The Ādi Granth, or the Holy Scriptures of the Sikhs (1877) · 39

(12). Rag TGdi (7T3T Z3\) (28). Rag Kanara (TT^J =^IArfl).

(13). Rag Bairarl (HTJJ tjdTrf'^)- (29). Rag Kalian (TOT STfeWT^).

(14). Rag Tilang (Tiaj f^T^)- (30). Rag Prabhata (TOT V3T3T).

(15). Rag Suhi (TT3T ff^). (31). Rag Jaijavanti (TTST %-HI«|j^).'

The verses of the different Gurus have been distributed into these fore-mentioned Rags, apparently without any leading principle, as hardly any verse is internally connected with another. The name of the Rag is therefore a mere superscription, without any reference to its contents. At the con- clusion of a Rag frequently some sayings of one or more Bhagats are added, which seem to have been selected in the same arbitrary way as chance might offer them. No system nor order is there- fore to be looked for in any of the Rags. In the first four Rags the most important matter was

' There were originally only thirty Rags; the last, Rag Jaijavanti, was composed by Teg-bahadur, and contains only fonr verses.

collected and tbcy are therefore also comparatively of the largest compass; the following minor Efigs seem to be a second gathering or gleaning, as materials offered themselves, no attention being paid to the contents, but only to the bulky size of the Granth. By thus jumbling together what- ever came to hand, without any judicious selection, the Granth has become an extremely incoherent and wearisome book, the few thoughts and ideas, that it contains, being repeated in endless variations, ■which are for the greatest part nothing but a mere jingling of words.

YI. The so-called Bhog or conclusion of the Granth. This portion contains:

(1). Some Sloks (four in number) by Nanak, and (sixty-seven) by Arjun.'

(2). Three small pieces by Arjuu (3[|kil, ^^U and r:jQt4M).

(ff). Panegyric of Guru Baba 2saiiak. (5). Panegyiic of Guru Angad. {e). Panegyiic of Guru Amar-das. ((?). Panegyric of Guru Eam-das. («). Panegyric of Guru Arjun. (7). Sloks in excess of the Yars, by Nanak. (8). S15ks by Amar-das. (9). Sloks by Eam-das. (10). Sloks by Arjun. (11). Sloks by Teg-bahadur.

(12). A piece called Mundavani (ii^T^kV) by -irjun, consisting of two Sloks.^ (13). Rag-mala (an enumeration of the Kags with the Piagiiiis) by an unknown author.

' They are called in the Granth?Tf5^ TvUTf^jY. whence some raslily concluded, that they were really Sanskrit Shloks. But this is a great mistake. Xcitlicr N.iiiak nor Aijiin understood anything of Sanskrit, and these verses are therefore composed in the usual Panjabi of those days. What is meant by JTU'fJT?3T> see p. cxxxiii. Remark.

^ Some copies of the Granth insert before or after the Mundavani some Sloks of Nanak (Mali. I., which Cunningham, p. 3/1, strangely interprets by: " Hymn of the first woman or slave"); a Ratan-malS (or rosary of gems) belonging to the Rag Ramkall, by Nanak; and a short story (in prose) of Rah-nuikam Siv-uabh, Raja (of Ceylon), by an unknown author.

cxxii ON THE LANGUAGE AND THE METRES USED IN THE GRANTH.

ON THE LANGUAGE AND THE METRES USED IN THE GRANTH.

Feom the foregoing survey of the various contributors to the Granth it may be easily inferred, that the idiom of the Granth is not the same throughout; it varies considerably according to the time or the province in which the author lived. Though the Granth, as regards its contents, is perhaps the most shallow and empty book that exists, in proportion to its size, it is, on the other hand, in a linguistic point of view, of the greatest interest to us, as it is a real treasury of the old Hindu! dialects, specimens of -which have been preserved therein which are not to be found anywhere else. The Granth contains sufficient materials, which will enable us to investigate those old and now obsolete dialects, from which the modern idioms have had their origin, so that the gap, which hitherto existed between the older Prakrit dialects and the modern languages of the Arian stock, may, by a careful comparative study of the same, be fairly filled up. It is to be regretted, that the oldest and therefore most interesting specimens of the language of mediaeval India are comparatively few in number.

Very likely the oldest writer in the collection of the Granth is Kc'imder, who is also considered the oldest Maratlii poet; he lived about the fourteenth century of our era, though we have no materials at hand, by which we might be enabled to fix his time more accurately. We know from the Bhakta- mala, that he was a native of the Dekhan and lived in the town of Pandharpur (in the Bhakta-mala written XTf^TJ^ and xj-^tf^), being the illegitimate child of a daughter of Vamdev and by pro- fession a calico-printer (not a tailor, as Molesworth will have it). The peculiarities of the modern MarathI are already visible in his compositions, though not in such a degree as in the verses cited by Molesworth in his Marathl-English Dictionary, Introduction, p. xxvi, so that the suspicion arises, that either the verses of Namdev, as far as received into the Granth, were adapted to the Hindu!, or that the verses cited by Molesworth were adapted to the modern Marathi. In order to illustrate his style and its peculiar grammatical features, we subjoin here a few lines taken from Eag Gaurl (Transl. p. -180):

$^ \nTj7; Tri^ww ii ht>t s7XJ3 tTt; sm tts^ ii ^ut© ii ■3T3^ ^ ^T'Rssn fsj^ TM" ^ftpfn ftPHTfti wttpt^ Tratnf^ ii

BH75 "Sift? iT7> 3# i?srf3 3^ II XtQ -^fe trfe iTS Tr»T ^ II 1

"By God stones are caused to swim. How should not men by the order of Earn cross?

(1). Seizing the raft the whore, the hump-backed woman without beauty, the hunter and Ajamal

were brought across. The man who struck the feet (of Krishna) became emancipated. I am a sacrifice to the man, (who)

"We have perhaps in ^c- i the inflectional a of Mar'itlii nouns of the first declension, but the Instrumental case-affix «T is not yet added (nor is it in Hindui), the Formative as such serving as Instrumental,

ox THE LANGUAGE AXD THE METRES USED IN THE GEANTH. csxiii

the same as in Sindhi. g^ is the JTai-rith! efi^, how? In 3T5\*K^ wo have a participle past passive, formed by the affix i-ale, the conjunctive vowel i of the modern MarathI being lengthened to I, and at the same time a short «-sound added = fTlF^^; hut by the side of such formations we find also the regular Hindu! form of the participle past, like "si^. The pronoun of the first person singular is TT%, hari, and notjf^, as now in Maratht. Nearly all the postpositions are still wanting, so that pieces of this kind are extremely difficult to translate.

About the same time lived tho Brahman Trilocan, who was likewise an inhabitant of the Dekhan, as may be safely concluded from the peculiarities of his style, which resembles very closely that of KTiradev. We subjoin hero a sample of the same taken from the Sirl Eag (Transl. p. 127, III. IV.):

fsW^ W^ "UfW xiTWcVT ■VJTS^ Hfe Tf?? 3Tr 75 1{%^ II

3n sra ^7?5 W3^ Humjft f375 »n3T^ H ^xj^ 7J ^nfe ii 8

(3). On a difficult, terrible road thou must go, 0 man, (whither) sun and moon do not penetrate. The infatuation of the Maya is then forgotten (by thee), when thou hast left behind the world. (4). To-day he has become manifest in my mind, Dharm-rau has been seen. His very strong hands break in pieces (men), before him I cannot abide.