The protocol follows from the doctrine. In a gurdwara the volume rests on a raised platform, the manji sahib, beneath a canopy, covered in cloths called rumala. An attendant waves a chaur, a whisk of yak hair, over it, the gesture made for a sovereign. Worshippers remove shoes, cover their heads, and bow to it on entering. Each morning it is brought out and opened in the Prakash ceremony, carried on the head of an attendant; each night it is closed and taken to its own resting room for Sukhasan. No one sits at a level above it.
Its authority is functional as well as ceremonial. A Hukamnama, the Guru's order for the day, is taken by opening the volume at random and reading the hymn at the top of the left-hand page. Sikh life-cycle rites, naming, the Anand Karaj marriage, funerals, are conducted in its presence rather than before a priest, and Sikhism has no ordained priesthood; a granthi is a reader and custodian, not a clergyman. An Akhand Path, an unbroken relay reading of all 1430 angs, takes about forty-eight hours and marks occasions of significance.
The treatment is not veneration of paper. Sikh teaching is emphatic that the object of reverence is the shabad, the word, and that the volume is honoured as its vehicle; worn copies are cremated with rites rather than discarded. This is why photographs, translations and quotations circulate freely while the volume itself is handled under strict discipline, and why printing is centralised under the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee at Amritsar, which controls production to ensure that every copy carries the same text on the same 1430 pages.