your bridge home
Saints and Poets
He is holding the pen that writes a religion's scripture, and not one line of his own verse will go into it.
In 1604, at Amritsar, a man sat down with a pen and wrote out, in his own hand, the scripture of a religion.
Guru Arjan dictated. Bhai Gurdas wrote. What came off that desk is the Kartarpur Pothi.
The volume that became the Adi Granth. And in time the Guru Granth Sahib.
The book Sikhs would come to treat not as a text about the Gurus. But as the Guru itself.
He supervised four other scribes on the work. His is the hand behind the first authorised copy.
His own poetry is not in it.
The dates are soft at the front end. He was probably born around 1551; the sources allow anywhere from 1543 to 1553, and nobody can do better than that.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.