Devotional Literature, Not Scripture

Sikh tradition has never treated the Janamsakhis as scripture in the sense the Guru Granth Sahib holds that status; they are devotional and biographical literature, valued for the teaching their episodes illustrate rather than defended as literal history in the way the Guru Granth Sahib's compositions are treated as the Gurus' own words. Modern Sikh studies scholarship, particularly the source-critical work associated with W. H. McLeod, has analyzed the different Janamsakhi traditions comparatively, treating their disagreements and their layered composition over the century or so following Guru Nanak's death as evidence of how an oral devotional memory solidified into competing written accounts, rather than as a problem to be resolved into one authoritative version.

The narratives nonetheless carry real doctrinal weight. Each of the well-known episodes is constructed to dramatize a specific teaching: the Mecca story asserts that God transcends any single religious direction or claim to exclusive access, and the childhood episodes challenging caste-based and ritual distinctions between Hindu and Muslim practice anticipate the egalitarian teaching that runs through Guru Nanak's own compositions in the Guru Granth Sahib. The Janamsakhis remain in active devotional use, recounted in gurdwaras and at Sikh educational institutions as the primary vehicle by which Guru Nanak's life, as distinct from his recorded teaching, is transmitted.