Compilation of Sri Guru Granth Sahib

Displaying Page 26 of 271


he does not work merely as time server to meet a particular situation. Those who adopt time serving measures to meet a situation, the effect of their reforms disappears as soon as they depart from this earth. The posterity can avail of the good work done by that Blessed man only when his ideas had been reduced to writing as a permanent record. Even an ordinary person understands this axiom. The centuries old evils present in the social life of the people, could not be removed merely by verbal sermons of five to ten years. It is for this reason that Guru Nanak Dev continued to appear in nine more ‘generations’. Guru Amar Das, the Third Nanak in a Slok in Sorath ki Var, page 647, Guru Granth Sahib, has said: parthae sakhi maha purakh bolde sajni sagal jehnaie - In certain context a God’s Man may give sermon to a person, but the sermon has the universal applicablity.

However, the sermons of God’s Man can be made applicable to the whole world only if arrangements were made to preserve them properly. So, it was not the case, that Guru Nanak Dev had given sermon to a person, and had considered the end all of the story and had not preserved it for universal applicability. During the time of Guru Nanak Dev, there was no scarcity of paper, pen and ink. The only way to preserve his Compositions, was to reduce them to writing and keep record with him. This was the, only way his sermons to a particular ‘person could have the universal applicability.

3. No one else has so much sense of understanding and responsibility of one’s work as he himself has. If a God’s Man himself does not preserve in writing the ideas he preaches to remove the evils in a society, he would fail to make these ideas known to the world at large, and also to the posterity, for none else can do this job for him.

4. People go to poetic symposia to hear the poems of learned poets. There are the poems, which when readout, are greatly applauded by the listeners, who insist on those being repeatedly read, some are read twice or even three times. We have not seen or heard of any of the listeners, who would be so much influenced by the poems readout, that they would listen and at the same time write them down on pieces of paper they would carry ‘with them to preserve them as a gift. During the time of Guru Nanak Dev, there

26

Displaying Page 26 of 271