**7. Afterword**

As one can easily see throughout this paper, I have relied quite heavily on the work of bhakti scholar Jack Hawley, especially his focus on the four*sampradays ¯* in situating my discussion of Raghavdas and Guru Nanak. Hawley's work on the *sampradays ¯* and Raghavdas has been particularly helpful in exposing this niche in Sikh studies to me—that is, early bhakti attitudes towards the Sikh Gurus. The present paper is o ffered as an expansion of Hawley's work, though with a focus on the Sikh tradition that is clearly peripheral in Hawley's essays.

This type of collaboration if you will is very good for us in Sikh studies, for it has only been within the last two decades or so that scholars of Sikh history and tradition have begun to engage those Indologists whose work lies predominantly within di fferent though related Indological fields in the hope of understanding the development of both Sikhism and the traditions which were its contemporaries. The goals between we scholars (of Sikhism and of bhakti traditions) are shared but, in so many instances, our perspectives di ffer. This was made quite explicit to me as I read Professor Hawley's very astute claim that

The Sikhs developed an intricate system of anthological practice that made it possible to locate the compositions of their own gurus within a wider range of songs ascribed to others.

#### (Hawley 2015, p. 126)

For me, the phrasing of this claim should in fact be altered given the situationality of the Bhagat Bani to which Hawley refers in this particular quotation. Thus, I would argue that the Sikhs develop a system which allowed the songs of non-Sikhs to be located within the compositions (that is the ideology) of the Gurus. What Professor Hawley's comment fails to note explicitly is that the Bhakt hymns

<sup>5</sup> This South Indian context was brought to my attention by Pashaura Singh who has my thanks.

included in the Adi Granth were incorporated because some agreed with the ideas of the Sikh Gurus while others, more importantly, did not. Those that did not agree are immediately followed by hymns of the Gurus, the aims of which are placing the Bhagats back on course, so to speak, and thus allowing Sikhi to stand in stark contrast to the tradition(s) espoused by the Bhakts/Bhagats. The di fference between both my view and that of Professor Hawley is, once again, one of perspective.

This di fference, at the same time, also gives rise to the issue of taming and containing. Here is where Raghavdas comes into play. Raghavdas notes enough of Guru Nanak in his *Bhakt-mal¯* to ensure that the First Master is fairly ensconced within the model of the four *sampradays ¯* . Put simply, Raghavdas contains the revered Guru and his following within his *chhappais* and goes on his merry bhakti way, turning immediately afterwards to the primary exponent of *nr.gun* bhakti, Kabir without paying the Guru and the Sikhs a second thought.

In many ways, this examination of mine, linked as it is to containment and limitations, brought me again and again to descriptions of the thought of Guru Nanak which generally note that Nanak's doctrine has been, in large part, refracted through the lenses of modern commentators and scholars to form the systematic theology to which we today attach Nanak's name, a theology that has been influenced (inevitably) by "modernist and secular scholarship." There is merit to this claim, but it is one which must nevertheless be tempered. We cannot ignore the modern in the construction of the construct that is Guru Nanak, but such statements we make as scholars are, let us be clear, as confining of the First Master as are those of Raghavdas.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Acknowledgments:** I would like to thank Pashaura Singh for allowing me to deliver an earlier and much longer version of this essay at the University of California Riverside Sikh Studies conference commemorating the 550th anniversary of Guru Nanak's birth in May 2019. I dedicate this paper to him.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.
