Guru Nanak's Japuji (A Look Anew)

Guru Nanak’s Japuji is a great work. Our abilities, contrarily, are quite limited. Yet we cannot stop hoping that this little book will do some good to every thoughtful reader.

The one clear aim of Japuji is to show us the way to get rid of suffering. This is borne out by the Guru’s crowning emphasis:

Now, in so far as we all pine for riddance from suffering when it strikes us, Japuji’s relevance to the whole of humanity is incontestable. No one, however, can gain anything from the work if it is read cursorily, as our holy books of religion often are. We too, in our present attempt, have not been able to do justice to all that Japuji says –and suggests. Some of its esoteric details had to be passed over because they appeared to be wholly beyond us. On the other hand, we have been able to clarify, we hope, quite a few such subtle points punctuating the text as could not be ignored; and, what is more, to put such cognate details together as occur distantly in the text. What has kept us glued to the work, in spite of the heavy demands it makes on both understanding and imagination, is not merely the richness and profundity of Guru Nanak’s words, but the catholicity of spirit for which he is well known. He does not go with any specific theological creed, but prefers to emphasize instead what is much more basic and of far greater overall value, that is, genuine self-control and collateral inner purity:

In our own imperfect way, we have all along tried to be clear and consistent in our writing; and this should be of help to all those who wish to make the most of this cardinal work of Guru Nanak.

It is precisely this hope that we regard as the one immediate reward of our labours. The close of this preface however has to be, first, a word of gratitude to those whose translations of this holy work, Japuji – specially the widely known ones done by S. Manmohan Singh, S. Gurbachan Singh Talib and Dr. Gopal Singh – have been of great help to us all along; and, second, some helpful hints for the reader. In respect of the relevant commentaries, we may add, our choice could not but be restricted. We wanted one by an author who has been widely respected not only for his knowledge of our rich and diverse religious traditions, but just as well for his personal devoutness and catholicity of interest in religious matters. This, we thought, was essential not only for balancing, in our writing, the demands of reason with the evidence of personal religious experience and insights, but for keeping true to the very wide relevance of Guru Nanak’s thought. So we fell back on Vinoba Bhave’s small but invaluable work, Japuji (Sarva Seva Sangh Prakashan, Rajghat, Varanasi). Vinoba Bhave is not only consistently – yet nowhere without reason – very sympathetic to the essential import of Guru Nanak’s entire writing, but is able to draw our attention to quite a few subtleties in Guru’s literary craftsmanship. One of these is the use of some such words from different languages as have a kindred, yet not identical meaning, so adroitly that the little semantic difference does nothing to ruffle understanding. Above all, Vinoba Bhave cites apt parallels of so many ubsugtful utterances of the Guru from traditional wisdom of our saints, representing different regions of the country and multiple paradigms of devout living, that Japuji finally comes to appear what it truly is – i.e. not just a single, isolated work, but a quintessential index of quite a few values and emphases of our timeless ethico-religious culture.

We cannot, however, close this preface before adding the following for readers’ assistance:
(a) The original text of Japuji, in three different languages – namely, Gurmukhi, Devanagari and English (as Romanized) – has been provided at the close of the book.
(b) Guide to transliteration follows the “table of contents”.
(c) In respect of spellings we have all along followed the orthographic pattern of Gurbani itself. It may, however, be noted that in reading its text, short vowels are to be quietly passed over, instead of being clearly articulated.

The reader is now welcome to turn to Chapter I: Introductory. If, as we hope, he finds the book not only sensible but good to look at, the credit has to go to Mr. Vinay Jain who has designed the cover not only beautifully, but with due care for the character of the book’s content, and to our unfailing publisher, Mr. Susheel K. Mittal, who never teres of removing stray errors in printing. Typing the manuscript has been the responsibility of Mr. A.N. Sharma and Mrs. Manjit Kaur Matta.   Buy Original and High paper Quality Sikhism/ Punjabi / History Books at Affordable rates. We have wide varity of books in Punjabi, English and Hindi. . Our ehutty / store deliver in India, Italy, Malaysia, Thailand, Canada, USA, UK, United States, America, Germany, Australia, new zealand , UAE and other parts of the world. Your can expect delivery as delivered by stores near you /me.