Compiling the Adi Granth
Baba Mohan and the Goindwal Pothis
Guru Ji sings beneath Baba Mohan's window until he comes down with the old manuscripts, in a story with a contested basis.
The later chronicles, as the Encyclopaedia and Mann describe them, say that Baba Mohan, son of Sri Guru Amar Das Ji, kept the old hymn collections at Goindwal and would not part with them. Bhai Gurdas was turned away, and then Bhai Buddha. So Guru Ji went himself, and sat in the street below the upper room with a tambura, singing to his uncle. Baba Mohan came downstairs with the books.
The Gurbilas adds a jewelled palanquin carried by Sikhs, with Guru Ji walking barefoot behind it because the books were the light of his predecessors. Mann shows that the later versions add a vision of Sri Guru Amar Das Ji warning him of the rough welcome.
How do we know?
The sources conflict on this story, or scholars doubt it.
The Pothis exist. Whether Guru Ji used these particular volumes as his main source is argued over, and the street scene appears only in later chronicles.
- ScholarshipTells of the refusals, the tambura and the surrender of the books.[EoS]
- ScholarshipFollows the Gurbilas on the palanquin and the barefoot walk to Amritsar.[EoS]
- ScholarshipShows how the tale grows from Mahima Prakash to the 19th-century texts, and reports Sahib Singh's rejection of it as against Teja Singh's acceptance.[Mann]
- ScholarshipSays that Sikh tradition has Guru Ji obtain the Pothis, and describes differences between their text and order and the final Granth.[EoS]
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