Sant Hari Singh Randhawa and the Panch Granthavali Steek: Reading a Commentary on a Gathered Collection

A ਗ੍ਰੰਥਾਵਲੀ (granthavali) is a gathered series of works set side by side as one body of reading. A 'panch granthavali' is such a collection built around a set of granths chosen for study together. Instead of leaving short works scattered, the tradition bound them so a reader could move through them in one place and in a settled order.

A ਸਟੀਕ (steek) places a text next to its explanation. The original lines stay, and beside them a commentary opens the meaning. Sant Hari Singh Randhawa's Panch Granthavali Steek belongs to this practice: it takes the gathered collection and walks a reader through it, line by line, in plain reach. Mandair and Singh (2014) describe how this kind of commentary work has long carried Sikh teaching from one generation to the next.

This course studies method — how a commentator opens a collection — rather than settling any point of doctrine. We keep biography light and ask a practical question throughout: how does a teekakar move from words on a page to a meaning a student can hold?

The ਟੀਕਾਕਾਰ (teekakar) is the person who writes the commentary. The role looks simple from the outside — explain the text — but every line involves a choice. How much should be glossed? Where should the reader be slowed down? When is a word left to stand on its own, and when does it need unpacking?

A good steek is restrained. It gives the reader enough to keep moving without burying the original under explanation. Sant Hari Singh Randhawa's approach, like much of the tradition Mandair and Singh (2014) survey, keeps the commentary in service of the text, not above it.

These choices, repeated across a whole collection, give a steek its character. We will watch for them in the rest of the course.

Commentary works on two layers. The first is ਪਦ ਅਰਥ (pad arth): the meaning of single words and phrases. Here the commentator simply tells the reader what a word means, like a guide naming things along a path.

The second is ਭਾਵ ਅਰਥ (bhav arth): the drawn-out, intended meaning of a passage taken as a whole. This goes past single words to say what the lines are getting at together. A steek that gives only word-meanings can leave a reader holding parts but not the shape; one that gives only the larger sense can float free of the actual words. The skill is balancing both.

Sant Hari Singh Randhawa's Panch Granthavali Steek moves between these layers as it goes. Across a gathered collection, holding that balance over many short granths is itself a craft. Sahib Singh's well-known Darpan shows the same two-layer method at scale, and reading the two together helps a student see the pattern clearly.

Commenting on a single granth is one task; commenting on a gathered ਪੰਜ (panj) collection is another. With one work, the commentator can settle into a single voice and rhythm. With a collection, several short granths sit together, and the steek has to carry the reader across the joins without losing its footing.

This brings new demands. The commentator must keep a steady method so the reader is not relearning the approach at each new granth. At the same time, each work in the collection has its own texture, and a flat, identical treatment would flatten what makes each one distinct. Mandair and Singh (2014) note that gathering texts for teaching was a deliberate act, and the commentary on such a gathering carries that same purpose.

The Panch Granthavali Steek takes on the harder, collection-wide task, which is what makes it useful for studying method.

A steek's layout is part of its teaching. The Panch Granthavali Steek follows the order of the collection it opens, moving through the gathered granths in turn and giving each its commentary in place. Keeping the original sequence lets a reader trust that the path through the printed collection and the path through the explanation are the same.

Within each granth, the commentary keeps the two-layer habit from Lesson 3: word-meanings where a reader needs them, then the larger sense where the lines ask for it. The ਸੰਥਿਆ (santhiya) setting matters here — a steek is often used in guided reading, where a teacher and student go through the text together at a careful pace, and the layout supports that slow, line-by-line movement.

We describe the organization; we do not reproduce the passages themselves. The point for a student of method is to see how a long, multi-granth collection is made walkable by a consistent layout, so that a reader never loses their place across the whole.

No steek stands alone. The Panch Granthavali Steek sits within a long line of Sikh commentary work, the same tradition described in modern scholarship by Mandair and Singh (2014) and in studies of how Sikh texts were formed and transmitted (Mann 2001).

Reading Sant Hari Singh Randhawa's collection-wide steek beside a single-text commentary such as Sahib Singh's Darpan sharpens the comparison drawn in Lesson 4: one shows method held over a single work, the other shows it held across a gathering of several. Both belong to the same craft of the ਟੀਕਾਕਾਰ (teekakar), and both ask the reader to value clarity over display.

The closing lesson of this course is simple. We have studied how a commentator opens a gathered collection — the choices, the two layers of meaning, the demands of a multi-granth set, and the layout that keeps a reader on the path. With that, a student can pick up the Panch Granthavali Steek and read it not just for what it says, but for how it does its work.