Guru Granth Sahib Facts

Guru Granth Sahib contains 5894 hymns (shabad) written in 60 melodies (raag) by 35 authors, including 6 Sikh Gurus, 15 Bhagats, 3 Divines and 11 Poets, all from different social classes, religions and spiritual traditions – making the Sikh scripture the world’s most interfaith scripture. 974 hymns are written by the first Guru, 62 by the second Guru, 907 by the third Guru, 679 by the fourth Guru, 2218 by the fifth Guru, and 115 by the ninth Guru. Among the remaining 922 hymns, the highest number of hymns — totalling 541 — is by Bhagat Kabir. The melody (raag) of each hymn sets the mood for the hymn, and is associated with a particular beat (taal), together which provides the context or mood for the hymn.

The opening section of the Guru Granth Sahib is the Japji Sahib or the Song of the Soul. The Japji Sahib begins with the Mool Mantra or root chant (Punjabi: ??? ????), which describes a human being’s true nature. The first sound is Ik Onkar (Gurmukhi: ?) which represents the principle of oneness and continuous change in the Universe. The rest of the Mool Mantra, Japji Sahib and indeed the entire Guru Granth Sahib sets out to bring the reader and the listener to this very experience of oneness.

Read more about Japji Sahib.

More Guru Granth Sahib Facts:

  • The Guru Granth Sahib has a total of 1430 pages.
  • The pages are written with a landscape orientation.
  • There are 19 lines of text per page. However, many pages with headlines (starting with new raag) have less than 19 lines per page.
  • Total number of lines are 26852.
  • Total number of words are 398,697.
  • Total dictionary words are 29445 (these are the words that have been used again and again to make the whole text). Many of these words have been used only once.
  • The word that has been repeated most often is ???. It has occurs 9288 times.
  • No punctuation marks like comma, semicolon or colon have been used. A ‘colon’ shaped character that has been used is not a colon.
  • No ‘Adhak’ charcater has been used.
  • No ‘Paireen Bindi’ character (dot at the bottom of character) has been used.