ABSTRACT
Sikh traditions of interpretation and explication of gurbānī, the words and thought of the Sikh Gurūs and other saints whose works are included in the Sikh scripture Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib (SGGS), are nearly as old the Sikh tradition itself. The chapter outlines some of the major schools within the broad tradition of Sikh interpretation, along with some of their important figures and works. The Sikh interpretive traditions are products of, and reflect, the historical conditions in which they developed. Different times and places, with their characteristic diversities in social and political organization, have produced varied requirements for interpretation according to the needs of the developing Sikh sangats. This includes variations in language, form, and medium. The colonial encounter and its new ontologies, epistemologies, methodologies, and technologies have also had a profound effect on the development of Sikh interpretive traditions and self-understanding. The previous primarily oral mode of transmission, where interpreters had direct contact with the sangats for whom they interpreted, was augmented, from the late nineteenth century onwards, with the development of new genres of writing that introduced primarily referential works, such as the dictionary, the grammar, and the encyclopedia into the interpretive field. Developments in communication technologies, from manuscripts, to the printing press, to audiovisual recordings, and most recently to broadcasting and streaming, have each been accompanied by shifts in forms of interpretation. This movement has not been unidirectional or teleological, however. The contemporary period, the introduction of new audiovisual technologies, has facilitated a return of various forms of oral exegesis.
