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Laying the Guru to Rest

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Laying the Guru to Rest

Sukhasan (the seat of peace) is the evening ceremony that concludes the daily attendance on the Guru Granth Sahib, the counterpart of the morning Parkash. At the close of the day the scripture is ceremonially closed, wrapped in its cloths (rumala), and carried, often on the head of an attendant and accompanied by hymns and prayers, to a designated resting room where it is laid for the night. The rite completes the pattern by which the Sikh community treats its scripture as a living Guru: just as a revered person is attended through the day and sees to rest at night, so the Guru Granth Sahib is opened in the morning, consulted and served through the day, and retired in the evening. The ceremony, like its morning counterpart, is observed in gurdwaras across the Sikh world and gives daily, tangible form to the doctrine of the eternal Guruship of the scripture.

Scholars of Sikh ritual, including Louis Fenech, have noted that the daily rhythm of Parkash and Sukhasan draws directly on the etiquette of a royal court, the scripture attended, fanned, and put to rest much as attendants would once have served a reigning sovereign, an image reinforced by the term darbar sahib used for the space where the Guru Granth Sahib is enthroned. This court imagery is not merely decorative but expresses a considered theological claim, that temporal deference once owed to human kings is owed instead, in Sikh practice, to the scripture itself as the community's sole living authority after the line of human Gurus closed in 1708.

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