strated with Nanak. He enjoined him to abandon his whims and act like others, as no one could live without worldly occupation. Nanak was not convinced, so his father in despair left him and went to attend to his ordinary business. Nanak's mother again attempted the worldly reformation of her son. She requested him to forget even for a few days his devotions and go abroad, so that the neighbours might be assured that Kalu's son had recovered his reason. Nanak then uttered the following verses in the Rag Asa :—
If I repeat the Name, I live; if I forget it, I die;[1]
It is difficult to repeat the true Name.
If a man hunger after the true Name,
His pain shall depart when he satisfieth himself with it.[2]
Then how could I forget it, O my mother?
True is the Lord, true is His name;
Men have grown weary of uttering
Even an iota of His greatness; His worth they have not discovered.
If all men were to join and try to describe Him,
That would not add to or detract from His greatness.
God dieth not, neither is there any mourning for Him;
He continueth to give us our daily bread which never faileth.
His praise is—that there neither is,
Nor was, nor shall be any one like unto Him.
As great as Thou art Thyself, O God, so great is Thy gift.
Thou who madest the day madest also the night.
They who forget their Spouse[3] are bad characters;[4]
Nanak, without His name they are naught.[5]
- ↑ Of course, spiritual life and death are meant.
- ↑ Literally—the pain of that hungry man shall depart on eating the Name, that is, on receiving it as food. The verse is also translated—His pain shall depart; all his desires shall be merged in his hunger for the Name.
- ↑ The allusion here is to men forgetting God.
- ↑ A colloquial meaning of the word kamjāt, which literally means inferior caste.
- ↑ Sanāt, a plural form of san, a year, or an age. The word was
