Adi Granth - The Inscription of The Granth

The Inscription of The Granth

The making of the Granth was not an easy task. It involved sustained labour and a rigorous intellectual discipline. Selections had to be made from a vast amount of material. Besides the compositions of the four preceding Gurus and the Guru Arjan who himself was a poet with a rare spiritual insight, there were songs and hymns by saints, both Hindu and Muslim. What was genuine had to be sifted from what was counterfeit. Then the selected material had to be assigned to appropriate musical measures and transcribed in a minutely laid out order.

Guru Arjan carried out the work with extraordinary exactness. He arranged the hymns in thirty different ragas, or musical patterns. A precise method was followed in setting down the compositions. First came shabads by the Gurus in the order of their succession. Then came hands, vars, and other poetic forms in a set order. The compositions of the Gurus in each raga were followed by those of the Bhaktas in the same format. Gurmukhi was the script used for the transcription.

A genius, unique in spiritual insight and not unconcerned with methodological design, had created a scripture with an exalted mystical tone and a high degree of organization. It was large in size—nearly 7,000 hymns, comprising compositions of the first five Sikhs Gurus and fifteen Bhaktas and Sufis from different parts of India, including Sheikh Fariduddin Ganjshakar, Kabir and Ravidas.