Editorial
The Sikh Review

The Sikh Review published a special edition to commemorate Guru Nanak's Quincentenary. The following is an editorial published in the Dec. '69 - Jan. '70 issue and was titled Guru Nanak's Mission, Message and Metaphysics. --Editor

Through over three and a half centuries since its compilation, the Adi Granth has not only been revered as their scripture by the Sikhs, it has also been cherished and relied on as religious authority by religious communities having no organisational association with them. The reason perhaps is that the Granth enshrines only the immutable verities that evoke a response in every heart, overflowing barriers of thought and culture which quite often narrow the horizons of understanding and emotion. Since these verities are unfolded through the language of inspiration, anyone harking to the song of the Granth is immediately and deeply affected and returns to it for spiritual solace again and again.

Sikhism has been keenly alive to the power of arts as media of thought and culture; music and poetry have occupied a place of unique importance in the Sikh system of values. Says Guru Nanak: "the bani (the Gurus prophetic utterance) is the Guru and the Guru is the bani; the bani has in it all immortal essence."

It was Guru Nanak who first adopted music and poetry for the communication of his gospel. Perhaps he did it out of necessity, because no other medium could have been adequate to the range, depth and intensity of His Revelation. In the process he transmuted Punjabi, till then a rustic language seldom employed for communicating any fine thought or emotion, into a subtle medium capable of communicating experiences which defy description and baffle comprehension.

Quite apart from the inherent literary merit of his poetry, which vouchsafes to Guru Nanak a high status in the literary history of India is his choice of a rugged language for his medium and convertion of it into a subtle and poetic medium. And this he achieved by bringing to this medium a keen and profound sensibility and a catholic receptivity ready to draw on other languages for expressive phrases and evocative images. He travelled widely and had no egoistical inhibitions in appropriating ideas and words where they conveyed his feelings better. The result was that he drew heavily on sant bhasha, Sanskrit, Persian, Sindhi, Hindwi and the newly evolving rekhta for words and images. To what effect he employed his borrowings can be seen from his use of a few terms: vismad (feeling of wonder, state of absorption arising from that feeling), banda (man, conceived of in relation to God), bandagi (devotion, acknowledgement through submission), kudrat (God's Will or Power or plainly external nature), or even the most frequently used Khuda (God).

For the appraisal of a poet, the most essential thing to do is to define the elements of poetry and also to examine what constitutes great poetry. The basic character of poetry is that it is a medium of communication, which, like prose, employs language as its instrument but which, unlike prose, appeals not to reason alone but to the total faculty of apprehension. The result is a passionate and profound realisation rather than mere comprehension. Poetry is supra-rational in its choice of theme as much as in the technique of its medium. The domain of poetry is the metaphysical, the transcendental. Poetry is the daughter of intuition and inspiration and not the child of analysis and reason. It is generated by strong impact on a sensitive mind of unusual aspects of reality and not by the slow processes of analytical contemplation. It may be emotion recollected in tranquility or contemplated passion or intuition; but it has the quality of emotion and passion nonetheless. It is, therefore, a medium of mystic experience.

Like all creative arts poetry is composed of two ingredients: inspiration and the art; the vision and medium by which the vision is communicated, the idea and the expression. Great poetry represents the synthesis of a great vision with effective art. It is, as a layman would say, a most beautiful description of a most beautiful thing. As to the relative importance of the two ingredients, critical opinion, through the ages, has held the subject of communication to be far more important than the art of communication. Excellence of style and expression cannot make up for the want of genuine feeling and a profound view of reality, and quite often does find spontaneous, adequate and eloquent expression.

Great poetry invariably unfolds a profound apprehension of one or more aspects of life. It is the vehicle of ecstasy or anguish arising from deep involvement with life; it is not fed by fantasy. It may unfold a transcendental philosophy; but this philosophy will be a system of ideas which are a serious-minded man's solemn response to some phenomenon of reality.

What greatly adds to the appeal of poetry is the originality of the idea sought to be communicated or of the mode of communication so that the poetic image that emerges reveals a new dramatic awareness or reality.

Guru Nanak apart from being a great Prophet, is a great poet. His poetry is not only the poetry of the Divine Revelation, it also reflects the deep pathos of contemporary life. It is at once the poetry of hope and of social criticism. While it lays bare and deplores the infirmities, depravity or abject condition of man, it expresses and is informed by a profound conviction that man is in essence Divine and that his destiny too is Divine.

The philosophy that Guru Nanak's poetry unfolds is that all life is one. It is Divine because God is the only reality, a combination of substance, consciousness and energy. Diversity has sprung up from Divine unity because His Will has so ordained. The destiny of each individual being is the return to its Divine Source. Human life is a great opportunity for such return or self-realisation. Unfortunately men often lose (as in Guru Nanak's times they had lost) sight of reality and chase shadows - attachment to wealth and power; pursuit of pleasures of flesh that sap a man's physical and spiritual vitality; egotistical concern for imposing one's own beliefs on others that often leads to deeper involvement in error, and the like.

To regain Divinity man must consciously and assiduously pursue Truth in all spheres of life, the social and the ethical, the mental and the spiritual. In fact self-realisation or realisation of the Divine is in essence the realisation of the Truth; it is the progressive widening of the consciousness through meditation to comprehend the whole power and glory of life. The process of widening of consciousness is not helped but hindered by the eschewing of any experience. A man must, therefore, fully participate in life but not submit himself to its allurements.

The realisation of Truth, the attainment of glory and power of life, comes through ethical excellence, pursuit of knowledge, creative endeavour to promote general good, modesty and the experience of sense of grace. Man regains Divinity when he attains to the region of Truth:

In the region of truth, the Formless Absolute dwells.
He blissfully contemplates His creation with compassion.
There, there are regions, constellations, universes,
If one attempted to describe these, there would be no end.
There, there are myriads of habitations, myriads of forms.
As His will ordains, so does it all proceed.
He sees and blissfully meditates.
O Nanak, it is very very hard to describe.

This being the philosophic framework of Guru Nanak's vision, the poetry, that unfolds this vision is inevitably rich and intense; its thematic range, extremely wide; and its emotional base, deep and varied. Examine a few passages picked up at random:

Wonder inspiring are the books of revelation!
Wonder inspiring the forms!
Wonder inspiring the colours!
Wonder inspiring, the air!
Wonder inspiring, the water!
Wonder inspiring the play of fire!
I have been struck with wonder
to see the wondorous play;
Nanak only the blessed ones understand.

The simple-minded physician knoweth not:
The ache is in my heart.

By His will the visible forms appear.
His will is indescribable.
By His will does greatness come to some.
By His will are the low low and the high high.
Nanak, the one who comes to know the will
Says not, "it's I; it's me; it's mine."

When the strong fall upon,
there is no cause for regret;
But when a powerful tiger
pounces upon a herd of meek cows,
the cowherd must be answerable.

Cheer up heart, Sawan, the season of
rainladen cloud is come.
My heart and body yearn for my Love-
Who is gone abroad.
The Lover comes not home, I die of sighing;
the lightning frightens me.
On the lone bed, I go through restlessness
worse than the pangs of death;
Without the Lord what hunger and thirst
can I have?
The clothes on my body hurt me!
Nanak, she alone is a truly-wedded wife,
who has a place in her lover's heart.

The above selection is much too cursory and small to indicate the range and depth of Guru Nanak's poetry; besides no translation, however competent it may be, can communicate the intensity of the original - much less where the original is, as in Guru Nanak's poetry, a series of dazzling flashes rather than a ratiocinative exposition. This incidentally, is the most notable characteristic of Guru Nanak's poetry, which invests it with a mystic charm even though it makes it a little hard to understand.

Two elements make Guru Nanak's poetry hard to interpret: the fullness of its thought content and the terseness of its language. What surprises the critic is that inspite of its obscurity, it evokes such warm responses in the reader and the listener. This is achieved by fusing highly evocative phrases and musical patterns, very appropriate to the mood.

Guru Nanak's imagery is drawn both from literature and life. He made free use of the imagery employed in religious literature and also of imagery drawn from the situations of everyday household and economic life of people engaged in different evocations. This helped him come close to the heart of common people. He also drew freely on phenomenon of nature for analogies. Thus he likened his soul to a bride, who yearned for her bridegroom, the Lord of all creation. By importing the situations of young married love into it, he imparted to his poetry of spiritual yearning deep pathos and piquancy. Here are some similes drawn from agriculture, trading and nature:

"It behoved a man to make his mind the soil and using patient effort as manure to sow the seed of Divine name in it."

"Man's spiritual venture was like a trading enterprise. He may trade in goodness and with seven horse-loads of spiritual merchandise, go forth with the currency of virtues for expenses on the way."

"The simal tree is tall, shapely and erect. But everyone coming to it returns disappointed. It's fruit is unsweat; its flower has no fragrance. One should rather ne sweet and low and have in oneself the essence of virtue."

The effect of this diverse imagery is heightened by appropriate rhythmical patterns. Guru Nanak's poetry is written, except in the case of Japuji, to conform to the designs of Indian classical music measures. But within the broad framework of the measure, Guru Nanak creates a remarkable variety of muscical and rhythmic patterns. Hearing his Asa-di-Var sung by any worthwhile musician is a musical treat which does not breed satiety even after years of daily hearing. The parts of lines in this large poem lengthen and shorten to suit the mood and the thought content. Here is, for instance, the exhortation that one should rather not be tall through fruitless like the simal tree.

simal rukh sara-era at dirag at muc
oe je awaih as kar jae nirase kit.
phal phike phul bak bake, kam na awaih pat.
mithat nivi Nanaka gun cang-yaian tat.

And here is the deprecation of austerities that are totally unnecessary for the attainment of the great spiritual ideal.

likh likh padia teta kadia
bahu tirath bhavia teto lavia
bahu bhekh kia dehi dukh dia
sahu ve jia apna kia
an na khaya, sad gavaya
bahu dukh paya duja bhaya
bastar na pehrai ah nas kehrai
mon viguta kio jagai gur bin suta
pag upetana apna kiya kamana
al mil khai sir chai pai

The complex combination of an extraordinary philosophy, a wide diversity of imagery and rhythmical patterns produce a poetry, which, as its continuing popularity proves, has all the elements of the greatest poetry.

Guru Nanak's message has a definite ethical aspect, as it has a social and political aspect too. That has to be because Guru Nanak was concerned with the whole man and his destiny. But his poetry seldom loses the heat of poetical passion and rarely succumbs to cold moralising. It ranks with the finest specimens of religious poetry. In the domain of religious poetry it has a most distinguished place, because it is a poetry of prophecy, a poetry of hope and vision:

Those who have deeply contemplated
the Name,
Their travails and labour have come to a
fruitful end.
Nanak, their faces are neat and bright,
And innumerable others have been saved
with them.