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A Measure With a Wide Family

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A Measure With a Wide Family

Kanra is a section of the later Gurus with a var, and one of the measures that carries a large family of variant forms in the classical system.

Its position near the end of the sequence invites a mistake worth naming. The order of the rag sections is not a chronology. A section drawn mainly from the later Gurus does not stand late in the volume because it was composed late, and a section standing early is not therefore early. The Granth gives no dates in its headings at all, and the arrangement is musical.

What can be dated, roughly, is authorship, because the numbered headings identify which Guru composed a thing and the succession is a known sequence in time. That is the only chronological information the volume carries, and it is carried at the level of the individual composition rather than the section.

The distinction matters for anyone trying to trace the development of the Gurus' teaching over five generations. It can be done, and the material is there to do it with, but it requires collecting a Guru's compositions from across thirty-one sections and reading them together, which is precisely the operation the volume's arrangement makes inconvenient. That inconvenience is not an oversight. The Granth is not organised for the study of its own history.

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