ਤਵਪ੍ਰਸਾਦਿ ਸਵੱਯੇਤਵਪ੍ਰਸਾਦਿ ਸਵੱਯੇ

Tav-Prasad Savaiye is the short, searching hymn by ਗੁਰੂ ਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ ਨੇ, the tenth Sikh Guru, that Sikhs recite every morning as the third bani of Nitnem. Its ten stanzas are taken from his Akal Ustat, the praise of the Timeless One, and they pass in review the monks, yogis, warriors, gods and kings of the whole world before reaching one verdict: all of it, without the grace of God and without love, is worth nothing. Its closing teaching is the most quoted line in all the Guru's shorter works: whoever has loved has found God.

What is Tav-Prasad Savaiye?

Tav-Prasad Savaiye is a composition of ten stanzas in the savaiye metre, the stately quatrain form from which it takes its name. Tav prasad means by Your grace, and the title states the hymn's whole argument before it begins: everything a person is or does counts only by grace. The ten stanzas are drawn from Akal Ustat, Guru Gobind Singh Ji's long praise of the Timeless One in the Dasam Granth, beginning at stanza 21 of that work. The bani is also called Amrit Savaiye or Sudh Savaiye in the gutka tradition, and in the five morning banis of Nitnem it stands third, read straight after ਜਾਪੁ ਸਾਹਿਬ.

Where does it stand in Akal Ustat and the Dasam Granth?

Akal Ustat is the second composition of the Dasam Granth, a devotional work of some 271 verses praising Akal, the Timeless Primal Being, under many names and forms. It is known for its open rejection of caste and of every claim that one people, region or creed stands above another, and for insisting that human beings are all one. The ten Tav-Prasad stanzas stand on pages 13 to 15 of the standard Dasam Granth and form the part of Akal Ustat that daily Sikh life took for its own: the wider praise stayed in the scripture, while these ten quatrains entered the gutka and the morning of almost every practising Sikh.

What do the ten Savaiye say?

The first stanza reports a survey of the religious world. The Guru describes seeing the disciplined orders of Jain and Buddhist monks, companies of adepts and yogis, brave warriors, assemblies of saints of many sects, and the disciplines of every land, and finding among them no sight of the Lord of life: without even a fraction of God's grace and love, he says, all of it weighs nothing. The hymn opens, in other words, not with doctrine but with a traveller's negative result, reached by looking everywhere.

The middle stanzas turn from holy men to power. Kings are pictured with jewelled and painted elephants, millions of horses faster than the wind, armies and drums and conquered countries, and the verdict is the same: such emperors, for all their splendour, leave the world barefoot in the end. Warriors in shining armour who crush armies and humble elephants fare no better, and nor do the routines of religion: pilgrimages, ritual bathing, fasting, charity, celibacy and the study of scriptures, pursued without love, are called fruitless. The savaiye move like a review of troops, each rank of human greatness inspected and dismissed in turn, until nothing is left standing except grace and love.

Why does it reject ritual without love?

The hymn names the outward forms plainly: idol worship, pilgrimages, the worship of graves and the samadhis of yogis are of no use in attaining God if they are performed without love of God and of all his creation. This is not a rejection of practice by a teacher who prescribed daily practice himself. Tav-Prasad Savaiye is itself recited daily, and the distinction it draws is between form used as a transaction, something done to purchase merit, and remembrance done in love. A pilgrimage walked in love is not its target. A pilgrimage, or a prayer, offered as a substitute for love is. Read this way, the ten stanzas protect devotion from its own machinery, which is why the Khalsa, the most disciplined of communities, was given them to read every morning.

Where does the line Jin Prem Kiyo Tin Hi Prabh Paayo come from?

It comes from the ninth of the ten savaiye, where the Guru turns from surveying others to stating the truth plainly, in a passage that begins by asking everyone to listen: I tell the truth, hear it all, whoever has loved has found God. The line has travelled far beyond the morning gutka. Scholars of many religions quote it, and the Dalai Lama quoted it in Dialogues on Universal Responsibility and Education while teaching on love. Its force inside the hymn is structural: after nine stanzas of negation, of this is not it, the positive way is finally named in a single condition, and the condition is not birth, learning, austerity or power, but love.

How is Tav-Prasad Savaiye recited today?

Tav-Prasad Savaiye is the third of the five morning banis of ਨਿਤਨੇਮ, recited in the Amrit Vela after Jaap Sahib and before Chaupai Sahib. The Sikh Rehat Maryada sets the morning recitation as Japji Sahib, Jaap Sahib and the Ten Savaiye beginning with the words Sravag Sudh, and the ten stanzas are also read at Amrit Sanchar, the Khalsa initiation, where Jaap Sahib, the Savaiye and Chaupai Sahib are recited while the Amrit is prepared. Short enough to learn by heart and sharp enough to stay in the mind all day, it is for many Sikhs the moment in the morning prayers when praise turns into self-examination.