‘South-Western’ elements in the language of the Ādi Granth

Bull. Sch. Orient. Afr. stud.

2008

The special importance of the Ā di Granth as the defining scripture of the Sikhs has encouraged the production of commentaries whose language and approach reflect changing understandings of the Gurus' teachings over the last four centuries. The oral style of the earlier commentaries which typically demonstrate a catholic inclusiveness towards the wider Indic tradition came largely to be replaced in the twentieth century by the more exclusive approach of Sikh reformist commentators, in part aroused by the dismissive attitudes of the first English translation by Trumpp. Continuing to shape most modern understandings of the scripture, these highly organized commentaries composed in the new idiom of Modern Standard Panjabi are only now beginning to be challenged by new styles of exegesis being pioneered in the Sikh diaspora.1 It is offered as a small tribute to John Wansbrough, whom I much valued as a SOAS colleague. In its preparation I have been most grateful to Marina Chellini of the British Library for her kind assistance.3 The best systematic account in English of Gurū Nānak's teachings remains McLeod 1968: 148-226.2 Scriptural references use the system of abbreviations set out in Shackle 1995: xxxiiii, 279, followed by the standard page numbers of the Ā di Granth. Scriptural quotations are transliterated from the Gurmukhī script according to the system set out in Shackle 1995: xxi-v. The transliteration employed below for modern standard Panjabi and other languages written in the Gurmukhī script used in the commentaries differs chiefly in the omission of the inherent -a in word-final position. It should be noted that Gurmukhī has only sh (written with dotted sassā) without the Nāgarī distinction between ś and ṡ .

Section: Reformist Commentariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…22 For the translation strategy involved in the above rendering, seeShackle 2005 andShackle andMandair 2005: xlvii-l.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Repackaging the ineffable: changing styles of Sikh scriptural commentary

Bull. Sch. Orient. Afr. stud.

2008

Approaches to the Persian loans in the Ādi Granth

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

1978

One of the chief fascinations exercised by words—especially by loan-words—derives from their dual function as markers of both linguistic and cultural change. For those interested in words from this historical view-point perhaps nothing is more tantalizing than the difficulty of reproducing, in the study of words as cultural markers, those types of clear and comprehensive classification which have been so successfully developed for the analysis of words in their formal aspects.

The Sahaskritī poetic idiom in the Ādi Granth

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

1978

In two previous studies we have sought to advance the process of understanding the complex linguistic character of the Āḍi Granth (AG) by isolating and describing two special stylistic varieties of language, which significantly differ from the normal idiom of the book as a whole. These were shown to be based respectively on the extensive use of elements drawn from the dialects of the South-Western Panjab, and of loan-items from Persian: but it was further emphasized that they were stylistic varieties of the usual AG poetic language, and were in no sense to be regarded as straightforward examples of contemporary Multani or Indo-Persian.