destroyed during an Afghan invasion in 1757, which would make any surviving volume a later copy. The difficulty of resolving the matter is compounded by access: the manuscript is privately held and only rarely and partially available for study, so independent examination has been limited. Gurinder Singh Mann's work on the formation of the canon treats the Kartarpur volume as a central and probably early witness while setting out the reasons the question remains open. The balanced position, reflected in the status recorded here, is that the manuscript is genuinely an early and important recension of the Adi Granth, while its identity as the specific physical book of 1604 is debated.