Authenticity of Kartarpuri Bir - Global Sikh Studies

11
with the quotation of the first words of each Sabad. Hence,
there cannot be any chance of later interpolation without its
becoming clearly apparent. This being the system laid down
by the compiler, the scribe had to devise a method by which
the task could be accomplished easily and speedily. It is also
important to understand that while the Bani was being recorded
in the Granth, the work of the collection of Bani of the first
four Gurus and the Bhagats was also, for evident reasons of
speed, going on simultaneously. Therefore, the scribe had to
take care of two things, first, that an adequate number of pages
or leaves was allotted to a particular Rag, and within a Rag to
each Guru or Bhagat, so as to enable the scribe to write within
the allotted space the Bani anticipated to be available. Secondly,
the Bani under each Rag was being written simultaneously, and,
while the Bani of one Guru, Bhagat, or author was being
collected, it was also being sorted out and recorded separately
at appropriate places under each Rag in accordance with the
set system that had been devised. There being a single scribe
for this gigantic task, some times this anticipation went wrong
and many of the incongruities, as we shall see, are due to this
faulty anticipation, or the late collection of the Bani, or the
multi- fariousness of the assigned task.
Another fact is that the numbering of the leaves of
the book had been done in advance. The paging of the
Kartarpuri Bir shows two things. If the book is opened, the
number of page stands given to the page on the left hand side,
and the page facing us on the right hand side carries no number,
i.e. if the number of the page on the left is 15, the page on the
right is deemed to be a part of it. We might call, as Dr. Jodh
Singh does, the page on the left to be 15/1 and on the right to
be 15/2. Page number 16 is given on the back of page 15/2
and when leaf 15/2 is turned, page 16 or 16/1 would face us
from the left side of the Granth. However, in the Kartarpuri
Bir, the number given to the page on