Japji - The Immortal Prayer-Chant
Translated by Khushwant Singh
Afterword by Mulk Raj Anand
JAPJI—the morning prayer—is a composition of Guru Nanak and is the first chapter of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh scripture. It was apparently not all written at one time and the length of its verses, their metre and thought content frequently varies. The verses are in the nature of meditations, dealing with the fundamentals of the Sikh faith, namely, the conception of God, the place of the religious preceptor, the 9 importance of prayer, a belief in the triumph of right over wrong, of transmigration, life hereafter and salvation.
Unlike the rest of the Granth Sahib, it has not been set to music and is never sung. The language of Japji is the Punjabi of the fifteenth century and is extremely difficult to translate. My translation is largely based on the commentaries of Bhai Vir Singh.
Khushwant Singh
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