ADI GRANTH. - "The fundamental book," also called simply Granth, "Book" (par excellence, in a religious sense: Bible) or Granth Sahib, "The holy fundamental book": a collection of songs and discourses composed and recited in public by Nānak (1469-1538), the founder of the religion of the Sikhs (v.) or "disciples," a religious community of northern India, which was soon transformed into a politico-military Church, and by three other masters (guru) who followed after him.
Another Granth, entitled "The Granth of the tenth guru," was compiled by the Sikhs in 1734. Besides prayers of Govind Singh (1675-1708), the tenth and last guru (to whom is due the true organization of the Sikhs into the aforementioned politico-military theocracy, but with a distinctly democratic character), this second Granth, which nevertheless does not enjoy the same authority as the first, also includes, among other things, hymns of the ninth guru Teg Baltadur.
The Ā. constitutes the Bible of the Sikhs, of whom Govind Singh considers himself the last master, or guru (he alludes, indeed, in the second Granth, to his divine mission). After him, the Granth Sahib was to be considered the only guru or Master, the true representative of God on earth, the incarnation of the guru. This sacred book is still preserved today in its principal copy, used by those charged with its daily reading (grāntis), beneath the dome of the "golden temple" (Har Mandar), the sanctuary of the Sikhs, erected in 1762 in Amritasar, the holy city of the Sikhs, on the foundations of a destroyed Muslim sanctuary.
The Ā., whose language is the Brajbhākhā dialect (a variety of western hindi) with notable influences of pañjabi and with Prakritic, Persian, mārāthi and gujarāti contaminations (the "Granth of the tenth guru" is instead in old hindi), contains, like the second, the fundamental principles of the doctrine of the Sikhs. These are: belief in the uniqueness of God, with the consequent rejection of all idolatry; the equality of all men before God, from which follows the abolition of castes; the prohibition of the sacrifice of widows on the funeral pyre of their husbands; the obligation to abstain from wine and from every other alcoholic beverage and from smoking. The use of meat is instead permitted, which has made the Sikhs a people by far stronger than their other Indian brethren.
The last census (1941) puts the faithful of Sikhism at 4,335,771.
Bibliography
Ambrogio Ballini