ADI GRANTH

Priest worshiping the Adi Granth (Punjabi: "First Book"), the sacred scripture of Sikhism, a religion of India. The book (also known as Granth, or Granth Sahib ["The Granth Personified"]) is a collection of nearly 6,000 hymns of the Sikh Gurus (religious leaders) and various early and medieval saints of different religions and castes. The Adi Granth is the central object of worship in all gurdwaras (Sikh temples) and is accorded the reverence paid a living Guru. It is ritually opened in the morning and wrapped up and put away for the night. On special occasions continuous readings of it are held, which last from 2 to 15 days. On the birthdays of the Gurus or anniversaries commemorating Sikh martyrs, the Granth is sometimes taken out in procession. The first version of the book was compiled by the fifth Sikh Guru, Arjun, at Amritsar in AD 1604. He included his own hymns and those of his predecessors, the Gurus Nanak, Angad, Amar Das, and Ram Das, and a selection of devotional songs of both Hindu and Islamic saints (notably the poet Kabir). In AD 1704 the tenth and last Guru, Gobind Singh, added the hymns of his predecessor, Guru Tegh Bahadur (the sixth, seventh, and eighth Gurus did not write hymns), and enjoined that after his own death the Granth would take the place of the Guru. The book opens with the Mul Mantra (basic prayer), which is a declaration of the nature of God as Truth, followed by the Japji (Recital), the most important Sikh scripture, written by the founder of the Sikh religion, Guru Nanak. The hymns are arranged according to the musical modes (ragas) in which they are to be sung. The language is mostly Punjabi or Hindi, interspersed with Marathi, Persian, and Arabic words. After the death of Guru Gobind Singh his hymns and other writings were compiled into a book known as the Dasam Granth (q.v.).