Reviewed work(s): The Bhagats of the Guru Granth Sahib: Sikh Self-Definition and the Bhagat Bani by Pashaura Singh
 

The Bhagats of the Guru Granth Sahib: Sikh Self-Definition and the Bhagat Bani. By PASHAURA SINGH. New Delhi: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2003. Pp. xviii 210. $27.50.
 
In 2000 Pashavra Singh, in an important work of scholarship, The Guru Grant Sahib: Canon, Meaning and Authority (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), provided an overview of many of the most central issues involved in the text criticism of the most sacred work of Sikh scripture, the Adi Granth (known to pious members of the Sikh community as the Adi Sri Guru Granth Sahib). In this work Singh took up such matters as the sources and redaction of the text by Guru Arjan in 1604, the manuscript history of various recensions of the text, the organization of the text in terms of musical ragas, scriptural adaptation in the text, broad processes of canon formation with regard to the text, the hermeneutics of the text both within and outside of Sikh tradition, processes by which religious authority has been and continues to be vested in the text, and the overall place of scripture within Sikh tradition. Singh also dealt with an issue, the status of the so-called bhagat bani within the AG, to which he has returned at much greater length in the book under review here. The new book owes its genesis to Singh's 1987 University of Alberta M.A. thesis, which predates the 2000 volume. Singh has, however, thoroughly revised and expanded the earlier work, taking into consideration a substantial body of scholarship on Sikh scripture written during the past two decades.
 
 
As is generally known, the Adi Granth (AG) in its canonic form, redacted by the fifth Sikh guru, Arjan, in 1604, contains verses, arranged by musical raga, composed by the first five of the Sikh Gurus, namely Nanak, Amgad, Amar Das, Ram Das, and Arjan. The text also includes a considerable body of poetry by earlier poet saints (called bhagats), believed to have been composed from the twelfth through sixteenth centuries, deemed worthy of inclusion by the redactor. Fifteen such poet-saints are included in the 1604 (or Kartarpur) manuscript of the AG, to wit Namdev, Ravidas, Jaidev, Trilocan, Beni, Ramanand, Sainu, Dhanna, Sadhna, Pipa, Sur, Bhikhan, Paramanand, Farid, and Kabir. Collectively the bhagat material comprises approximately eight percent of the total text of the 1604 version of the AG. The fifteen bhagats are highly diverse in their religious affiliations and geographical spread. Some (Farid, Bhikhan, Kabir) were Muslims and others (Namdev, Sainu, Sadhana, Dhanna, and Ravidas) of low-caste background. The geographical backgrounds of the bhagats ranged from Bengal (Jaidev) to Maharashtra (Trilocan and Paramanand). All the poets included, however, shared the quality of being known for iconoclastic outlooks and rejection of narrow caste orthodoxy. Until recently, much (particularly Western) scholarship has focused on the compositions and contributions of the Sikh Gurus in and to the AG. Of late, however, there has been growing interest in the compositions of the non-Sikh bhagats. In two recent publications (Songs of Kabir from the Adi Granth [Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1991] and Songs of the Saints from the Adi Granth [Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 2000], for instance, Nirmal Dass has translated the entire corpus of material in the AG not composed by the Sikh Gurus. Interest in this body of material reflects current concerns with processes of canon formation, textual transmission and redaction, and the role of sacred text in the formation of self-identities within religious communities.
 
The core of the work at hand comprises six chapters. The first is an overview of the nature and content of the bhagat corpus in the AG, dealing not only with basic textual matters concerning manuscripts, authors, and the like, but with more general issues concerning the characterization and analysis of the corpus. The second, third, and fourth chapters contain detailed studies of the corpora of three bhagats included in the AG, namely Farid, Kabir, and Jaidev. The fifth chapter examines the status of the bhagat material within the Sikh scriptural tradition, from the perspectives of history, doctrine, liturgy, and inter-religious dialogue. The sixth chapter is a relatively brief conclusion, reiterating the main theses of the book and asserting the importance of the bhagat bani within the Sikh community for the past four centuries. The work, in addition to the usual scholarly apparatus, also contains a helpful glossary of important terms.
 
This is a book from which one can learn many things. One can gain a basic familiarity with a body of literature that has generally been overshadowed in discussions of the AG by discussion of the composition of the Gurus. But this is not, to my mind, the book's main contribution. More important is the fact that the book provides a sophisticated and compelling answer to a fundamental question, namely why Guru Arjan, as well as the redactors of other early versions of the AG, saw fit to include this material in their compilations. The answer provided in one form or another by many earlier commentators on Sikh scripture is that Arjan and others included it because it was doctrinally compatible with the spiritual and doctrinal messages propounded by the early Gurus, as evinced by their poetic compositions. Singh now makes us see that it's not so simple. That there was a fundamental sympathy between the beliefs of the redactors and those of the bhagats is a given. But this sympathy did not prevent the redactors, nor the early Gurus, from reinterpreting points contained in the compositions of a particular bhagat in order to advance the superiority of the views of the Sikh community to those espoused by the bhagat. Singh demonstrates this by means of a nuanced and close analysis and interpretation of the language of the bhagat bani itself. In the case of the Farid material, for instance, he analyses how compositions by Guru Nanak, Guru Amar Das, and Guru Arjan allude to Farid and his compositions, particularly with reference to issues that were deemed "crucial for shaping the emerging Sikh identity" (p. 75). What has now become important about the bani is not only its doctrinal compatibility with the ideology of the newly forming Sikh panth, but also its utility in providing a contrast, made manifest through the juxtaposition of the bani of the bhagats with that of the Gurus, between the views of the proponents of the newly emerging Sikh faith and those of the new faith's spiritual precursors. The AG, rather than being a monochromatic hymnal containing a set of ideologically compatible compositions, becomes something much more dynamic: a text in which Sikh Gurus not only espouse particular doctrines, but engage, as it were, in active exchange with their precursors. By demonstrating how this might be the case, Pashaura Singh has altered the way scholars are likely to view the bhagat bani in the future.
 
MICHAEL C. SHAPIRO
 
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
 
COPYRIGHT 2005 American Oriental Society