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Spirit of the Sikh

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Spirit of the Sikh INTRODUCTION The manuscript of Spirit of the Sikh, as left by Professor Puran Singh, is in three large-sized typed volumes, corrected at numerous places in the author’s hand along with additional matter which suggested itself to him after the typing had been done. This voluminous work was in the process of composition from 1923 to 1930, but because of the fatal illness that came upon the author in 1930, the publication of this as also of a good deal of his other work could not be arranged in his life-time. A group of lyrical essays of homage to the holy Gurus, entitled ‘The Kinship of Ages’ was completed in 1923-24 and intended for publication the same year as a separate work. This arrangement could not come through, as the Lahore publisher who was approached, kept silent. ‘The Kinship of Ages’ has already appeared in this series as Part I of ‘Spirit of the Sikh’. The larger work was projected in three volumes, including ‘The Kinship of Ages’, which was later included as Part III of volume I (the present volume). This volume is now appearing as volume I of Part II of Spirit of the Sikh, to be followed by its companion volume II. The portion entitled ‘The ‘Kinship of Ages’ which has already appeared under the imprint of Punjabi University, Patiala, appears from internal evidence in the autobiographical reverie attributed to the Yogi Bharthari Hari to have been composed in 1923, when the author was forty-two years of age. In the reverie occurs the sentence: ‘Infancy seizes me at times, and I find myself now, even at this age of forty-two, a little babe lying in the lap of my Mother, covered under her shawl, with both my tiny, white hands still clutching at her breasts, with the life- nipples in my mouth, and sucking the Nectar of love, from those fountains of Immortality’ …….The date 1923, which perhaps spilled over into 1924 is supported by the brief preface prefixed by the author to the ‘Kinship of the Ages’, appearing after the English rendering of Siddha Goshti that closes the present volume. This Preface is dated August, 1924 and is signed at Dehra Dun. Professor Puran Singh’s younger son, the late Raminder Singh, however, in a short monograph on his father, has indicated ‘Spirit of the Sikh’ as written at Jaranwala between 1927 and 1930. This last statement, however, appears to be substantially correct. In the opening chapter of Part I of the present volume, he author in the first paragraph indicates that at the time of undertaking to put down his spiritual experience in this work he is forty-five years of age. So, while ‘The Kinship of Ages’ published already as Part I of the total work belongs to 1924, the major work now being published, must come after 1926. Spirit of the Sikh is the author’s testament to his faith in extenso, and brings to fulfilment what had been his theme in the rest of his writings, in English and Punjabi. While ‘The Kinship of Ages’ stands out as a distinct work, containing reveries on the teachings of the holy Gurus and the Spiritual experience under the names of several personae, the other two volumes following now, are a continuity, expressing the author’s own meditations and outpourings, along with renderings from Gurubani in his own soulful, though somewhat free, manner of treating the sacred Word. About Puran Singh’s literary achievement some studies have already appeared, and others are under preparation, which should give an adequate idea of the astounding range and output of this writer, who in the course of his brief life of fifty years beset with various distractions, was able to create a vast mass of writing in English and in his mother-tongue, Punjabi, in which he is acknowledged as a pre-eminent poet and a pace-setter in the modern idiom of poetry, which with freedom from the conventions of prosody combines the qualities of superb imagination and rhythm. At a time, back in the twenties, when hardly any Sikh writer had been published abroad and little on Sikhism itself was published from any Sikh, or for the matter of that any Indian writer, three of Puran Singh’s books got published in Britain and won high acclaim. These works, Book of the Ten Masters, Nargas and The Spirit of Oriental Poetry have ever since remained classics of Indian poetry in English, on themes expressing the mystical experience. The reader, as he goes through the expository portions of this work, will meet a flowing harmony, a uniformity of style and vision. This writing, saturated with influences from Gurubani and enshrining half-conscious memories of expressions from poets of spiritual experience like Blake, Tennyson and Whitman, becomes lyrical in style, in long, flowing sentences and turns of phrase, somewhat in the manner of Carlyle, whose influence may be noted not only in the vehemence with which the writer asserts his vision, but also in ‘The Kinship of Ages’ where persona like Carlyle’s Teufelsdrockh in Sartor Resartus are created to voice the author’s own convictions. Puran Singh also translated Carlyle’s Heroes and Hero-Worship into noble Punjabi prose. The selection of this work is indicative again, of his preference for personalities whose mystical vision found expression in socially valuable, heroic action. Another influence on the poet is Walt Whitman, the appeal of whose free verse style, as has been pointed out often, Puran Singh so successfully captured in his own Punjabi poetry. Over and above these influences, Whitman’s gospel of work as dedication appeals to Puran Singh’s grasp of the Sikh ethos. Sikhism has evolved a unique synthesis of mysticism with socially beneficial work, Seva. Writing in the twenties, when to idealistic Eastern eyes, oppressed by the shackles of European imperialism, the new dispensation in the Soviet Union appeared to presage the fulfilment of all that mankind in their visions of utopia had dreamed, he is again and again slipping into a somewhat hazy identification of the Sikh idealism with the new Soviet order. In the course of the editing of this work, such an imbalance, as certain others, had necessarily to be set in proper focus. On certain other Asian countries, especially Japan and China, his views again echo the situation in the twenties. For Japan, where Puran Singh had lived and imbibed the Buddhist faith which he later outgrew, he felt great fascination because of its ordering of its corporate national life. The harsh, imperialist face of Japan was yet to show itself more than a decade later. Buddhism and Christianity held great appeal for this writer, whose mysticism partook of the basic teachings of each of these faiths. Time and again he expresses himself in the mystic phraseology of these faiths, which again tend to get mixed up with and overlay his passion for Sikhism. Such spots too needed delicate handling by the Editor. The writer’s power in capturing vision and experience and the prophetic mode of his expression will encounter the reader too frequently to need isolated pointing out. This is his characteristic style, in which alone he can satisfactorily express himself. In the course of his outpourings, sometimes he tends to break loose from the laws of controlled prose-writing, but most often what comes from his pen has significance and appeal. Here is a man who is recording his testa- ment of faith and relating it to what insights he feels he has got from other systems of faith and from certain social organizations. As a necessary corollary, he is seen to be allergic to the religion of mere contemplation divorced from action and a dynamic vision of society. That is what makes him such a severe critic of the ancient thought of India. And yet, embedded as his thought is in the best that belongs to modern Indian idealism, he is always able to balance his reaction. In a passage on India in the rather lengthy Foreword he thus builds up his synthesis in India: ‘Our mother-country is India, our language is derived from Sanskrit, but we are modern in our outlook, though also ancient as Prahlad and Krishna. We (implying Sikhs) have got a new and intensely reactive past of over 400 years and we are cut off from the decadent past of India. In view of the political solidarity of India it is mischievous for any to suggest that we are not of the Hindus, and not equally of the, Muslims. It is mischievous to multiply the points of difference with the Hindu, which are not fundamental. Now the process of Hindus joining the Guru under his flag for the freedom of India has been discontinued by the Hindus themselves. It is suicidal for them to have done so. The Gurus have shown the Hindus the way to freedom of mind and soul and also to political freedom…for the Hindus, the way to survival, and freedom is the Guru’s way.’ Not all Hindus may be expected to assent to this above viewpoint, but it proceeds from Puran Singh’s fervour of faith in the Guru’s teachings and practice, no less than his sympathy for the Hindu, through long ages lying torpid and victim of aggression. The theme of the books has been summed up by the author himself in words breathing deep and fervent faith at the opening of Part I in the chapter entitled ‘Music of the Soul.’ This noble passage, expressive so masterfully of his source of inspiration and his mode of embodying it may here be reproduced: “In the following pages I try to indite what I, as a Sikh, a disciple of the glorious Gurus, have in a dim way felt to be the rhythm of their life-giving hymns.
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