Preface
IT was in early 1947 and I was in Adyar. A Sikh Theosophist who had served in the Indian National Army heard of The Gospel of Islam in this series and that I was writing other volumes; he asked me if I had ever read the Guru-Granth Sahib of their Guru Nanak. I had heard of it, of course, but knew of no English translation and was ignorant of the dialect of medieval Punjabi in which it is mostly written. But he assured me that I would find it easy, knowing Hindi, and that I would certainly love the book when I read it. I then added the title to the projected series. 1 Three years passed, and I had made the first selection of passages from Macauliffe's great work; My grateful thanks are specially due to Principal N.B. Butani, to Sri K.C. Advani, advocate, Bangalore, and to Sri Bhagwan Singh B. Advani, president of a Gurdwara in Bombay, for the gift of the Sri Guru-Granth Sahib, to Mrs Butani for the inspiring portrait which presided over my work and now appears as frontispiece to this volume, to several Sikh friends for encouragement, to Dr Srinivasamurti, Hon. Directior, Adyar Library, for three times lending their Macauliffe's volumes and condoning long extensions of the time limits! The Gospel of Peace According to Guru-Granth Sahib Sikh friends from South Kanara, Bombay and Bangalore sent me a fine copy of the Holy Book, and a Sikh lady sent me her own portrait of Guru Nanak. But until volume seven had gone to press I found little time to work at all seriously on this volume. When I did so, I was appalled at the difficulty in tracing the selected passages; Macauliffe, like almost all Sikh authors, satisfied himself with merely referring to the rag and the mahala (author) no chapter, no verse number! It took me more than a month to trace all the passages; but this proved useful work for it gave me a certain familiarity with the book and a delight in its inspiring thoughts and musical language. The more I dug into its pages, the more I fell in love with them Sikh friend was justified in his prophecy! Among the world's scriptures few, if any, attain so high a literary level or so constant a height of inspiration. My When it was time to select new passages to fill in logical gaps, to make certain rearrangements, to undertake a complete retranslation of the whole, the non-existence of a Gurmukhi-English dictionary proved a serious handicap, although the Hindi of Tulsīdās, Sürdās and their contemporaries helped me out. At times, though, I had to take my authorities on trust and merely shaped their English in harmony with that employed throughout. Principal Teja Singh's English renderings of a few great sections of the Guru-Granth Sahib proved helpful in conveying the spirit of some hard passages. Professor Sahib Singh's excellent works gave me all confidence in their careful accuracy and scholarship; I soon had cause to give his versions preference over all others because of his deep knowledge of the grammar. Here and there other renderings also threw light on dark places, but in a few I had no means of going behind.
About The Book
Duncan Greenlees (1899-1966) was educated in England and spent much of his life in India. He was associated with Dr. Annie Besant in her educational work for India and served as Principal of one of the many theosophical high schools she founded. He participated in the Indian national struggle for freedom, was associated with Gandhi, and drafted the Indian National Education Policy. Later, withdrawing from all worldly and political activities, he made a study of the religious scriptures of the world. His detailed expositions of the underlying philosophy of the religions are published as the World Gospel Series.
Hindu (1765)
Philosophers (2327)
Aesthetics (317)
Comparative (66)
Dictionary (12)
Ethics (44)
Language (350)
Logic (80)
Mimamsa (58)
Nyaya (134)
Psychology (497)
Samkhya (60)
Shaivism (66)
Shankaracharya (233)
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