death the community would have no
more human leaders, but only their
scripture to guide them. The book’s reli-
gious authority can be seen in the way
that the Sikhs treat it. They accord the
Adigranth the status of a living person.
In Sikh temples the Adigranth is cere-
monially put to bed at night and woken
up in the morning. It is enshrined under
a canopy (a sign of royalty) for worship,
is fanned during hot weather and
warmed during cold, and if it has to be
taken anywhere, is carried on the bear-
er’s head, considered the purest part of
the body. In according this respectful
treatment to a physical book, the Sikhs
were probably influenced by Muslim
practice with regard to the Qur’an, since
in general Hindus pay little heed to a
book itself, however important the text
may be.
The Adigranth plays a central role in
Sikh life: Children are named by opening
the book at random and taking the first
consonant on the upper-left-hand page
as the first letter of the child’s name; Sikh
couples are married by circling the
book, as Hindu couples circle the
sacred fire(agnipradakshinam), and a
commonly performed death rite is an
unbroken reading (akhand path) of the
entire text.
The text itself was compiled in
1603–1604 by Guru Arjan, the fifth Sikh
guru. According to tradition he com-
piled the book in response to certain
rivals contesting his authority, some of
whom had compiled and were circulat-
ing books purporting to be the teachings
of Guru Nanak, the Sikhs’ founder and
first guru. There may be some truth in
this tradition, but it is now well estab-
lished that Arjan himself was working
from a compilation made a generation
before. The text’s opening verses are
known as the mulmantra, which gives a
collection of attributes and qualities
ascribed to the Supreme Being. After
this opening, the Adigranth has
three main parts. The first is the Japji,
a sequence of thirty-eight poems
written by Guru Nanak that is
considered the essence of the Sikh faith,
and which is recited by the faithful as
the morning prayer.
The second section contains the
hymns of the Sikh gurus, arranged by
raga, or melodic mode. Within each raga
the hymns are arranged according to
poetic meter, and within each meter the
hymns are arranged sequentially accord-
ing to which of the gurus composed
them. Since the Sikh tradition holds that
all ten gurus contained the same divine
spirit, they all identified themselves as
“Nanak.” But introductions to the songs
differentiate between them by calling
them Mahala(literally “house,” but figu-
ratively “body”) followed by a number—
from Mahala 1 for Guru Nanak to Mahala
5 for Guru Arjan.
The final section of the Adigranth
contains hymns by various other devo-
tees (bhakta), both Hindu and Muslim,
whom the Sikh gurus believed to
be propounding the essential Sikh
message of monotheism and the need
to serve God. Among the Hindu
devotional (bhakti) poets whose works
can be found in this section are
Trilochan, Jayadeva, Pipa, Ramananda,
Sen, Namdev, Kabir, and Ravidas, with
significant collections for the last three.
Even for those not interested in the
Sikhs, this last section makes the
Adigranth an extremely important
document. Not only does this section
provide manuscript tradition that can
be precisely and accurately dated, but
the sacred status of the text has ensured
that it has remained unchanged since
the beginning of the seventeenth cen-
tury. Many other manuscript sources
for these poets are far more recent and
are made problematic by textual cor-
ruption and pseudonymous additions.Adishesha
(“Primal Shesha”) Epithet of Shesha.
See Shesha.Aditi
In Hindu mythology, one of the wives of
the sage Kashyapa, who also marriedAditi