Foreword

From each generation from Guru Nanak Dev Ji onwards the Sikhs have preserved and conserved with critical skill the. integrity and purity of their Scriptural Tradition. Major architects in the process - were Guru Arjan Dev, Guru Gobiod Singh Maharaj and Bhai Gurdas Ji, but always the community played an appropriate part. At various times some scholars have shown themselves to be prepared to study methods learned from other traditions of scholarship, but the mainstream has always been natural, indigenous, growing organically out of the community, based on reason, common sense and the consensus of Sangat life, past; present and still to come.Professor Sahib Singh, who died in 1977, was one of the greatest proponents of this naturally based form of the study of Sikh Scripture and Tradition. He was one of those scholars, who came up the hard way from an educationally disadvantaged background. His family were not the kind who could send him off to an expensive British type boarding school and certainly higher education of the British University type was hard to get. Again, he was not able to receive much education of the high falutin Sanskritic or Farsi type, but he made the most of the best solid education that the Punjab could provide. Above all, he had a brilliant clear brain with a gift for asking deeply penetrating questions. This was coupled with a single minded self discipline and devotion to the truth of the Sikh Scripture. His writings are part of the such heritage of Sikh studies which as time passes will remain closed not only to those who chose to ignore it but to foreign scholars of good will, who have a modicum of Gurmukhi, but cannot read it quickly, without the help of a Punjabi friend. Sikhs of the second and third generations born in New Zealand, North America and Britiain and other parts of the world-wide Sikh diaspora will increasingly find themselves in this group.