Doubts About Laridaar Saroop
Posted by:
Sardar Singh (IP Logged)
Date: July 30, 2009 08:58PM
I recently saw a debate about Laridaar Saroop vs. Pad Chhed Saroop. A number of points were raised which I wanted to answer here.
1) There are several printing mistakes in both Laridaar and Pad Chhed Saroops
- yes, this is true. But to equate unintentional printing errors with the intentional manmat of changing Guru Sahib's saroop and deciding what the correct pad chhed is for all words and forcing that on the reader (whether it is correct or incorrect), is ridiculous. Yes, the uninentional printing errors should be corrected but they should not be used to justify pad-chhed.
2) Guru Sahib used different kannas than present saroops and the manglacharans were in different places.
-I have seen numerous puratan saroops and the kannas are not different than what we see in printed saroops today. In the very early Gurmukhi, the kanna was often just a dot. The oldest saroop I have seen is from 1644 and even that uses a line.
-Manglacharans: there are some printed saroops with all manglacharans first. I have seen numerous handwritten puratan saroops though with the manglacharans ahead and behind. I have only seen one puratan saroop with all the manglacharans first. I suspect and it makes logical sense that this is the way it should be and was originally though.
But once again, these issues are not one of intention. If there are errors, they are unintentional. No one has attempted to change Guru Sahib's doing.
3) Larreevaar Saroops break words in "inappropriate ways" than Pad-Chheyd. Often, words in Larreevaar Saroops are broken at the end of the line and continued on the next line.
-This argument is born from complete ignorance. This is not pad-chhed at all. Where the line ends, the word must be carried on to the next line. All puratan saroops are like this. The intention is not to break the word and the paathi understands that what appears at the end of a line is not necessarily an entire word.
4) Baba Deep Singh prepared saroops in Farsi and Arabic. These were altering the original form of the Guru Sahib's Saroop.
-Do you know that these saroops were meant to be parkash and treated as Guru Granth Sahib? Can you provide any historical reference to suggest they were treated the same as Guru Granth Sahib in Gurmukhi?
In summary, where there are unintentional errors in Laridaar, they are due to human imperfection which is forgivable. Where someone has used their own mat (intellect) to break Guru Sahib's saroop into pad chhed and impose their own mat on the reader (often incorrectly breaking words), accepting pad-chhed amounts to accepting manmat.
Pad-chhed saroops should not be parkaash and Gursikhs should not accept them. Laridaar is the Saroop of Sri Guru Granth Sahib and no one has the authority to change that.
