Scripture Organized by Melody, Not by Author

This hymn's attachment to Raga Dhanasari reflects a structural feature of the Guru Granth Sahib unlike how most scriptures in this atlas are organized: the entire text is arranged primarily by musical raga, the classical system of melodic modes each associated with particular moods, times of day and emotional registers, rather than by author, chronology or theme, so compositions by different Gurus written across more than two centuries are interfiled together whenever they share an assigned raga rather than grouped by who wrote them or when. This means locating a given hymn within the Guru Granth Sahib tells a reader what mode it is meant to be sung in before it tells them anything about its date or author, a genuinely distinctive principle of scriptural organization reflecting how centrally the Sikh Gurus treated kirtan, sung devotional performance, rather than silent reading, as scripture's primary mode of transmission.

In ongoing practice, the hymn is sung as part of the aarti ceremony held at Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar and at gurdwaras generally, typically in the late evening, continuing a use directly connected to the origin story tradition assigns it, even though the ceremony as performed today, without the oil lamps, incense plates and other ritual objects the original Puri temple aarti tradition employed, deliberately omits the very physical apparatus the hymn's occasion is said to have criticized as unnecessary, so singing it today functions as commemoration of Nanak's teaching rather than as reenactment of the original confrontation.