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'An honour to find oldest copy of Guru Granth Sahib outside India'

Shyam Bhatia in London

A Sikh researcher, who has found the oldest known copy of the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of the Sikhs, outside India, says he is both honoured and humbled by his role in the discovery.

Jeevan Singh Deol, a research fellow at St John's College, Cambridge, is in charge of a project to catalogue Punjabi manuscripts for the British Library. The project is funded by the British Academy, the Heritage and Lottery Fund, and the Wellcome Fund.

Dr Deol, a Canadian national, came across the manuscript during the course of his work and describes the 17th century manuscript written in the Gurmukhi script as "incredibly important and old."

The manuscript is part of a collection of documents that was brought over to the United Kingdom in the last century and was previously thought to be a copy of the Sikh community's holy text that was first compiled by Guru Arjun Dev in 1604.

The manuscript consists of verses and quotes from Sikh gurus such as Guru Nanak, Guru Angad, Guru Amardas, Guru Ramdas, and Guru Arjun Dev. There are also inputs from Sant (saint) Kabir, Sant Namdev, and Sufi Sant Baba Farid.

"This discovery is important for British Sikhs," says Deol. "It is both poetic and appropriate for the Guru to send out this object for us to find."

"Eighty per cent of the manuscripts from a century ago have been destroyed either because of the climate in India or because of the decaying buildings in which they were housed."

"There was also the practice of cremating a manuscript or throwing it into a river. The idea of holding on to something old was not there."

Deol is descended from the Sikh pioneers who settled in North America in the early part of the last century. One of his grandfathers fought with United States troops in France in the First World War. Another was a member of the Ghadr Party, which worked for India's independence.

He says both would have been proud of the work he has done on behalf of the Sikh faith.

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