The Sisters of the Spinning Wheel, and other Sikh Poems

Front matter

THE SISTERS OF THE SPINNING WHEEL

of the Original and Translated

By PURAN SINGH

Introduction

This book of Puran Singh's poems is the latest offspring from a famous old root. It is founded on the Granth Sahib, and most of the songs that follow are in one way or another derived from that inspired book, which has sometimes been called the Sikh Bible. But as that is the youngest of the bibles, so these songs and lyrics are re-charged, we shall find, by the spirit of youth in poesy. It may be that the ideas, images and figurative expressions in these poems are often openly borrowed, and a fairly close transcript of certain passages may even at times be given. But whether the rendering be close or free, the religious emotion is always in essence the same, and it is always authentic. It runs right through the songs from beginning to end, and no reader can fail to be touched by its sincerity, grace and fervour.

English versions of the Granth Sahib have already been given to the public in the six volumes, of Mr. M. A. Macauliffe's remarkable work on The Sikh Religion, and with his versions any reader who likes can compare Mr. Puran Singh's poems, and will find the comparison most interesting. In The Sisters of the Spinning Wheel we have a living emotional verse that conveys the ecstatic mood of the original, while it adds a new impulse to the old one. In the other work we have a series of careful scholarly translations, faithfully rendering the Indian texts.

It was Rabindranath Tagore who carried over into the English tongue with a new power and melody the first convincing strains of Bengali poetry. Puran Singh has fortunately something of the same gift, and his music too freely naturalises itself in the English medium and makes good its accent, and one soon becomes aware of its living charm. Later, the spirit of his poetry is seen to involve a rare sense of delight in devotion, and the closer thought one brings to bear upon it the profounder its effect. All the evidences of a high spiritual ancestry are joined to the fine pageantry of the Eastern world that glows in the page.

The figured reality in this pageant carries us far, and uses vivid symbolism, to interpret the region of its imagination. The set symbol is the key to an ever widening world. The songs that open this fair region to us we may call parable, or picture, poems; and we shall find in reading them, that their mode often recalls that of other parable-makers. It was the method of many Eastern teachers; nay, was it not the method consecrated by Christ himself?

In other poems like "Simran," on the other hand, the thought, the inner ecstasy, is directly expressed without any aid to the imagination, without any ascent from the real to prepare the approach. And these we may term songs of worship.

No doubt some unevenness of workmanship was bound to result from this double method. It was at first thought it might be wiser to divide the poems into two definite groups; but afterwards it was felt that the very irregularity lent a certain charm to the sequence: something like that which we find in a necklace of gems of different values, colours, shapes and sizes, strung on the one golden thread.

Perhaps the only serious difficulty that will be felt by the Western reader in understanding Puran Singh's book is the obscurity caused by the identification of the Guru, the earthly Master or teacher with the Almighty Father, the Guru Who is above all. The same word is often used for both. The passion of love for the Master who in himself unites God and man is expressed in a hundred ways throughout the book—most memorably in the remarkable poem, "A Turbanned Man."

This passion melts by degrees into the adoration of the Eternal One, and bound up with the worship of the spirit of God incarnate in the Guru, the Master and Teacher, is the worship of the Name of God. It is believed that an entrance into the presence and the heart of God can be made by the use of the symbol of his Name—the key, as it were, that admits us into his kingdom. This is that Nâm, which will be found throughout the book. Nâm stands both for the name of God, and for the union with God, to be attained by the devout repetition of His name. It is akin to the "calling upon God" mentioned in our own Bible. The word Nâm is an old Sanskrit word and is actually the same as our "name"; the Latin nomen and the Greek ὄνομα come from the same root. All through the book Nâm, the Name, is used as the Symbol of God, exactly as Λογος, the Word, occurs in the Gospel of St. John. "And the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In the poem called "Guru Nanak" we find it written: "It is true for us for ever, God himself cometh to man in the shape of Man who spells Him for us: this is Nâm. He is the sign and symbol."

The poem called "Nâm, the Name of the Infinite" needs to be specially studied in relation to this divine invocation. Also the poem "Guru Nanak" already mentioned, for that touches another difficulty that may affect Western readers—the passing of Spirit from one Guru or Prophet-Teacher of the Sikhs to another. This poem reminds one (though with a difference) of the Hebrew pedigree chants. It is a poetic recital of the descent of prophetic inspiration through the great leaders of the Sikh religion. So the Christian plenary inspiration, we may recall, was supposed to descend through the apostles. In the case of the Sikhs, however, the succession depended not on any direct election, but on a sort of spiritual elective fatherhood in each succeeding Guru, very much as, in our Bible, the Mantle of Elijah fell upon Elisha. Into each new Guru passed the spirit of him that was gone; each Guru in turn added to the Scriptures, if that special gift were his.

Until recent years, when Mr. Macauliffe's work appeared, most of us were ignorant of the life and literature of the Sikhs. They were a people welded together by no community of blood or race, but were at first solely a religious community: afterwards a religious and propertied community, and finally by virtue of a curious necessity a sect as military as religious. The founder of the sect was a simple village lad, called Nanak, born at Talwandi in the Lahore district of the Punjaub, A.D. 1469.

Nanak was a strange boy; he existed in the remote world of his own thought and imagination. He was the despair of his parents as many another dreaming incomprehensible child has been. He grew up surrounded by the usual picturesque beliefs and symbolic worships common to all primitive peoples in an earlier world. Almost from his cradle he seemed to take his own way. He lived, as he grew up, detached from the religious practices that went on about him. A pretty fable is told of his boyhood. He was sent out one Monday by his parents to herd some buffaloes on the plain, and he lay down under the shadow of a tree and soon became lost in his own thoughts. The herd wandered away: he never moved. In the late afternoon the villagers came out to look for him; and there he lay, reflecting silently: but behold the tree still cast its morning shadow over the young saint's head. It had never moved with the moving sun.

Whether the shadow moved or not is quite immaterial. The true miracle was the young lad's thought beneath the tree. He had to think himself out of ignorance, out of idol-worship and sacrifice, out of bigotry and prejudice, out of the stony prison of caste, out of every chain ever forged by his fellow men to enslave the mind. In the end, he achieved a perfect freedom. He discovered for himself the religion of love, of union with the spirit of God; the universal religion which is being slowly welded together out of the chaos of men's diverse imaginings. Nanak's religion, framed in utter loneliness, face to face with the God in nature and the God in his own soul, is the religion of many Western thinkers to-day because it realises the central truth that is at the basis of all religion.

The village of Talwandi was surrounded by forests; Nanak who was already a poet passed much of his time there. After various unsuccessful attempts to earn his own living, he went as storekeeper to the governor of Sultanpur. To the astonishment of everyone he proved to be a jewel among store-keepers. He rose before dawn, bathed and prayed, and came like a fresh spirit of grace to weigh out salt and seed and tummeric and pepper. In justice and courtesy he was the same to rich and poor. He lived sparingly and all the money he received he gave to those who were in want. Mardana the rebeck-player came to him out of Talwandi: and when Mardana played one of the thirty-one measures Nanak would sing to it one of his own songs full of wisdom and strange meaning. Such a store-keeper never was and all men spoke well of him and depended upon him. But the saints are incalculable folk: one day Nanak disappeared into the forest. There during three days and nights he had a new and deeper vision of God; when he came forth again his store-keeping was over. Henceforth he was to be a dealer in the lives of men, the founder not only of a religion but of a people. With Mardana he wandered through India chanting his strange new songs to the old measures of Indian music. Carried on the familiar sounds and rhythms, the new meanings glided into the understandings of the people and captured them before they were aware.

His chief message was the joy of pure union with the spirit of God. His second was the equality of all men and women before God. He preached universal brotherhood; he often reminds one of Walt Whitman in his feeling for the greatness of the people, and at times by the very rhythm of his prophetic verse. But it was no free people to whom Nanak addressed himself. Not even in the Byzantine Empire were the partitions of caste as strong as in India, where like iron walls they divided the different classes. With deed and piercing word Nanak attacked these powerful Taboos. On coming to Saiyidhpur he went to stay in the house of a just man, a carpenter called Lalo. People cried out upon him because Lalo was of lower caste than his. Nanak took no notice and continued to eat with Lalo instead of in a separate place by himself. Soon after a rich and powerful man, Malik, gave a great feast; Nanak refused to go. Malík ordered him to be brought before him and reproved him for his double offence. Nanak then asked Malik for a piece of his bread and sent Lalo for a piece of his. Nanak then took a piece of Lalo's coarse bread in his right hand and a piece of Malik's fine white bread in his left. He squeezed them both. From Lalo's bread there issued milk, from Malik's came forth blood; the interpretation of which is that Nanak pronounced the bread of the carpenter pure, that of the rich man stained by oppression and cruelty. So fearless was Nanak! Small wonder that his Sikhs for hundreds of years have proved themselves bravest of the brave. But no valour in battle can equal the courage of Nanak when he refused to sit and eat unclean bread at the rich man's table.

On another day he attacked the pride of caste shown by the Brahmans. When a Brahman wants to eat he draws a square upon the ground and makes his cooking place within the lines, and thus comfortably entrenched eats his meal. Wanting some lighted brands for his own cooking, Nanak stepped within a Brahman's cooking square and helped himself. The Brahman loudly objected and complained that Nanak had defiled his food. Nanak, who knew what sort of man the Brahman was, answered that it had already been defiled. And he spoke these lines:

Evil mindedness is a low woman, cruelty a butcher's wife, a slanderous heart a sweeper woman, wrath which ruineth the world, a pariah woman. What availeth thee to have drawn the lines of thy cooking place when these four are seated within at the meal with thee?

Nanak was an artist as well as a reformer. His weapon was verse of terrible force, delightfully chanted to familiar rhythms that lived in the people's ears. Many oddly invented miracles are recounted of him, but what miracle could be more astonishing than the immortalising of that Brahman and the four terrible guests within his sanctimonious cooking-square by the peasant boy from the forest land of Talwandi?

Although he knew how to be severe he was seldom so. He had a charming way with him, and learnt how to turn men from their hardest purposes and make them his reverent disciples. As an illustration of this method one might tell of the very rich Duni Chand who asked the Guru to his house and treated him with much affection. Nanak noticed that the house was stuck over with flags, and when he inquired what they might mean he was told that each flag stood for a lakh of rupees that the master had gained. Nanak then politely handed Duni a needle and bade him keep it until he asked for it in the next world. The foolish Duni took the needle to his wife and told her to put it by. "How can a needle enter the next world, said she. "Go and return it to the Guru." Duni Chand carried his wife's message to the Guru, who said: "If such a small and light thing as a needle cannot go to the next world, how can thy wealth reach there?" Duni Chand fell at his feet and prayed to know how his wealth might accompany him. Nanak answered, "Give some of it in God's name, feed the poor and that portion shall accompany thee."

After this Duni became his disciple and learned of him.

In common with all the great Saints of the Celtic and other Churches we find in Nanak a passionate love for nature and the open sky. When asked by the Brahmans to worship in their magnificent temple, Nanak composed one of his noblest poems by way of answer. Here are two verses of it:

The sun and moon, O Lord, are Thy lamps, the firmament Thy salver; the orbs of the stars the pearls enchased in it; The perfume of the sandal is Thine incense; the wind is Thy fan; all the forests are Thy flowers, O Lord of Light.

Puran Singh's version of this poem will be found on a later page.

It is a poem much venerated in the original and often translated. It is, however, as difficult to translate as one of Heine's lyrics, or a medieval Welsh ode. For the benefit of those who care to study this famous poem more closely let us add that in the temple of Vishnu or Jugannath lamps were lit for the evening worship, and offerings made on salvers studded with pearls. Flowers and incense were placed on the salvers, fans were used to make the incense burn. The whole ceremonial was gorgeous, but Nanak worshipped best under the open sky.

Nanak was strangely gifted: there can be no doubt that in addition to the powerful brain, the warm heart, the poet's tongue, and the many spiritual gifts which were his, the hypnotic faculty was added as well. Numberless miracles grew up about his personality: among them are indisputable facts, natural miracles that could only have been brought about by powers of unusual quality.

He foretold the coming of the terrible Babar who laid waste the north of India; and more especially the destruction of Sayidhpur.

Bringing a wedding procession of sin, Babar hath hasted from Kabul and demandeth wealth as his bride,

Soon afterwards Babar took and destroyed the city of Saiyidhpur where Nanak was staying. All the country far and wide was devastated and the people, both Hindu and Mussulman, were massacred. Nanak was imprisoned at first and then set to carrying loads as a slave. One day when carrying a bundle on his head, he met his disciple Mardana, now serving his new masters as groom and leading a horse. They walked together a little way and then there passed by a little company of women, slaves of the conquerors, weeping and wailing aloud in their misery. Mardana asked his master what ailed them. "Take your rebeck and play a tune for me," said the Master, "and I will sing to you the meaning of their woe."

"I cannot play the rebeck," said Mardana, "for I must use both my hands to hold this horse." "Say the Glory to God; let go the bridle and play," said the Master. Mardana obeyed, and the horse followed of its own will behind while the master sang to the rebeck the famous lament:

They who wore beautiful tresses and the partings of whose hair were touched with vermilion, Have their locks now shorn with the scissors: dust is thrown upon their heads, Now chains are on their necks and broken are their strings of pearls.

One of the terrible Babar's officers saw the two as they went along, making music while the horse followed behind. Above Nanak's head hung his burden suspended in the air. When the emperor heard of this strange spectacle he said that had he known that such holy men lived in the city he would not have destroyed it. In the end he bowed himself before Nanak the slave and granted him the lives of his captives and clothed them in robes of honour. Such are the undoubted miracles worked by the saint. Only the floating bundle appears apocryphal, though it should be said such strange appearances can be produced in India to-day by magicians who have that particular faculty.

Nanak had a noble conception of women and stood as their defenders against the contempt so often poured upon them by weaker men. He was especially a liberator. The Brahmans forbade the instruction of all women and of men of low caste in their Scriptures. Religion was for the ruling male alone. In the words of Guru Amar Das: "Guru Nanak composed his hymns in the language of the people and wrote them in the ordinary characters so that men and women of all castes and classes might read and understand them."

Natural and simple in all things, the Sikh religion allowed marriage; most of the Gurus had one wife or none. The veiling and immuring of women was strictly forbidden by them. A Guru was once visited by the emperor's wives: only one, the youngest, kept her face veiled. "Mad Lady," said the Guru, "If thou likest not the Guru's face wherefore are thou come hither to gaze upon him?" And the young woman immediately became mad and ran to the forest casting away her raiment, till presently healed by the Guru. Nowhere is it suggested in the Sikh scriptures that a woman's God is her husband. On the contrary the Gurus directed the woman's thoughts upward to the worship of the one true God. It is told of Guru Teg Bahadur that knowing that a Matron of Dhaka had long earnestly desired to see him, he set out alone to her house. He called to her from outside and she was overjoyed and ran to meet him and prostrated herself at his feet. Then she led him in, seated him on a beautiful couch she had prepared, dressed him in cloth spun and woven by herself, and gave him a fine meal prepared by her own hands. The Guru told her to ask a favour; she answered that all she wished was to remain ever near him. He answered that she might behold him whenever, after bathing, she deeply meditated on God, directed her love to His lotus feet and repeated His true name. There is a difference in this point between the atmosphere of the Granth Sahib and that of Puran Singh's book. The emotions are softer and more sensuous in the latter, the flavour of the poems is more Eastern, less modern.

Nanak laid great stress upon one point, upon which most of us, to-day, are in agreement. "Whoever," says he, "a watch before day, bathes in cold water and repeats God's name with love and devotion, shall receive nectar at God's door and be blended with him who is unborn and self-existent."

Of caste he says:

I have reduced my mind to the caste of fire and wind.

A most memorable saying.

Of the troubles of the world he says:

There are continual showers, squalls and threats; hundreds of thousands of waves succeed one another, Address the True God and there shall be no fear that thy boat shall go down.

He also says:

Abide pure among the impurities of this world—so shalt thou find the way of religion.

A pious priest of Lahore brought Arjan a poem abusing women which began:

Look thou not on woman even though she be cut out of paper,

to be included in the Granth Sahib. Arjan refused it, saying Nanak had said home life was the best of all.

The end of Guru Nanak was in keeping with his life. When it was known that he must die, he appointed Guru Angad as his successor. He continued to teach his simple and profound lessons to the crowds who visited him. His Mussulman followers begged for leave to bury him; his Hindus wanted to cremate him. The Guru said, "Let the Hindus place flowers on my right, and the Mussulmans on my left. They whose flowers are found fresh in the morning may do what they will with my body."

Then the Master told them to sing the noble psalm which ends:

Remember the Caller: the day is approaching

—and then the couplet:

They who have pondered on the Name of God and departed after the completion of their toil Shall have their countenances made bright; how many shall be set free in company with them!

The Master then drew the sheet over his head, uttered the "Glory to God" and made obeisance to Him and blended his light with Guru Angad's.

When the sheet was lifted next morning there was nothing found beneath it. The flowers on both sides were in bloom.

Such was the founder of the Sikh religion and such the manner of its founding. There were in all ten prophets in this strange dynasty. The first three teachers were quietists; men who were lovers of God and lovers of freedom—Nanak, Angad, and Amar Das.

Guru Angad was the beloved disciple of Nanak. When Guru Nanak died so great was Angad's grief that he went and lived alone in a little hut for six months. When his Sikhs came to find him, his love and his sorrow got the better of his piety and he repeated aloud the following slōk, or couplet:

Die before the dear one thou lovest To live after him in the world is a curse to life.

He then took his seat as Guru among the people and taught and explained Nanak's hymns. He used the changing play of the life about him as material for his teaching. When watching the children at play he would tell his Sikhs they should be as pure and simple in heart as children, and then would they be dear to their Creator. He used sometimes to watch the wrestling matches in the early afternoons and there he would talk to the lookers-on, telling them how they might overcome anger and other deadly sins.

Presently a disciple came to him upon whom the mantle of the leadership of the Sikhs was to descend. This was Amar Das, born in the year 1479. He was a youth of gentle mind, who had a natural insight into the truth of things, and found himself therefore lonely in life; he longed for a religious teaching to fit his particular need, but could find no saint to his mind. "How can the lotus bloom without sight of the sun," he asked, "and how can a man get salvation without a teacher?" He was sunk more and more in sadness when one morning early he heard a sweet voice sing a beautiful chant. This was the voice of Guru Angad's young daughter who had lately married Amar Das's nephew. This girl used to get up a watch before daybreak, bathe, chant the hymns of Guru Nanak, and then make butter for the family. Heavenly butter it must have been, made by so sweet a saint.

Amar Das went to the girl and asked her to sing her song again. She did so and then taught it him, telling him of her father Angad and of Guru Nanak and his faith. Presently the two set out together to find Angad and on seeing him Amar Das fell at his feet.

Guru Angad set himself to destroy superstition in Amar Das. He taught him, for this reason, to eat meat when it was set before him. "If you think of it," said the Guru, "there is life in everything, even in fruits and flowers. Whatever you eat, eat remembering God and it shall be profitable to you. Whatever comes to you without hurting a fellow creature is nectar: whatever you receive by giving pain is poison." When Amar Das showed irritation with an impostor, the Guru rebuked him, saying—"Thou shouldst have endurance like the earth, steadfastness in trouble and in happiness like a mountain. Thou shouldst be humble, for the humble shall ever be exalted. Behold how precious even the smallest diamonds are. The pearl is small, but consider its price," meaning thereby that even the humblest saint has a certain exquisite quality.

With the fourth teacher, Ram Das, a change began to creep in. The Sikhs had increased in numbers; they were beginning to group themselves together; to become a people. Ram Das founded the Golden Temple of Amritsar. He planned out the Sacred Bathing Pool from whose waters Amritsar (Essence of Nectar) takes its name.

Under Ram Das the Sikhs were become a people possessing property and an organisation. The quality of their profession of religion began now to be subtly altered. Under Guru Arjan, the Tank and the Temple of Amritsar were finished. So terribly had the Sikhs to labour over this work that it is said that when Arjan saw the state of their bodies he fairly wept. Arjan was a poet and a mystic. He had a creative mind: by him and for him the Granth Sahib was compiled and all the scattered songs and sayings of the Gurus were written down. He was bold also and independent: therefore he was to discover some of the disabilities that attach to the gathering and keeping of property.

Jealousy and covetousness brought him enemies who used the power of the Emperor Jahanjir against him. He was ordered to pay a fine, which he refused to do, saying all his money was for the service of the poor. An attack was also made upon him by the religious, among both Hindus and the Mohammedans, because of the unorthodoxy of the Granth Sahib. They worked to inflame the mind of the emperor against him and he was ordered to alter or erase certain hymns, as well as to pay the fine. He was put to the torture. He bore the torture of burning and boiling water and the hot cauldron with unfailing firmness. One of the last poems he recited was as follows:

Dear God, merciful, joyous; Deep, profound, endless, sustainer of the earth; Lofty unfathomable eternal Lord, I live by remembering Thee.

His dying counsels which he bade the Sikhs carry to his son and successor Har Gobind were significant: Let him sit armed on his throne and keep up an army as best he can.

Accordingly while the first four Gurus or prophets of the Sikhs are represented as peaceful men, bearded and comely, sitting upon cushions with adoring disciples about them, Har Gobind is drawn as a warrior, seated on his battle steed, a sword by his side. After the year 1606, being that of Arjan's martyrdom, the Sikh religion became subtly altered from its ancient direction. The Sikhs had found (what is ever the case all over the world, among animals as well as among men) that property of every kind must be defended by armed force.

Even the existence of a book like the Granth Sahib was an offence to those that thought differently. Exactly as the inoffensive Armenians were a prey to the Turks, so were Arjan and his people a mark for their armed neighbours. Therefore Har Gobind became a fighting man. He showed himself a chivalrous leader much after the fashion of our Christian knights who knew mercy but never fear. Under Har Gobind and his successors, the Sikhs grew in number and power. Under Teg Bahadur, the ninth prophet and leader of the Sikhs, the question of resistance to oppression became more acute.

It was from the West that the oppressors of India came in ever succeeding floods. The Moslems that pressed upon Europe from the East, poured back over India from Syria and Gabul and Kandahar. Cruel as were these Moslems to the Christians, they were far worse to the Hindus, whose idols they abhorred. From Shahab-ul-Din (A.D. 1170) to Aurungzeb (1680) it is one tale of woe. Hundreds of gorgeous Hindu temples were razed to the ground. Massacres were common, gold, silver, and jewels were robbed systematically. One emperor had twenty thousand Hindu maidens in his harem. Probably the most striking example of religious intolerance in the history of the human race was the method adopted by the Emperor Firoz Shah. When he destroyed the city of Bhilsa he razed all the Hindu temples to the ground, carried away their idols and had them placed in front of his fort where every day they were bathed in the blood of a thousand Hindus. The emperors had no objection to the religion of the Sikhs but they could not tolerate their brave and independent bearing. Under the Emperor Babar, Nanak was enslaved. Now, under Teg Bahadur, a terrible enemy to the Sikhs had newly arisen in the person of the Emperor Aurungzebf, who determined to convert all men within his reach to Islamism. Torture, robbery and murder, the usual methods of the tyrant, were freely resorted to. It was borne in upon Bahadur, by the operation of some secret wisdom, that through his own martyrdom, freedom of religion and the lives of many martyrs might be saved. This wisdom came to him as follows.