A Manuscript That Left the Main Line of Succession

By the received Sikh historical account, the Kartarpur Bir was compiled in 1604 at Amritsar under Guru Arjan, the fifth Guru, and inscribed by his scribe Bhai Gurdas from hymns gathered from the earlier Gurus, contemporary saints and Guru Arjan's own compositions, making it the first authoritative single-volume Sikh scripture. Its custody left the main line of Guru succession within a few generations: tradition holds that it passed into the keeping of a family line descended from a relative of the Guru household who settled at Kartarpur in Punjab, separate from the town of the same name in present-day Pakistan associated with Guru Nanak, and it has remained with that family, now known as the Sodhi family of Kartarpur, ever since.

This private, hereditary custody sets the Kartarpur Bir apart from almost every other scripture in this atlas, which are typically held by a temple, monastery or public institution with at least some form of communal or institutional oversight. The family's continued possession is treated by many Sikhs as a matter of settled historical fact and considerable religious significance, since the volume, if it is what it claims to be, would be closer to Guru Arjan's own hand than any other surviving text of the Adi Granth.