User talk:Harnaamsingh

Dasam Granth

WJKK WJKF

Welcome to SikhiWiki and thanks for the contributions! I hope that in time you’ll have a string of articles to your list!

I recently read you statement added to the Dasam Granth article:

“There is no clear agreement in PANTH about the creator of DASAM GRANTH. The PANTH has to decide on the creator of DASAM GRANTH and has directed not to have any discussion about its creator. Many Sikh scholars believe that expect few BANI's (like Jap Sahib) DASAM GRANTH is not a creation of Guru Gobind Singh. Therefore please do not specify Guru Gobind Singh Ji as creator of whole DASAM GRANTH.”

As you know, there is still controversy surrounding the issue of authorship of the Dasam Granth. As a result the Dasam Granth article carefully uses the following statement: “[that the Dasam Granth is a collection of wiritings]…attributed to Guru Gobind Singh” This is in place of a more direct statement such as “written by” or “created by” and the result is (hopefully) that it implies that it is others who have said so i.e scholars etc – this of course does not take into fact that at varies places throughout the Dasam Granth, we find Bani’s starting with the phrase ‘Sri Mukhvakh Patshah Dasveen’.

The article is inclined to the positive i.e that Guru Gobind Singh is the Author, since all the authorative dicussions and debates of this topic lend this view – from 1892-1897 scholars gathered at Akal Takhat Sahib and the resulting report supports this view (available to download and read in Punjabi at the bottom of the article); the meeting in 1931 headed by the Darbar Sahib Committee of the SGPC also lends this view. Further to this, it has also been seen that scholars who have published books suggesting otherwise have either had them banned or in some cases been ex-communicated from the Panth. It is when taking these factors into account that the article attributes the writings of the Dasam Granth to Guru Gobind Singh.

You are absolutely correct that just as there are many scholars who support the Dasam Granth, there are as many who don’t and for this reason there is a section within the article titled ‘The Controversy’. Hopefully here readers can bring together the various debates for either viewpoint allowing ‘neutral’ readers be informed and encouraged to read and investigate for themselves.

One of the aims of articles at SikhiWiki should be, I think, to be a complete encyclopedia and so the source of all (Sikh-related) knowledge! For example, where it once may have said ,”many scholars agree” it would/could be that “these scholars agree:” giving readers further sources of information and study.

Anyway, I’ve digressed from the original discussion. What I was going to suggest was if you could take your statement and move it to the ‘The Controversy’ section within the article, better still would be if you could interweave it/integrate it into the opening paragraph of the section, I think it would work better there.

Keep up the work!

WJKF --Navroop Singh 08:03, 13 Jul 2005 (Central Daylight Time)