Prabhati is a measure of the early morning, and its name means simply the dawn. The section gathers work by the Gurus and by the bhagats and stands second to last in the rag sequence.
Its placement has attracted readings. A sequence that opens with a grave evening measure and arrives, thirty sections later, at dawn is a shape that means something if it was intended, and more than one account of the volume has treated it that way.
The atlas notes the observation and declines to endorse it. The sequence is fixed and the Granth states no reason for it; a pattern that can be seen in the order is not thereby the principle of the order, and the same sequence contains a spring measure, a rain measure and a midday measure at points where no comparable narrative reading is available. A reading that works for the first and the penultimate section and not for the twenty-eight between them is an observation rather than an explanation.
What is worth saying about the position is narrower and safe: the rag sequence ends here and at Jaijawanti, and the material that follows the last rag heading is of a different kind, standing outside the arrangement altogether.
One further caution about reading the placement. The compositions gathered for recitation at dawn are not drawn from this section, and a reader who assumes that a dawn measure supplies the morning liturgy will have the relation backwards. The daily sequences are assembled separately and draw chiefly from the opening pages of the volume and from Asa. Prabhati's position at the end of the rag sequence and the tradition's morning observance are two different facts that happen to share a word.