Kartarpur Bir

The Kartarpur Bir is a manuscript volume revered in the Sikh tradition as the original Adi Granth, the first canonical scripture of Sikhism, compiled in 1604 under the fifth Guru, Guru Arjan, and written out by his scribe Bhai Gurdas. It is kept by the Sodhi family at Kartarpur, a town near Jalandhar in the Indian state of Punjab. This Kartarpur should not be confused with the Kartarpur in present-day Pakistan, founded by Guru Nanak, with which the manuscript has no connection; the Bir is neither kept there nor associated with that site.

As the earliest recension of the text that would later be expanded and installed as the eternal Guru Granth Sahib, the manuscript carries immense significance for the history of the Sikh canon. Because it is held privately and is only rarely and selectively made available, the volume has been the subject of a long scholarly debate over whether it is indeed the physical book of 1604. In deference to the sanctity the tradition attaches to the scripture and to the restrictions on its handling, this entry treats the manuscript with corresponding care.

In 1604 Guru Arjan brought together the hymns of the earlier Gurus, a body of compositions by Hindu and Muslim saints, and his own verse, and had them set down as a single authoritative scripture at Amritsar; Bhai Gurdas served as the scribe. This first volume, the Adi Granth, was installed in the Harmandir Sahib, the Golden Temple, an act that gave the young Sikh community a fixed canon.

The manuscript identified with that original followed a particular family line. When the sixth Guru, Hargobind, left Amritsar in 1634, the volume came into the keeping of his grandson Dhir Mal, and it has stayed with Dhir Mal's descendants, the Sodhi family, at Kartarpur near Jalandhar ever since. That descent is significant because the line of the Guruship, and the later canonical scripture, passed differently: the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, gave final form to the scripture at Damdama and conferred perpetual Guruship on the Guru Granth Sahib, the text now enthroned in every gurdwara. The Kartarpur Bir thus stands as a revered early witness held outside the main line of scriptural transmission, which has at times made its custody a matter of community sensitivity.

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.