The Month of Vaisakh: April – May

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This Post is Based on Translation from SikhitotheMax and Information on the Bara Maha from SikhiWiki.

Note: the month of Vaisakh typically takes place mid-April through mid-May on the Gregorian Calendar.

 

Words from the Guru

In the month of Vaisaakh, how can the bride be patient? She is separated from her Beloved.

She has forgotten the Lord, her Life-companion, her Master; she has become attached to Maya, the deceitful one.

Neither son, nor spouse, nor wealth shall go along with you-only the Eternal Lord.

Entangled and enmeshed in the love of false occupations, the whole world is perishing.

Without the Naam, the Name of the One Lord, they lose their lives in the hereafter.

Forgetting the Merciful Lord, they are ruined. Without God, there is no other at all.

Pure is the reputation of those who are attached to the Feet of the Beloved Lord.

Nanak makes this prayer to God: “”Please, come and unite me with Yourself.”

The month of Vaisaakh is beautiful and pleasant, when the Saint causes me to meet the Lord. || 3 ||

Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Siri Guru Granth Sahib Ji (Ang 133 – 134) 

Vaisakhi is so pleasant; the branches blossom with new leaves.

The soul-bride yearns to see the Lord at her door. Come, O Lord, and take pity on me!

Please come home, O my Beloved; carry me across the treacherous world-ocean. Without You, I am not worth even a shell.

Who can estimate my worth, if I am pleasing to You? I see You, and inspire others to see You, O my Love.

I know that You are not far away; I believe that You are deep within me, and I realize Your Presence.

O Nanak, finding God in Vaisakhi, the consciousness is filled with the Word of the Shabad, and the mind comes to believe.  || 6 ||

Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Siri Guru Granth Sahib Ji (Ang 1108) 

Listen to the Month of Vaisakh in English by Don Cooper (Bara Maha Musical English Translation)


About the Bara Maha

“The twelve months, the seasons, the weeks, the days, the hours, the minutes and the seconds are all sublime, when the True Lord comes and meets her with natural ease.

God, my Beloved, has met me, and my affairs are all resolved. The Creator Lord knows all ways and means.”

– Excerpt from Bara Maha by Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Siri Guru Granth Sahib Ji (Ang 1109)

Bara Maha is a form of folk poetry in which the emotions and yearnings of the human heart are expressed in terms of the changing moods of nature over the twelve months of the year. In this form of poetry, the mood of nature in each particular month (of the Indian calendar) depicts the inner agony of the human heart which in most cases is described as a woman separated from her spouse or lover. In other words, the separated woman finds her own agony reflected in the different faces of nature.

The tradition of Bara Maha poetry is traceable to classical epochs. In Sanskrit, the Bara Maha had the form of “shad ritu varnan,” i.e. description of the six seasons (shad = six; ritu = season; varnan = description), the most well known example being Kalidasa’s Ritu Sanhar.

The mode was commonly employed to depict the moods of the love stricken woman in separation, and it became an established vogue in medieval Indian poetry. Modern languages of northern India claim several distinguished models.

Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s Barah Maha in the measure Tukhari is not only the oldest composition belonging to this genre but also the first in which the theme of love poetry has been transformed into that of spiritual import. He made the human soul the protagonist which suffers in the cesspool of transmigration as a result of its separation from the Supreme Soul. This is followed by Guru Arjan Dev Ji’s Barah Maha.

Guru Nanak’s Bara Maha or “twelve months” composition in Raga Tukhari in the Siri Guru Granth Sahib (pages 1107 to 1110,) stands out in Sikh literature for its poetic splendor and philosophical import . . . Herein, time and space universal as well as particular have been richly fused in the person of a young bride ardently searching for her Divine Bridegroom through the cameos of the changing reality of the twelve months.

It is Guru Arjan’s calendar poem in the measure Majh included in the Siri Guru Granth Sahib (pages 133 to 136). The bani was composed at the behest of Sikh Sangat when they approached Guru Arjan and requested that Guru Nanak Sahib’s composition mentioned below in Tukhri raag is very difficult for them to understand. The opening verse of the composition presents the binary theme of the poem: the factual situation of the human soul’s separation from the Divine Soul  and its quest for union with Him.

Later some Sufi poets such as Ali Haider, Bulleh Shah, Hasham, and Shah Murad also wrote bara mahas.

 

Listen to the Bara Maha

Bara Maha – Professor Satnam Singh Sethi: 

 

Many Versions of the Bara Maha are Available on the SikhNet Gurbani Media Center


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