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The non-Sanskritic vocabulary of the later Sikh gurūs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

C. Shackle
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Extract

Althouth the Ādi Granth (AG) is rightly renowned for the number and the variety of its contributors, the great bulk of its contents is in fact formed by the compositions of Gurū Nānak (d. 1539), and those of his successors Gurū Amar Dās (d. 1574), Gurū Rām Dās (d. 1581), and Gurū Arjan (d. 1606).

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , February 1984 , pp. 76 - 107
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1984

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References

1 Shackle, C., A Gurū Nānak golssary, London, 1981. The morphology is described in the companion teaching grammar, An introduction to the sacred of the Sikhs, London, 1983Google Scholar

2 As set out in ‘The Sahaskritī poetic idiom in the Ādi Granth’, BSOAS, XLI, 2, 1978, 297–313Google Scholar. The 111 salok by Gurū Arjan in pure Sahaskritī listed there as (3–5) on p. 298 have been excluded in compiling the present vocabulary.

3 As described in my ‘Approaches to the Persian loans in the Ādi Granth’, BSOAS, XLI, 1, 1978, 73–96Google Scholar. But words occurring only in the pure Torkī hymn by Gurū Arjan, Til (AG, p. 723), have been excluded here.

4 An attempt was made to assess the linguistic evidence for the latter in my ‘“South- Western” elements in the language of the Ādi Granth’, BSOAS, XL, 1, 1977, 36–50Google Scholar. The literary significance of these elements is outlined in ‘The South-Western style in the Guru Granth Sāhib’, Journal of Sikh Studies, v, 1, 1978, 69–87Google Scholar

5 Other than those compositions by Gurū Arjan described in n. 2 and n. 3 above.

6 Alternants of words cited in the Glossary have been included only where considered to be of particular interest, e. g. South-Western ḍ- for d. In order to keep the present list within manageable proportions, many variant forms have been excluded, typically those differing from Glossary citations only in vowel-length, or in having v-, -ṇ-, -l-, -ṛ- for b-, -n-, -r-, -r- (or vice versa). A similar ruthlessness has been exercised with regard to the many unique rhyme-forms, a particularly noticeable characteristic of Gurū Rām Dās's innovative style, and to the acrostically distorted forms naturally especially frequent in Gurū Arjan's Bāvana akkharī (AG, 250–62). For words cited here only for the later Gurūs it has, however, been feasible to indicate the total range of by-forms, without impossibly swelling the list of entries.

7 In my ‘ Approaches’, BSOAS, XLI, 1, 95–6Google Scholar, where the adjustment of figures for the later Gurūs is explained, i.e. M3 × 1·4, M4 × 1·75, M5 × 0·5. The corpuses of M2, Farid, and M9 are too small to make such proportional adjustments realistic.

8 op. cit., pp. XXIX–XXXI.