Asa di Var

The var was the Punjabi bard's form, a ballad of heroes sung with a fixed refrain structure, and Guru Nanak's genius in Asa di Var was to keep the form and change the battlefield. Its twenty four pauris, stanzas of the ballad, praise not a chieftain's victories but the true Lord and the life of truth, and between them are set saloks, couplets and longer verses, by Guru Nanak and his successor Guru Angad, that carry the work's cutting edge.

The saloks are among the sharpest social criticism in scripture. They mock the sacred thread that leaves the wearer's conduct unchanged, expose the hypocrisy of purity laws administered by the impure of heart, weigh ritual bathing against inner truthfulness, and, in the most quoted passage, defend women, of woman we are born, to woman betrothed and wed, why call her inferior, from whom kings are born. Nothing exists without woman, Guru Nanak concludes, except the True One alone. The var's theology matches its ethics, the divine order, hukam, runs through all things, and honour before God belongs to conduct, not to caste, creed or ceremony. Set in Asa raga, the raga of hope, the composition joins the Sikh scripture's most confrontational verses to its most consoling music, argument and praise in alternation.

Asa di Var belongs to the amrit vela, the ambrosial hours before dawn that Sikh tradition holds apt for remembrance, and its singing is among the oldest fixed customs of Sikh worship. In gurdwaras across the world, ragis, the musicians of the tradition, perform it in the early morning, and at the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar its daily singing is part of the sanctuary's unbroken round.

Performance practice enriches the text. By long custom the ragis interleave the pauris and saloks with chhants of Guru Ram Das, the fourth Guru, so that the sung Asa di Var is a woven fabric of three Gurus' compositions, and the congregation hears the ballad expanded from within, a liturgical arrangement the tradition itself created and preserves. The music moves between recitation and full kirtan, the saloks often delivered in a plainer style and the pauris carried on the melodies of Asa raga, with the sangat joining refrains. Attending Asa di Var is a devotional discipline in its own right, families rising in darkness to be present, and the custom travels wherever Sikhs settle, so that the ballad Guru Nanak composed for a Punjabi dawn is now sung before sunrise on every continent. Few scriptures assign their social conscience so prominent an hour, the day opened, before business or breakfast, with verses against hypocrisy and for the dignity of women.