Re-Membering the body of the transcendent one

Abstract

This paper is a re-memory of Sikh scripture from my perspective, which happens to be that of a Sikh female scholar. I borrow the term ‘semiotic’ from Julia Kristeva who distinguishes the Mother's free and primordial ‘semiotic’ language from that of the Father's divisive and oppressive ‘symbolic.’ So by using Kristeva's semiotic process we enter the elemental power of Sikh verse: we become sensitive to its sensuousness and sensuality and re-experience the full physicality, dynamism, and elan vital of the sacred words. Kristeva's ‘semiotic’ helps us realize that female is not set aside in the male compositions of the Sikh Gurus, and that ‘word’ and ‘flesh’ do meet in their expression of and quest for the transcendent Reality. A revised version of this paper appears in my book The Birth of the Khalsa: A Feminist Re-Memory of Sikh Identity (SUNY, 2005).

Notes

1. For translation and further discussion see André Padoux, Vac: The Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras, trans. Jacques Gontier (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), p. 11.

2. I have discussed these five stages in depth in my chapter on ‘The spiritual experience in Sikhism’ in Sundararajan and Mukerji (1997, 530-61).

3. The term ‘Sita’ is taken by some exegetes in the sense of seetal (cold). See, for example, Harbans Singh (1963, 230). Even in his commentary, Japuji: The immortal prayer-chant, G. S. Talib (1977) includes the possibility of its meaning ‘cold’. He writes: ‘Sito Sita in the line may be either Sita by herself – that is few other like Sita attain to that realm. Or sito may be an epithet, meaning cool (Shital) of great poise, one who has subdued all passion’ (135). For a balanced discussion of this verse, see A. Singh (1970, 236–8).