FRAMING THE DASAM GRANTH DEBATE

Abstract

Much of the Dasam Granth debate is focused on the questions of its authorship and authenticity. Clouding the study of its text with such questions, however, derails further progress in our understanding. There is an urgent need to move beyond polemics and locate the Dasam Granth in the context of courtly culture of late seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century Punjab in Mughal India. This article further examines the intersection of Sikh, Indic and Islamicate frameworks. To superimpose any single framework whether Indic or Islamicate on the study of the compositions of the Dasam Granth will provide us with a partial understanding of the actual situation of literary culture at the court of Guru Gobind Singh.