Guru Nanak’s Acros­tics of the 35 Al­pha­bets of Pun­jabi

The founder of Sikhism -Guru Nanak lent unique mean­ing to the al­pha­bet in his own inim­itable style, which was God-or­dained and God-gifted. How else could one for­mu­late the mean­ing of each let­ter of the al­pha­bet? What a beauty is this Patti Likhi re­vealed a group of hymns in the early pages of Guru Granth Sahib. WSN proudly pre­sents this piece in which Bhupin­der Singh from Hous­ton takes you through this unique com­po­si­tion, in­still­ing a love for the Gu­ru’s script Gu­ru­mukhi and re­spect for the mother tongue Pun­jabi. Read, rel­ish, en­lighten and en­joy.

HIS BANI -THE RE­VEALED COM­PO­SI­TION OF “PATTI LIKHI” -is a unique les­son im­parted by Guru Nanak, us­ing the let­ters of the Al­pha­bet to con­vey their spir­i­tual sig­nif­i­cance. As per the Pu­ratan Janam Sakhi -the old ver­sion of fa­bles of Guru Nanak, when Guru Nanak was 7, his fa­ther Mehta Kalu took him to the Pandha -teacher named Gopal for his ed­u­ca­tion. The Pandha wrote the 35 let­ters of the Al­pha­bet on the Patti or Takhti -a wooden tablet or slate of the times. The Patti is coated with yel­low clay paste and then dried in the sun. When dried, with a sharp­ened reed pen, the al­pha­bets are writ­ten over it. It can be washed and re­coated and used again.

The place where Guru Nanak wrote the Patti is at a walk­a­ble dis­tance from Guru Nanak’s birth­place -Gur­d­wara Janam Asthan, presently in Pak­istan.

One day, dur­ing school, the child Guru Nanak sat in a cor­ner, away from the rest of the stu­dents -deeply en­grossed in writ­ing and hum­ming while writ­ing. The whole day passed but the child did not show his work to his teacher. The leg­end goes that be­fore the end of the day, when asked to show his work, the prodi­gal mys­tic child brought 3 Pat­tis– slates and handed one to the Pandha, while still hold­ing on to the re­main­ing two.