CONFERRING OF GURUSHIP ON THE GURU GRANTH SAHIB BY GURU GOBIND SINGH 1708 CE
6th October 2025
Sikhi
On October 6th, 1708, the day before his death, Guru Gobind Singh (the Sikhs’ tenth Guru, 1666 -1708) declared that, instead of having another human Guru, from now on Sikhs would regard the scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib, as their Guru.
The composition known as the Adi Granth contains the bani (teaching) of six of the Gurus of the Sikh faith, along with some of the writings of certain Muslim fakirs and Hindu saints. It was compiled in this form in the year 1604, incorporating at a later stage the addition of a sacred composition dictated by Guru Tegh Bahadur.
The first copy of the Guru Granth Sahib was installed in the Harimandir (the Golden Temple in Amritsar) in 1604. The fifth Guru, Guru Arjan Dev, compiled the book, which was written down by his uncle, Bhai Gurdas, and printed in Punjabi. The second (enlarged) edition was completed in 1705 by the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh. He added the hymns of his father, Guru Tegh Bahadur, the Ninth Guru, and a couplet of his own to the volume created a century earlier. Since then, the authorised version has been transcribed and printed a number of times. Its veneration is an article of faith with all Sikhs.
It is the only scripture of its kind which contains the songs, hymns and utterances of a wide variety of saints, sages and bards from differing traditions. Much of the volume carries the compositions of Hindu bhaktas, Muslim divines, Sufi poets and other God-intoxicated souls, whose hymns and couplets, while rendered in their own idiom, find a ready correspondence in the songs of the Sikh Gurus. Guru Arjan’s purpse was to to affirm the fundamental unity of all religions, and the unitary character of all mystic experience.
Then, in October, 1708, in a gurdwara at Nanded, on the banks of the Indian river Godawari, Guru Gobind Singh designated the Adi Granth as his successor, using in his address the words, ‘Guru maneyo Granth’ (consider the Granth to be the Guru), affirming the text of the Granth as sacred and terminating the traditional line of human Gurus. Installed now as the ‘Guru Granth Sahib’, it became the central text of Sikhism, and the eternal Guru of all Sikhs. In this way he conferred Guruship on the Granth Sahib as the living Guru of the Khalsa, declaring in his speech that the temporal functions of the Guru would be performed by the Five Beloveds, the Panj Pyares, the leaders of the Khalsa; and that spiritual guidance would be given in future by the Guru Granth Sahib.
Guru Gobind Singh prostrated himself as he offered his obeisance to the sacred Granth. He conferred Guruship on the Granth by walking around it five times and bowing his head before it. He declared that after him, the living Guru would be embodied in the Guru Granth Sahib. The Granth is now central to all Sikh worship and is said to incorporate the living spirit of the ten human Gurus. This gurdwara, Abchal Nagar Sahib gurdwara, is also the place where Guru Gobind Singh died the next day on October 7, 1708.
Guru Gobind Singh did not appoint any human successor in the line of human Guruship as had been the previous tradition. He declared the Guru Granth Sahib to be the ultimate source of authority and the eternal Guru of the Sikhs. Today the Sikh religion holds that in each of the succeeding Gurus, the spirit of Guru Nanak, the first Guru was incarnate, and wherever Sikhs assembled, he would be present. Today the sacred Granth is installed in all Sikh holy places of worship and is treated as the presiding presence of the Guru.
A building becomes a gurdwara (‘house of the Guru’) when the Guru Granth Sahib is kept inside. The Guru is placed on a raised throne-like platform (takht) with a decorated canopy above it. Every morning the Guru is taken out from its special rest room and carried on the head to the centre of the gurdwara, where it is placed on the throne. Devotees offer gifts as they bow to the Granth, whenever they enter the Gurdwara.