A section from the journey

The Adi Granth

The fifth Guru gathered the hymns of the Sikh Gurus into one great book, the Adi Granth. It is sung, not merely read. What makes it remarkable to our story is who else is inside it. Beside the Gurus stand the verses of saints from outside the path, Hindu and Muslim alike, such as Kabir, Ravidas, and Namdev. Later this book itself became the eternal Guru.

We meet now the heart of the Sikh path, its holy book. The fifth Guru, Arjan, gathered the hymns of the Gurus into one great volume. It is called the , which means the first book.

He finished this work in the year 1604 and placed the book in the great central shrine. There it sat in the seat of honour, higher than any person, for the word was held above all.

From the very start, this book was meant to be sung, not just read in silence. Its hymns are set to musical measures, each one tuned to a way of singing. To sit before it and sing its words together, that is the centre of Sikh worship.

The book opens with a short statement of faith. It says, in its own way, that there is one God, true in name, the maker of all, without fear, without hate, beyond time and birth, known by grace. In a few words it holds the whole of Nanak's message.

Now here is the part that touches our own story most closely. When Guru Arjan gathered the hymns, he did not gather only Sikh voices. Beside the Gurus, he set down the verses of saints from outside the path. Some were Hindu. Some were Muslim. He judged their songs true, and so he gave them a place of honour.

Among these saints are poets we have already met on our journey. There is Kabir the weaver, who scorned all empty ritual. There is Ravidas, of the leather-working community, who sang of a world without high or low. And there is Namdev, a voice of the Varkari road to Pandharpur. Their verses live on inside the Sikh holy book.

Think of what that means. A thread of song runs straight from the devotional saints into the scripture of a new and separate path. It is a real and living link between two traditions that grew in the same soil. The bhakti tide we followed earlier did not stop at its own banks. Some of its water flowed here too.

And yet we must hold the truth steady. The Adi Granth is far more than a gathering of older voices. It is fully the Sikh path's own, the heart of its faith, shaped by its own Gurus. The borrowed verses sit inside a new and complete tradition, not the other way around.

One last thing, looking ahead. Long after Guru Arjan, this book would be raised even higher. The line of human Gurus would end, and the book itself would be honoured as the living, eternal Guru, the Guru Granth Sahib. But that part of the story belongs to a later turn, which we will reach soon.

Guru Arjan honoured true words even when they came from outside his own path. When have you found wisdom in a voice you did not expect, from a place you thought was not your own?