Theorizing the (Un)Sounded in Sikhī: Anhad, Sabad, and Kīrtan

Inderjit N Kaur

doi:10.3390/rel12111007

Abstract

Listening to sabad kīrtan (sung scriptural verse) is a core, everyday, widespread, and loved worship practice of Sikhs around the globe. Thus, it would be fair to state that sounding is central to Sikh worship. Indeed, the Sikh scripture considers kīrtan to be an eminent mode of devotion. Yet, the ultimate aim of this sonic practice is to sense the “unsounded” vibration—anhad—and thereby the divine and divine ethical virtues. Based on a close reading of Sikh sacred texts and ethnographic research, and drawing on the analytic of transduction, the paper explicates the embodied vibratory dimensions of the (unsounded) anhad and (sounded) sabad kīrtan. It argues that the central purpose of the Sikh (un)sounding perceptual practice is embodied ethical attunement for an unmediated experience of the divine and divine ethical virtues, and thereby the development of an ethical life. At the intersection of music, sound, religious, and philosophical studies, the analysis reveals the centrality of the body in worship and ethical development, and contributes to interdisciplinary conversations on sensory epistemologies in faith traditions.

Highlights

The word sikh literally means student, and as a verb, it means to learn
I have proposed that in Sikh culture, singing and listening to kīrtan is a physical conditioning of the body to viscerally sense anhad—the common vibration in the universe—and its ethical contents, most saliently, the oneness of all, and, thereby, the divine
Sikh kīrtaning is a somaesthetic practice that prepares the body to physically sense and heed the ethical call in anhad that is elaborated in the scriptural verses

Summary

Introduction

The word sikh literally means student, and as a verb, it means to learn. A Sikh is a learner of Sikhī (lit. teachings; Sikhism, in English), the path to the divine, founded by Guru Nanak (1469–1539). Epitomizing this eternal truth and ultimate reality of oneness, anhad is a conceptualization and an experience of the divine These points have their bases in the sabad in the Guru Granth Sahib. The theory, in the Sikh scripture, of embodied vibration, attunement to the divine, and ethical development comes together in the following sabad: Aisī kingurī vajāe jogī. To recapitulate the main points of this section, I have argued that in the scriptural verses, anhad is described as vibrations in the body that are unproduced, formless, undif‐ ferentiated, limitless, and atemporal. While they are vibrations, as is sound, they are not sounded (produced) vibrations (which sound is), and this is my basis for using the term unsounded for anhad. All this leads me to say that anhad can be said to be a conceptualization of the divine

Between the Unsounded and the Sounded

Concluding Remarks