What it means to translate the Guru Granth Sahib

Translating Sikh scripture for the Murty Classical Library series has given me a chance to reflect upon multifarious texts and enjoy the diverse patterns of our shared humanity.

Beginning with Guru Nanak’s Japuji, the Guru Granth Sahib is the core of Sikh ethics, philosophy, and aesthetics; the volume draped in silks and brocades presides at all public and private ceremonies. This is literally the body of the Gurus. To translate this sacrosanct text is indeed a daunting task. To compound matters, the source material is stylistically epigrammatic: without conjunctions and prepositions, the text creates hermeneutic complications.

Growing up in a Sikh home, I naturally absorbed Guru Nanak’s sublime poetry. But to translate what echoes in the psyche is a process all its own! When sound and meaning are perfectly fused, what does a translator do? How does one convey the dynamic alliteration, assonance, rhyme, and overall aesthetic efficacy of the simple, sensuous, transcendent melodies? Now, how does a translator transmit the taste from one tongue to another?

Translation is an adventure; we discover the newness of the ever-familiar. But we must discard old intellectual habits with their customary dominant models. The process involves reading the original closely, intimately, and getting a feel for each bit of every lyric. The words must make their entry into the mouth of the translator and move about freely. By viscerally experiencing, the most ordinary words suddenly become extraordinary, full of mystery, and their unique power rebounds fluently with its own sound and sense. Translation ultimately is a deeply creative process. It is a sort of letting go so that the transparency of the original strikes back.

The first Guru’s vision of the infinite ikkoankar, the One encompassing all beings and things, is foundational to the Sikh religion. Transcending languages, cultures, and religions, Guru Nanak’s primary numeral One, with its soaring geometric arc, is a universal modality. It is important to retain the Oneness of the numeral One, and I would say the dynamic verb “Be-ing” (recommended by the feminist theologian Mary Daly) works quite well as an English equivalent.

In comparison, its standard translation “There is one One God” imposes a monotheistic patriarchal God with “lordly” associations, distorting the multiplicity and poly-imagination of Guru Nanak’s all-inclusive infinite numeral One. In just a short composition, the Guru perceives the singular One as the bride in her wedding dress, and also as the groom on the nuptial bed… as the fisherman, the fish, the waters, the trap, the weight holding the net, as well as the lost ruby swallowed by the fish (GGS:23)! Male and female are balanced in his theological imaginary, and nothing in the cosmos is deemed too low for the divine to sparkle through. I follow German philosopher Walter Benjamin’s model of interlinear translation: the two languages are set literally parallel, and so they come face to face as equals. Prejudices and hegemonies of ‘colonial’ English are thus less likely to seep in. Only by staying close to the original and following its movements, rhythms, and syntax does Punjabi verse lend itself well to English.

In fact, when we search for a genuinely reciprocal relationship, English materialises as an immensely rich language that touches Punjabi in many tender ways. In spite of their differences, medieval Punjabi and modern English can affirm each other, voice each other, and even tenderly embrace each other. It was paramount for me to convey the wondrous joy of Nanakian verse. His Punjabi phrases — variī variī javan / ghol ghumaiāī — picture him going round and round in joyous cognition of the borderless One. Though his circular motions can pose problems for his translators and English speakers, they record a natural bodily reflex of his insuppressible joy (mani cao); the deeper those beautiful disclosures of that One strike, the more he spins ecstatically.

Guru Nanak’s tiny phrases open up conduits of freedom, gratitude, and love; here is the dance of the stars and planets, the whirl of electrons and protons, the ebb and tide of life, the flow of the infinite One in every finite self. An intersection of the timeless words with precise moments, the translator’s task must remain forever incomplete. 

The author is a Crawford Family Professor and Chair of Religious Studies at Colby College, USA. 

The Heritage Shelf is a monthly column from the Murty Classical Library of India, published by Harvard University Press, presenting India’s greatest literary works and the enduring traditions that shaped them.