Making the East Meet the West

By Sarwat Ali

(The News, Karachi, Sunday, April 2, 2002)

Transcription from Gurmukhi to Shahmukhi and vice versa can bring Punjabis close to each other through an increased understanding of the literature being created on both sides of the border

Kalam-e-Nanak

Compiled by Jait Singh Seetal

Published by APNA and Punjabi Heritage Foundation, USA

(Summary of the Book Review)

Guru Nanak's great poetic talent has been eclipsed by his religious stature as the founder of the Sikh religion. He has been deified by the later Sikh Gurus who in institutionalising the religious order created such a halo round his personality that the distinction between the poet and the founder of a religion ceased to exist.

But the fact remained that between the two great poets of Punjabi, Baba Fareed Shakarganj (1188-1280) and Shah Hussain (1538-1601), the gap of about two hundred and fifty years needed to be filled, and that was not possible without taking into account the massive contribution of Guru Nanak's poetic genius. He provided the key to the finding of many missing links in the language and the poetry of the region called Punjab.

Baba Fareed wrote shalok or dohre and Shah Hussain wrote Kafi and there was total silence about the other poetical forms. It seems quite clear that Nanak held the answer to the origins and the acceptance of the other forms of poetry like waar, rahrus, aarti, sohle, sudh gost, pehar and baramah.

These poetic forms were popularly used by other poets but how these came about and became part of Punjabi was not very clear. Being related to the soil and its people, these have emerged as popular forms in Punjabi literature and have organic links with poetic forms of the adjoining areas as well. For example rahrus and aarti were poems of invocation, sohle were either eulogies or in the praise of the Almighty, sudh gost were poems written in the form of dialogue, pehar was on the four stages of human life and baramah were poems written on the twelve months.

The significance of Nanak was all the more crucial since he lived when Punjabi as a language was in a formative stage. He used three languages -- Punjabi, Hindvi and Apabhramsha -- and employed all the dialects and accents of Punjabi because he was writing for the people and in a language that was spoken by the common man. And it was not surprising because Nanak wrote against discrimination, orthodoxy, dogmatism and the hierarchical division of human society. He chose to write not for those who were powerful but for those who were weak. He wrote in their language. The Gurmukhi script and its formalisation was done later by the Sikh Gurus.

Kalam-e-Nanak is all that Guru Nanak (1469-1539) wrote and it consists of five hundred and eighty six pads (stanzas) .The order followed in the book is the one found in Guru Granth -- the name of a raag is given before the verses follow which can be sung in that raag. For a student of music it is quite interesting to know of the close relationship between poetry and music. For every poem a specific raag has been prescribed for its rendition and in all nineteen raags have been mentioned in the book.

The most significant and troublesome aspect of any work like Kalam-e-Nanak is to understand and decipher the real text. Jait Singh Seetal has done that by providing an extensive farhang (dictionary) at the end of every poem. The enormity of the task can be gathered from the fact that every word needs to be explained and the meaning of nearly every word thus has to be given.

The literature of East Punjab has been made inaccessible to people living in West Punjab and vice versa due to the difference in script. The Punjabis in conversation are on an equal keel but ironically they become total strangers when communicating through the written word. This has also inhibited an open literary exchange.

APNA has now taken upon itself the responsibility of removing this main hurdle of communication. By transcription from Gurmukhi to Shahmukhi and vice versa, the newly formed body intends to bring the readers of both the Punjabs closer to each other by increasing their understanding of the literature created on both sides of the border.

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