Sri Guru Granth Sahib
Sikh Gurus and other devotional poets
Primary text · Reading guide
The short answer
The Sikh scripture, revered as the living Guru, brings together devotional compositions with a deep relationship to music and communal practice.
Sikhism · Primary text
The reading guide
Its status in Sikh life exceeds that of a philosophical anthology. Read with awareness of worship, service, and the community that preserves it.
Reading lens: symbolic and religious interpretation; historical details are identified through the sources below.
What this text is doing
The Guru Granth Sahib is the Sikh scripture revered as the living Guru. Its devotional compositions are organized through musical modes and belong to a communal practice of singing and listening. Approaching it as a set of detachable spiritual slogans loses both its musical form and its place in Sikh life.
Begin with Japji Sahib
The opening composition attributed to Guru Nanak sets questions of truth, human conduct, and the divine in motion. Read the whole sequence with a named translation.
Attend to raag
The organization by musical mode is a reading cue. Listening in a Sikh context can reveal a quality that a plain text extract cannot provide.
Many devotional voices
The collection includes compositions from Sikh Gurus and other poets. Identify the attributed voice and location rather than flattening them into a single anonymous author.
Keep in mind: How does the verse change when it is heard in its musical and communal setting?
Choose an edition
Use an identified Gurmukhi text and named English translation. Musical organization and terminology deserve explanation from Sikh sources.
A path through the book
Sikh orientation
Begin with an introduction to the scripture’s role as Guru.
Japji Sahib
Study the opening composition with Sikh commentary.
Listen with context
Explore the relation between the written compositions and kirtan.
Sources & editions
- SGPC: Sri Guru Granth Sahib ↗
Edition and reading reference.
An editorial reading guide with original summaries and source links. Modern translations remain the work of their named translators.
Read alongside
At a glance
- Origin
- Established. Compiled by Guru Arjan as the Adi Granth in 1604 at Amritsar; expanded by Guru Gobind Singh (c. 1706) and installed as Guru in 1708
- Language
- Established. Gurmukhi script; Punjabi with Sant Bhasha, Braj, Lahnda, Persian and Sanskrit-derived vocabulary
- Form
- Established. 1,430 angs (pages): Japji and daily prayers, 31 raag sections, then saloks and closing compositions; hymns by six Gurus, bhagats and bhatts
- First full reading
- Experiential. Japji: about 30 minutes; the complete text: about 48 hours of continuous recitation, or several weeks of daily reading
Translation quoted on this page
The Sikh Religion: Its Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authors, vol. 1 (Japji) — Max Arthur Macauliffe, 1909
Rights ledger: recorded as a public-domain translation. Published 1909 by the Clarendon Press, Oxford; Macauliffe died 1913. Public domain worldwide. His rendering is a colonial-era scholar's interpretation, made with Sikh collaborators, and uses King James-style English; Sikh readers today commonly use the translations of Sant Singh Khalsa or Gurbachan Singh Talib, alongside Gurmukhi commentary. Words Macauliffe supplied in italics are given here without the markdown italic markers, and footnote numbers are removed.
Read the first pauris of Japji slowly
20 minutesRead the Mul Mantar and pauris 1 to 4 of Japji in one named translation, and if possible listen to them recited in Punjabi. Write down every word or phrase the translation leaves untranslated or explains in a note, such as hukam, haumai, naam or gur prasad. For two of them, look up how a Sikh source such as the SGPC or a published commentary explains the term. Finish by writing the question pauri 1 asks in your own words and the answer the pauri gives, without adding your own view.
Key Insights
- The scripture includes multiple devotional voices.
- Music is part of its organization and reception.
- Translation alone does not reproduce its communal or liturgical life.
Quotes Worth Remembering
6 passages in Max Arthur Macauliffe’s 1909 translation, each linked to the page it was checked against. Other translations word these lines differently.
THERE is but one God whose name is true, the Creator, devoid of fear and enmity, immortal, unborn, self-existent by the favour of the Guru.
Japji, opening (Mul Mantar)
The Mul Mantar opens the scripture and much Sikh prayer; Macauliffe's own footnote shows that even its last words, gur prasad, are translated in more than one way.
Max Arthur Macauliffe, 1909 · check the source ↗
How shall man become true before God? How shall the veil of falsehood be rent? By walking, O Nanak, according to the will of the Commander as preordained.
Japji, pauri 1
After four lines on what thinking, silence and cleverness cannot do, the first pauri poses the question the whole composition answers: living within hukam, the divine order.
Max Arthur Macauliffe, 1909 · check the source ↗
All are subject to His order; none is exempt from it. He who understandeth God's order, O Nanak, is never guilty of egoism.
Japji, pauri 2
It sets hukam against haumai, self-centredness, a pairing that runs through Guru Nanak's writing.
Max Arthur Macauliffe, 1909 · check the source ↗
At the ambrosial hour of morning meditate on the true Name and God's greatness.
Japji, pauri 4
The amrit vela, the hours before dawn, remains the time many Sikhs recite Japji and practise naam simran.
Max Arthur Macauliffe, 1909 · check the source ↗
Neither the Jogi nor any other mortal knows the lunar day, or the week-day, or the season, or the month. Only the Creator who fashioned the world knoweth when He did so.
Japji, pauri 21
The pauri declines the claims of pandits, qazis and yogis alike to know the moment of creation, which shows how directly the Guru addressed the religious authorities of his time.
Max Arthur Macauliffe, 1909 · check the source ↗
The air is the guru, water our father, and the great earth our mother; Day and night are our two nurses, male and female, who set the whole world a-playing.
Japji, closing salok
The closing salok places human life inside air, water, earth and time before turning to judgement, and Macauliffe notes it is generally attributed to Guru Angad.
Max Arthur Macauliffe, 1909 · check the source ↗
Editorial reading map
An editorial reading map. Each row names a place to start, with the idea to carry and a short summary. Read the text itself for its own order.
01Japji Sahib (pp. 1–8)
Guru Nanak's opening composition: the Mul Mantar, 38 pauris and a closing salok.
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Japji is not set to a raag and is recited rather than sung, traditionally in the early morning. It moves from the Mul Mantar through hukam, the divine order, to the value of hearing and obeying the Name, and ends with the five realms (khands) of spiritual ascent. Sikhs regard it as a key to the rest of the scripture.
02Sodar, So Purakh and Sohila (pp. 8–13)
Short evening and night compositions that form part of daily prayer.
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After Japji come the hymns known as Sodar and So Purakh, which form the core of Rehras, the evening prayer. Kirtan Sohila follows and is recited before sleep. Together with Japji they give the opening pages a liturgical shape tied to the daily cycle.
03The raag section (pp. 14–1353)
Most of the scripture is arranged by 31 musical modes, then by author and form.
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Each raag section begins with Sri Raag and continues through the modes, grouping hymns first by metre and form (chaupade, ashtapadi, chhant, vaar) and then by Guru, identified as Mahalla 1, 2, 3 and so on. The raag names the mood and time of day for singing. This arrangement is a reading cue: a hymn belongs to a musical and devotional setting, not only a page.
04Bhagat bani
Compositions by fifteen bhagats, Hindu and Muslim, are included within the raag sections.
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At the end of many raag sections come hymns by bhagats such as Kabir, Sheikh Farid, Namdev and Ravidas, from different regions, castes and faiths. Their inclusion reflects the Gurus' judgement that these voices agreed with the Sikh understanding of the Name. Readers should note each hymn's attributed author rather than reading the whole as one voice.
05Saloks, swayyas and Mundavani (pp. 1353–1430)
The closing pages gather couplets and panegyrics and end with Guru Arjan's seal.
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This part includes Salok Sahaskriti, the swayyas of the bhatts (court poets), saloks of Kabir and Farid, and the saloks of Guru Tegh Bahadur added in Guru Gobind Singh's recension. Mundavani, by Guru Arjan, describes the scripture as a platter holding truth, contentment and contemplation and serves as its seal. The final item, Raagmala, is included in standard editions, though its authorship and status are debated within the Panth.
06How the Granth is installed and read
The scripture is treated as the living Guru in the gurdwara and the home.
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Each morning the Granth is opened in the Prakash ceremony and each evening it is closed and put to rest in Sukhasan. An Akhand Path is an unbroken reading of the whole text by relays of readers, taking about 48 hours; a Sehaj Path is a reading at an unhurried pace. The Hukamnama is the hymn read from the page opened at random, taken as the Guru's word for that day or occasion.
Best For
Frequently Asked Questions
Which English translation of the Guru Granth Sahib should I read?
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Many readers use Sant Singh Khalsa's complete translation, which is widely available online alongside the Gurmukhi, or Gurbachan Singh Talib's four-volume translation published by Punjabi University. Macauliffe's 1909 renderings are public domain and historically important but cover only selections and reflect a colonial-era English idiom. Sikh commentators generally advise reading with the Gurmukhi text beside the English and treating any translation as an aid to reading the original.
Where should a beginner start?
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Most Sikh guides point to Japji Sahib, the opening composition by Guru Nanak. After that, Sukhmani Sahib by Guru Arjan (in Raag Gauri) and the evening Rehras are common next steps. Listening to kirtan of a hymn you have read adds the musical dimension the text was arranged for.
How long is the Guru Granth Sahib?
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Standard printed editions have 1,430 pages, called angs, and every edition keeps the same pagination. It contains several thousand hymns, often counted at around 5,800 to 5,900 shabads. A continuous recitation of the whole text, the Akhand Path, takes about 48 hours.
Why is the Guru Granth Sahib called the living Guru?
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Guru Arjan compiled the Adi Granth in 1604, and Guru Gobind Singh added the hymns of Guru Tegh Bahadur. Sikh tradition holds that before his death in 1708 Guru Gobind Singh ended the line of human Gurus and vested the Guruship in the scripture and the Khalsa Panth. It is therefore treated with the respect due to a person: it rests under a canopy, is attended with a chaur, and is carried on the head.
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