Bhai Vir Singh's Puratan Janamsakhi

Abstract

This chapter examines the role of Bhai Vir Singh's (BVS hereafter) critically edited work, the Puratan Janamsakhi (1926), in shifting the understanding of book culture and textuality in the Sikh tradition during the colonial period. BVS's edits alter the ontological understanding of textuality as possessing embodied being to a Western understanding of “the book” as an inert object, or commodity, containing an author's writing for sale and broad circulation. This chapter discusses the mechanics of how BVS's philology enacts the philosophical transgression and then considers the narratological consequences of grammatological alterations. Philological textual criticism and higher criticism facilitate the enactment of a philosophical transgression that alters the text's logos. Using this method, BVS changes what a “text” means and, at the same time, avowedly appeals to his readership to encourage new reading practices. In doing so, I argue that BVS's transgression aims at the narrative logic of Sikh textuality but aspires to change how Sikh subjectivity get produced and replicated. This is done through paratextual marginalia that mirrors for readers how to critically assess temporal events given in the Janamsakhi using originalist models of reasoning. Thus, I argue, understanding the mechanism of philosophical transgression is vital for decolonizing Sikh textuality and reassessing its systematic place within Sikh worldviews.