Origin 1469 to 1604
Shabad is the Word as divine utterance: the self-communication of the one, which the Gurus received rather than composed. Guru Nanak says of his own hymns in Tilang that he speaks the word as it comes to him from his Lord, which is a disclaimer of authorship and not a modesty formula. Bani, utterance, is the term for the received compositions themselves, and a shabad is also the ordinary name for a single hymn in the Guru Granth Sahib, so the word runs from the highest theological register down to the practical business of which piece the musicians sing next.
The doctrine that matters is shabad-guru: the Guru is the Word, not the man. The human Gurus are the Word's vehicle and their authority is derivative of it. This is stated well before it becomes constitutionally necessary, and it is what makes the eventual arrangement intelligible instead of eccentric. When the line of human Gurus ends, guruship passes to the scripture because the scripture is where the Word is, and nothing about the nature of guruship has to be revised to allow it.
It also explains the shape of Sikh worship, which is not sacrifice, not image-service and not primarily petition, but the singing and hearing of the Word. Kirtan is the central act of congregational worship for a reason internal to the doctrine: if the Word is the Guru, then attending to it sung is attending to the Guru directly.
A further consequence is that the Guru Granth Sahib contains compositions by figures who were not Sikh Gurus at all, among them Kabir, Namdev, Ravidas and the Muslim Farid. If authority attaches to the Word rather than to the standing of the speaker there is no difficulty in it. On any other account there would be.
Facts
Status
Status Within the TraditionStandard teaching, not formally defined 1Tradition: Sikhism The received account of the divine word as the Guru Standing as a Comparative CategoryA standard analytic category in the study of religion 2 Doctrinal CategoryRevelation, Covenant and Prophecy 1 Origins
Origin Period Doctrinal category (class)Revelation, Covenant and Prophecy 1 Learn More
The Word, Which Is the Guru
Shabad, the Word, is in Sikh teaching the divine utterance through which God is known and by which a person is transformed. In ordinary usage it is also the name for an individual hymn of the Guru Granth Sahib, and the two senses are deliberately joined: the compositions are held to be the divine Word, and the tradition's statement is that the Guru is the shabad and the shabad is the Guru.
That identification is what makes the Sikh scripture a Guru rather than a record of what Gurus taught. Guru Nanak's own compositions locate the Guru in the Word rather than in a person, in the Siddh Gosht, his recorded dialogue with the Nath yogis, he says that the shabad is his Guru, so that the vesting of guruship in the scripture in 1708 is presented within the tradition as the completion of something present from the beginning rather than as an innovation forced by the end of the line.
The Word is encountered principally through kirtan, the singing of the hymns, which is the central Sikh act of worship. The Guru Granth Sahib is arranged by raga, musical mode, rather than by author or subject, thirty-one principal ragas, with the compositions of all the contributing Gurus and saints grouped within each, and that arrangement is itself a statement that the text is meant to be sung rather than merely read. Listening, sunia, is treated at length in Japji Sahib as itself transformative, and the tradition holds that congregational kirtan works on the hearer directly.
The scripture's contents are notably plural. Alongside the compositions of six Gurus it includes the work of fifteen bhagats, Hindu and Muslim saints of varied region and social background, among them Kabir the weaver, Namdev the calico-printer, Ravidas the leatherworker, and the Sufi Farid, together with bards and others. That such compositions stand within a text which is itself the Guru is the strongest available statement of the tradition's position that the divine Word is not the property of any one community, and it is regularly cited in exactly that connection, including in arguments against caste.
How the Book Was Made
The theological claim that the scripture simply is the Guru rests on a specific and traceable compilation history, showing the claim was not asserted about just any collection of devotional poetry but a text assembled with unusual editorial care over more than a century.
Guru Arjan, the fifth Guru, compiled the first authoritative recension, the Adi Granth, completing it in 1604 and installing it at the Harmandir Sahib (the Golden Temple) at Amritsar, drawing together the compositions of his four predecessor Gurus, his own hymns, and the works of the bhagats, the Hindu and Muslim saints noted elsewhere, into a single volume arranged by musical mode. The compilation was partly a response to spurious hymns falsely attributed to the Gurus by rival claimants to leadership, so establishing an authoritative text served a practical function of guarding the tradition against forgery as much as a devotional one.
Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru, added the hymns of his father, Guru Tegh Bahadur, producing the version now recognized as final, and shortly before his death in 1708 declared that the line of personal Gurus was ending and that the scripture itself, now titled the Guru Granth Sahib, would be the eternal Guru thereafter, a declaration Sikhs mark annually as the founding act of the tradition's current religious authority. The text has since been fixed at a standard 1,430 pages in modern editions, with standardized pagination used worldwide so a citation means the same thing wherever printed, extending the same concern for textual integrity that motivated Guru Arjan's original compilation.
Connections
Attributed To
Source Guru Nanak (Wikipedia)
Belongs to Tradition
The divine Word, treated as the Guru itself, is Sikh teaching held by this order, the doctrine that let a book succeed a line of human Gurus.
Source The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and AuthorityPashaura Singh
The divine Word, treated as the Guru itself, is Sikh teaching held by this order.
Source The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and AuthorityPashaura Singh
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
The divine Word, treated as the Guru itself, is Sikh teaching held by this order.
Source The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and AuthorityPashaura Singh
Sources
1. The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and Authority
2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source Guru Granth Sahib
Compiled by Guru Arjan, 1604; final recension attributed to Guru Gobind Singh, 1706, Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, 1604Tilang, Guru Nanak, on speaking the word as it comesthe holders' own accountView the Source Guru Nanak (Wikipedia)
Attributed To: Guru Nanak, LeadQuote, Attributed To: Guru Nanak, Lead
Nanak's words are registered in the form of 974 poetic hymns, or shabda, in the holy religious scripture of Sikhism, the Guru Granth Sahib, with some of the major prayers being the Japji Sahib (jap, 'to recite'; ji and sahib are suffixes signifying respect); the Asa di Var ('Ballad of Hope'); and the Sidh Gosht ('Discussion with the Siddhas').
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