The Sodhi family of Kartarpur, a town in Jalandhar district, Punjab, India, are the hereditary private custodians of the Kartarpur Bir, held to be the original 1604 manuscript of the Adi Granth compiled under the fifth Sikh Guru, Guru Arjan. Unlike most entries in this atlas, custody here is private and familial rather than institutional, passed down within one lineage for four centuries rather than held by a temple, museum or state body. The family permits scholarly viewing only rarely and has consistently declined requests for unrestricted examination or physical dating, which is itself the center of long-running debate. The manuscript remains a matter of both textual scholarship and religious reverence, viewed by many Sikhs as the most authoritative surviving copy of their scripture.
Facts
Disputed
Public AccessSourced to the subject's own accountThe Sodhi family of Kartarpur, Pakistan, holds the Kartarpur Bir, a Sikh scriptural manuscript tradition associates with an early, possibly original, compilation of the Guru Granth Sahib. The family's own record of its custodianship states that it permits only occasional supervised viewing of the manuscript to invited scholars and has consistently declined requests for unrestricted examination or physical dating techniques such as radiocarbon analysis or detailed paper and ink testing. This access restriction is itself the centre of the scholarly debate over the manuscript, since the questions scholars would need direct physical and codicological access to answer, its precise age, its relationship to other early Sikh manuscripts, and whether it is the specific original attributed to it, cannot be independently tested without exactly the access the family has declined to grant. The method scholars are limited to is restricted observational study during the occasional supervised viewings permitted, rather than the physical testing a firm dating would normally require. Because the family's decision itself constrains what evidence can be gathered, the manuscript's status remains debated for want of access rather than disagreement over evidence in hand. Organisation
Institution FoundedSourced to the subject's own accountHereditary custodianship of the manuscript has been held by the same family since the seventeenth century, when it was entrusted to their ancestor Dhir Mal. 1 Governing BodySourced to the subject's own accountPrivate hereditary custody of the Sodhi family 1 Custody and Display
Relevant HoldingSourced to the subject's own accountKartarpur Bir, held to be the original 1604 manuscript of the Adi Granth compiled under Guru Arjan 1 Learn More
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.
A Claim Access Cannot Fully Test
The central difficulty with the Kartarpur Bir is not a dispute over what it says but over how little independent verification its custodians have allowed. The family has permitted occasional supervised viewing by scholars and religious authorities over the decades, sufficient to produce partial descriptions and comparisons with the standard Damdama Sahib recension used throughout Sikh worship today, but it has consistently declined requests for unrestricted scholarly examination, high-resolution imaging or physical dating methods that could independently confirm the manuscript's seventeenth century origin.
Textual differences between the Kartarpur Bir as described by those who have seen it and the widely used printed Sikh scripture have been noted by researchers, though without full access these comparisons remain partial rather than conclusive. The family's position, consistent with private ownership generally, is that continued restricted access protects the manuscript both physically and from what they regard as inappropriate scrutiny of a living scripture; critics, including some textual scholars, argue that restricted access is precisely why the manuscript's authenticity cannot be settled either way. The atlas records both positions without resolving the underlying question.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Hereditary custodians of the Kartarpur Bir, held to be the original 1604 manuscript of the Adi Granth.
Belongs to Tradition
The Sodhi family of Kartarpur are descendants of the Guru line and hold the Kartarpur Bir as a family trust. Custody here is hereditary and religious, not institutional.
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