The Language of Gurbani Devinderjit Singh St

The language of Gurbani Devinderjit Singh St. Catherine's College, Oxford (November, 2006)

As Sikhs, we are uniquely fortunate with regard to our Scriptures: the Guru Granth Sahib was written and compiled by the Founders of our Faith, and not by devotees many decades after their passing. This enables us to resolve arguments of interpretation for ourselves by going back to the original source. It would be great loss, therefore, if the latter was not always available because it had been replaced by a translation. To gain from Gurbani, of course, we have to be able to make sense of the text. Does this mean that we must be able to read the Gurmukhi script and understand all the languages used in the Guru Granth Sahib? No, that would be impractical; even theological and linguistic scholars would find it difficult to satisfy those re- quirements in general. What would be most helpful, in my view, is the availability of ‘commentaries’ in a variety of languages (English, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and so on) along the lines of Professor Sahib Singh’s magnum opus in Punjabi, ‘Sri Guru Granth Darpan’. Here each word (albeit its transliteration) should be translated one at a time, notes provided to explain the background and context of any references used in a Hymn (e.g. Indian mythology, Hindu and Muslim beliefs and rituals, Yogic practice etc.) and then the overall message of the Verse de- scribed in a narrative style. This is a mammoth task, and needs a dedicated group of individuals with the relevant knowledge and skills to work on it together for a number of years. I think this approach is preferable to that of the currently avail- able translations, because it would give guidance towards a deeper understanding of Gurbani and provide the reader with enough information to form their own opinions from effectively the original source.

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