Origin of the Guru Granth Sahib
The Guru Granth Sahib is the holy book of Sikhism. It was originally called POTHI from the time of Guru Nanak. In 1539 he handed the first Pothi to Guru Angad Dev. This was passed to Guru Amardas and Guru Ramdas and it was in 1601 that Guru Arjan Dev Ji started compiling the Granth Sahib. He completed the Granth Sahib in 1604. In August 1604 he installed the Granth at Harmandir Sahib and named it " POTHI SAHIB".
The scribe for the Pothi Sahib was Bhai Gurdas, who was a maternal uncle of Guru Arjan. In 1605, Empror Akbar examined the Granth in detail after receiving complaints from various jealous quarters - both Hindu & Muslim. Akbar, however liked it very much for its divinity. He summoned the complainants and punished them and as a mark of respect offered 51 Gold Coins for the Granth.
The Granth stayed in Amritsar from 1604 till 1635. It was then moved to Kirtarpur Sahib by Guru Hargobind. In 1644, this original Granth was stolen by Dhirmal - a grandson of Guru Hargobind.
In 1706 a second version of the Granth was compiled by Guru Gobind Singh. The scribe for this was Bhai Mani Singh - a classmate of Guru Gobind Singh. Four copies of this Granth were made by Bhai Deep Singh.
In 1708, Granth Sahib was declared the spiritual Guru of the Sikhs by Guru Gobind Singh at Nanded in the Southern part of India - now known as Hazur Sahib.
The Guru Granth Sahib is composed of 1430 pages in total.
Composors
The details of the composers of the Bani (sections) are as follows:
Gurus | No. of Compositions |
|---|---|
Guru Nanak | 972 |
Guru Angad | 62 |
Guru Amardas | 907 |
Guru Ramdas | 679 |
Guru Arjan | 2218 |
Guru Hargobind | Tune of 9 Yaars out of 22 |
Guru Tegh Bahadur | 115 |
Guru Gobind Singh | 1 Page - 1,429 |
Bhagats | |
Shiekh Farid | 134 |
Jai Dev | 2 |
Kabir | 541 |
Namdev | 60 |
Ravidas | 41 |
Beni | 3 |
Trilochan | 4 |
Ramanand | 1 |
Dhanna | 4 |
Bhikkan | 2 |
Sadhna | 1 |
Pipa | 1 |
Sain | 1 |
Paramanand | 1 |
Surdas | 1 |
Relatives of Sikh Gurus | |
Baba Sundar | 1 Page - 966 |
Bards of Gurus | |
Mardana | 3 Pages - 533 |
Sata & Balvard | 1 Page - 966 |
Court of Poets (House of Gurus) | |
Swayas in praise of the first five Gurus | 123 |
The Golden Temple, Amritsar, India. Courtesy of Arrn Capture
Languages used in the Guru Granth Sahib
More than ten languages have been used in the Guru Granth Sahib. The main languages and their authors are listed below:
Arabic | Namdev |
Sanskrit | Guru Nanak, Guru Arjan & others |
Persian | Guru Arjan |
Punjabi | All Gurus who composed, Shiekh Parid & others |
Hindi | Kabir |
Sindhi | Guru Arjan |
Lehndhi | Guru Arjan |
Dakhi | Guru Arjan |
Bengali | Jaidev |
Marathi | Man Dev & Trilochan |
All the Bani in the Guru Granth Sahib are classified in different Ragas except for the first Hymn JAPJI & the Swayas and Sloks at the end.
NOTE: This information has been compiled from a few Sikh Historians who are well known in the Sikh World.