Authenticity of Kartarpuri Bir - Global Sikh Studies

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on very cogent grounds rejected all these stories to be
unreliable and self-contradictory. 55 The first version in not
tenable for a number of reasons. Sahib Singh believes that it is
impossible to imagine that the developed town of Amritsar,
which had been there for some decades, had, at that time, no
facility for the simple work of binding a book. Secondly, the
story is contradicted by the factual position of the Banna Bir.
Apart from the impossibility of copying out a voluminous
Granth in just 4-5 days, we find that the Banna Bir has been
written generally by one hand or at the most by a few hands
not exceeding two or three. Second, the copyist has done the
job very well Besides, the writing is such as to show that the
copyist never wrote it in haste or under pressure of time. 56
Third, for evident reasons the work of copying could have
been done conveniently only during the outward journey when
the Bir was unbound and in bunches which could be distributed
among different scribes. As it happened in the Kartarpuri Bir,
such a process would obviously leave gaps or blank spaces
between different sections, Rags, etc. But this is not the position
in the Banna Bir. Fourth, it is difficult to imagine that Bhai
Gurdas who did the entire writing of the Granth would not be
entrusted with the task of binding the Bir or would not even
be associated with it. The other stories of Bhai Banno, having
taken the Bir to his village and having spent on way 50 days to
seven months to copy it out are even less plausible than the
first one. Normally, Bhai Banno would not take the Bir to his
village without first having got it bound; and having done that
his taking the Bir to his village and keeping it away from the
Amritsar for one month to seven months, is not a mere
circumvention, but a clear flouting of the orders of the Guru
to keep it for only one night at village Mangat. Such defiance
on the part of a devoted Sikh of the expressed wishes and
directions of the fifth Guru is really unthinkable. And, evidently
in the case of a bound Bir the work of