Songs of the Saints from the Adi Granth.

• Author: Shapiro, Michael C.
• Position: Book Review

By NIRMAL DASS. Albany: STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS, 2000. Pp. ix + 308. $19.95 (paper).

The most sacred work of Sikh scripture, the Adi Granth (AG) (or Sri Guru Granth Sahib), redacted by the fifth Sikh guru, Arjan, in 1604, in addition to containing verse composed by the first five of the Sikh gurus, also includes a substantial body of poetry by earlier poet saints whose beliefs were felt to be doctrinally compatible with those of the Sikh gurus. In all, there are fifteen such poet saints (known as bhagats) included in the AG. These poets are Namdev, Ravidas, Jaidev, Trilocan, Beni, Ramanand, Sainu, Dhanna, Sadhna, Pipa, Sur, Bhikhan, Paramanand, Farid, and Kabir. Some of the fifteen (e.g., Namdev, Kabir) are well-known figures in their own fight, while others (e.g., Beni, Sadhna) are less well known. The time frame of these compositions is believed to be the twelfth through sixteenth centuries. Some of the authors (Paramanand and Sainu) are represented by as few as one verse each, while others (e.g., Kabir) are represented by as many as several hundred compositions. The language or languages of these texts are various forms of early New Indo-Aryan, in a style often referred to as sant bhasa, but with influences from a diversity of languages, including Sanskrit, Apabhramsha, Braj, Hindi, Marathi, Lahnda, and Panjabi.

Until recently, most scholarship and publication on the AG tended to be focused on the compositions of the Sikh gurus, with negligible attention given to the works of the bhagats. In two recent publications, the second of which is the work here under review, Nirmal Dass has attempted to remedy this situation by translating the bulk of compositions other than those by the Sikh gurus. In the first of these, Songs of Kabir from the Adi Granth (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1991), Dass translated the entire corpus of Kabir material in the AG. The translation of this material was important not only from the point of view of early Sikh text studies, but also from other perspectives as well. Kabir, one of the most important of the Sant poets of North India, is known from three distinct textual traditions, the eastern (or Bijak), the Rajasthani (or Granthavali), and the northwestern (represented by the works in the AG). Of these three recensions of Kabir materials, the first two are well known to English readers, but the third is not. By translating the Kabir material in the AG, Dass made available to the English...