Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mr. Hutchinson and welcome to religious education.

And in our lessons, we're learning all about the religion of Sikhism.

Really interesting, fascinating religion.

And you've already learned so much about it.

And then today's lesson, we're going to turn our attention to the Holy text of Sikhism.

So many religions, not all religions, but many religions have a Holy text, Holy scriptures.

Now, religions can sometimes fall down a wall called scriptural traditions where there's lots of scripture that people follow or oral traditions where the message that's spoken is the important thing.

And for its first a hundred years or so, Sikhism was that message, it was the word that was given.

However, those writings were collected.

So those messages were collected into various writings, as well as a scripture and messages from other religions and collected together into one Holy text, which is the Holy text of Sikhism.

And that's what we're going to be learning all about today.

So our lesson will look like this.

First of all, we're going to learn about the eternal, which means forever the eternal guru.

Then we'll learn about an important part of the Holy text of Sikhism called the Mool Mantra.

Well then learn about reverence and respect and how this text is treated with both.

And finally, we'll end with our end of lesson quiz.

So to begin with, The Eternal Guru.

So in our lessons so far, we've been learning all about, the gurus of Sikhism.

These religious leaders who have been passing on the message, developing the religion, writing hymns, and collecting together messages from other religions, which they think reveal an aspect of God and telling people how to live.

You remember the, the, the final guru the tenth guru, who was Guru Gobind Singh.

And Guru Gobind Singh was the guru who, who created the council, initiated the first council at the community of Sikhs.

And before Guru Gobind Singh died, he didn't do what the other gurus did.

So the other gurus had named a successor.

They'd named somebody to take over from them saying you will be the new guru.

And Guru Gobind Singh said I actually don't think we should do this.

He said, instead the guruship, should pass on to a book.

So he said, the man isn't important.

It's the word.

It's the message that's important.

And the message has been given by all of the gurus, as well as the other Holy people.

And so the candle, the light of Sikhism should pass on not to another man, but instead it should live on eternally in the text.

And so the text of Sikhism is called the Guru Granth Sahib.

And you can see here, there's a picture.

This is a picture of Guru Gobind Singh.

And if you look here at this picture, you can see that he is treating the, the text of Sikhism just here with great respect, bowing down to it, showing that this is the message.

This is the message of God.

And you can see here that it's the well having the, what do you notice about it? Have a close look.

What can you notice about the, the Guru Granth Sahib here? What do you see? Take a close look at everything that you notice.

So I've noticed, first of all that Guru Gobind Singh is he's got this sort of like almost a halo around him to show that he sort of enlightened that he, as a, as a Holy man, that's got this message, but he is bowing down with great respect to the Guru Granth Sahib.

Like it's a teacher.

And you can see that this man here has got kind of like a, it's kind of like a fan to, and it swats off and it flies and keeps dust away.

So again, showing sort of real respect to this text because he wants to keep it really clean and cool and make sure that no flies or anything gets to them.

I can see other members of the Khalsa who are all sitting down below the Guru Granth Sahib.

And there looks like there's some sort of soldiers or sikh warriors here.

We know that the Sikhs were, were persecuted by other people in the area for a long time attacked and so trained as warriors.

And they're all surrounding that Holy text.

So what do we know about it? Well, it's all of those hymns that were written by all of the gurus over, over a 150 year period, going right back to Guru Nanak as well as teaching from other religions.

So there is Islamic texts in there, Hindu texts in there and texts with other Holy men.

It was usually about Holy men and preachers around the, around the area.

It's all written in the Gurmukhi script.

So the language is Punjabi, which is the reason the spoken, which is the region, the spoken language is Punjabi, but it's written in that more simple script, The Gurmukhi script, which allows more people to be able to read it because remember within Sikhism equality is so important.

So making the script readable to as many people as possible was very important, which is why it's written in Gurmukhi.

And it contains 5,867 sacred hymns.

Wow It contains so many sacred hymns that have been collected together over the years from the different gurus.

So let's see if we can write down everything that we've remembered about the Guru Granth Sahib, I've written some sentences, but I've left some gaps that I'd like you to fill in.

So your job now is to write out this paragraph, filling in the gaps.

And I put the words here for you.

So, 5,867, Punjabi, Islam, Arjun, Gurmukhi, 150 years, and Hinduism use those words to fill in the gaps and write out that full paragraph with the gaps filled in.

So pause the video and do that now.

Okay.

Let's see if you are right.

So I'm going to put up the answers now.

It should have read the Guru Granth Sahib was written over a period of 150 years.

Most of it is written in the Punjabi language, but in the Gurmukhi script.

So the actual writing the letters using Gurmukhi.

Most of the Guru Granth Sahib was compiled by Guru Arjun.

You might have remembered that from a previous lesson.

He first started to put together those writings.

It contains 5,867 hymns, as well as teaching from other religions such as Hinduism and Islam.

Make sure you tick your notes if you got them right and add in anything you missed or correct them if you got them wrong.

So one of the most important passages in the Sikh scriptures is called the Mool Mantar or the Mool mantra.

And it reads like this.

This is the Gurmukhi script.

And this is actually said to be Guru Arjan's actual handwriting.

So this here, is a picture of, what's supposed to, of a version of the Mool Mantar supposed to be written actually by Guru Arjan.

It's written there in the Gurmukhi script.

Now, this is what it means.

I'll translate it for you.

It means Ik Onkar is the first bit which you looked at in a previous lesson.

There is only one God, truth by name the creator, without fear, without hate, timeless in form, beyond birth, self existent, and known by the grace of the Guru.

This contains all of the important messages about the religion, about God for Sikhs.

And the Mool Mantar is one of the most important pieces from the scripture, extracts from the scripture as a, as a result, there is one God truth by name the creator, without fear, without hate, timeless in form, beyond the birth, self existent known by the grace of the Guru.

There are a few different translations to this Especially the first bit is quite difficult to translate, but there is one God or one existence, or it's sometimes translated as.

So let's see if you can write this out using this Gurmukhi script.

This is going to be a nice chance for you to really practise using this actual script that was used by Guru Arjun, when he wrote down the Mool Mantar.

So, here's your task and it's a very challenging one but it should be quite fun.

I'd like you to see if you can write out the Mool mantar, as it's written there in the Gurmukhi script.

So you're going to have look going to have to look really close and see if you can copy it out exactly as the Gurmukhi script.

So pause the video and have a go at that now.

Awesome work.

I'd love to see your beautiful, delicate Gurmukhi script.

Remember that you can ask your parents or carers to share any of your work, take a photo, ask them to pop it onto Instagram or Facebook or Twitter at Oak National Hashtag Learn With Oak and then everybody will be able to see your amazing work.

You deserve it because you're working so hard.

So,there's a Guru Granth Sahib.

We've learned about how it was put together, how it's compiled, what it contains, the teachings of all the different Gurus and the hymns and other religious writings.

How's it treated today? What is treatable, great reverence and respect and reverence really means deep respect really admiring the qualities of something.

If something's revered, it's almost like it's going beyond respecting it almost sort of like worshipping it.

And the Guru Granth Sahib is treated as a living guru.

So the guruship was passed on to the Guru Granth Sahib.

And so it's treated as if it were a person it's literally treated as a person.

So when people approached the Guru Granth Sahib in the gurdwara, which we'll learn about in the next lesson, the place of worship, they will cover their hair as a sign of respect.

They'll take their shoes off as a sign of respect.

They'll bow to the Guru Granth Sahib as if they were bowing to a religious leader.

They will always make sure they sit below to show that the Guru Granth Sahib is higher than them and they're there to learn from it.

Guru means teacher.

And the Guru Granth Sahib, is in the morning, it's woken up.

So just like a person, it's woken up.

So it usually has its own room in the gurdwara.

And it's woken up in the morning taken into the prayer hall.

Then at night, it's put back to bed and very often there will be a literal bed for the Guru Granth Sahib to go in for the night time.

So it really is treated as a person.

And so, whereas other religions might have a person as their, as their sort of head of their religion.

So the Roman Catholic denomination of Christianity, for example, has the Pope as the head of religion, the church of England has the Archbishop of Canterbury as the head of the religion Within Sikhism, it's the Guru Granth Sahib, that's the head of the religion.

So the Guru Granth Sahib represents the collected wisdom of all gurus.

Sikhs will, never read the Guru Granth Sahib aloud bow to the Guru Granth Sahib and sit below it, memorise the entire Guru Granth Sahib to enter the Khalsa, give the Guru Granth Sahib its own room in the gurdwara.

Only two of those statements are correct.

Your job is to find the two and write them out.

Pause the video and do that now.

Okay.

Let's see if you were correct.

So the answers are B and C.

The Guru Granth Sahib will usually have its own room in the gudwara and people will bow and sit below it.

It's not necessary to memorise the whole thing to enter the Khalsa.

And the Guru Granth Sahib is read aloud.

In fact, on some special occasions, the Guru Granth Sahib is read in its entirety.

It takes about two days and two nights, and the whole thing will be read aloud.

People will take it in turns.

So it's read from cover to cover out.

that's the end of our lesson for today.

And you've worked extremely hard and I'm really proud of you, but you need to do your quiz.

Don't forget to click next and do the quiz, get your feedback see if we've got them right.

If you've got them wrong, no problem, because you'll see the correct answer.

And that means you won't make that mistake in future.

And you're just have the correct knowledge locked away in your brain.

You've worked really hard.

You've got some great work down and you know a little bit more about Sikhism now.

It's Holy scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib Well done awesome work and I'll see you next time.