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Acknowledgments
DATE OF THIS POSTING:
October 2, 1999.
The distribution of Gurbani
CD started on November 14, 1995.
The making of Gurbani-CD has
been possible due to a selfless dedication of a number of individuals.
It is worth mentioning here
that many individuals and organizations have been making their own efforts
to do similar projects.
One such project was
started many years ago by S. Jaswant Singh-ji, an engineer by profession. He
typed the text from Siri Guru Granth Sahib into the computer and is the main
architect of this project.
S. Jaswant Singh-ji did most
of the work of typing, proof reading, editing and formatting of the text of
Siri Guru Granth Sahib. S. Jagjit Singh Karwel helped in typing the text of
many hundreds of pages.
The most difficult part of
this project has been to eliminate all mistakes of text entry. That required
extensive proof reading, a task that may seem simple but is very difficult
and time consuming. Many dedicated individuals were helpful in this regard.
The names of those individuals are mentioned below.
1. Dr. Kulwant Singh-ji, who in addition
to being an ophthalmologist (a retired medical doctor) is also a Sikh
studies scholar and a writer of many books on Sikhism. His “Mansrovar” and
some other documents are included on Gurbani-CD. He did a commendable job of
‘full proof-reading’ of the whole of Siri Guru Granth Sahib, twice. His 2nd
proof-reading is done recently. He also helped in this project in many other
ways as described later.
3. In addition to the correction work
done before, a recent, very extensive correction work was done by Paminder
Singh Aujla of Hopewell Junction, New York, USA.
2. Many other individuals helped in
proof-reading the typed text from Siri Guru Granth Sahib and many of them
edited it a number of times. Their names are: S. Jagdev Singh Beasley, Bibi
Avtar Kaur Beasley, Giany Amarjit Singh-ji, S. Rajinder Singh Dhaliwal, Bibi
Surinder Kaur Dhaliwal, S. Manjit Singh Sahota (with the help of his niece)
and Bibi Khushdev Kaur Thind.
We are thankful to Dr.
Harbans Lal, Ph.D., the Chairman of Department of Pharmacology, University
of North Texas, and the founder of Academy of Guru Granth Studies for
providing moral support and for his participation in some decision making
processes. It is because of him that Dr. Thind came to know Dr. Kulwant
Singh-ji, whose contribution to this project has been very valuable.
The text of Bhai Gurdaas's
Bannies has been typed by ManinderPal Singh in Delhi, India.
To achieve proper appearance
of text from Siri Guru Granth Sahib on pages, many logical formatting
decisions had to be made. Dr. Kulbir Singh Thind, MD was helpful in this
regard by offering his word processing & other computer related technical
abilities. He was also responsible for all conversions of the text of Siri
Guru Granth Sahib to Hindi and Roman.
All the fonts on the
Gurbani-CD has been made by Kulbir Singh Thind, and are his copy right. He
has been making and distributing Gurmukhi fonts (free of charge) for many
years. His Gurmukhi type-faces, named “Amrit-Lipi” had a wide distribution.
However, Amrit-Lipi lacked some subscript characters (shown below) that were
required to correctly type text from Siri Guru Granth Sahib. Dr. Kulwant
Singh-ji, did a thorough search of Siri Guru Granth Sahib to list all such
characters for Dr. Thind who then developed a new font for the purpose of
writing Siri Guru Granth Sahib and named it “Gurbani-Lipi”. This font was
gradually perfected over time and other similar fonts were also developed.
Following eleven characters
previously not found in the Amrit-Lipi were included in the “GurbaniLipi”
and in all the fonts that were developed subsequently.
@ ´ ç †
œ ˜ ü ¨ Ú æ
Conversion of the text of
Siri Guru Granth Sahib from Gurmukhi to Hindi required a customized Hindi
font which was then developed. Some characters found in Gurmukhi do not have
equivalent characters in Hindi. Decision was made to import those characters
in the custom Hindi font.
Conversion of Siri Guru
Granth Sahib text to Roman was a much greater challenge and has been done
with a new approach. All the search and decision making regarding the
development of this font has been done by Kulbir Singh Thind who then
created the font and named it “GurbaniRomanizing”. Dr. Kulwant Singh-ji made
many suggestions for this font, a few of which were incorporated.
Kulbir S. Thind has also been
responsible for making of "PLRA_SGG.---" document. The text in this document
is arranged in an easy to use format for scholarly work. In this document
each sentence from Siri Guru Granth Sahib is arranged as a single line or in
a few instances in double line paragraphs. Each line/paragraph ends with the
page number, line number, Raag and Author for easy reference. This file has
been further developed by including Dr. Khalsa’s (see below) English
translation below each line of Gurmukhi text.
Singh Sahib Sant Singh
Khalsa, MD, graciously gave his permission to record his English translation
of Siri Guru Granth Sahib on the Gurbani-CD. Users will find his work very
valuable. We are very thankful to Dr. Khalsa for his generosity.
An additional document named
“TRAN_COM” included on the Gurbani-CD is also compiled by Dr. Khalsa and
compares the five available English translations of Siri Guru Granth Sahib.
Manjit Singh Sahota of San
Jose California, a computer professional has been kind enough to contribute
to the Gurbani-CD by creating (1) "All Words List" from Siri Guru Granth
Sahib files (2) a “Word Index” file that indexes all words from SGGS with
page and line numbers (3) a “sorting” program to help users sort lines of
text written with GurbaniLipi according to the Gurmukhi alphabet and (4) by
sorting the “PLRA_SRT” file according to the Gurmukhi alphabet. The sorting
program created by Manjit Singh Sahota works under Windows 95/98 DOS and can
sort up to 2000 lines of text. Manjit Singh Sahota has also been helpful in
many other ways. He deserves numerous thanks.
The documents in the
“PSSGTRST” folder on the Gurbani-CD are included courtesy of Professor Sahib
Singh Gurmut Trust and have been spearheaded with the labor of love by Dr.
Gurcharan Singh, Academy of Sikh Religion & Culture, 1 Dhillon Marag,
Patiala 147001, India. The names of other individuals associated with these
documents are described in the leading pages of the documents.
Dr. Pritam Singh, author of a
25 page introduction to Sikhism kindly gave permission to include his work
on the Gurbani-CD. With his permission another useful document “ANAND_K.DOC”
compiled by the same author is also included on the Gurbani-CD. Dr. Pritam
Singh deserves many thanks for this.
Permission has also been
obtained from “Sikh Missionary Center, PO BOX 62521, Phoenix, Arizona 85082”
to include on the Gurbani-CD an approximately 263-pages document on “Sikh
Religion” written in English. The Sikh Missionary Center deserves many
thanks.
The documents in the “GAHIR_”
folder on the Gurbani-CD have been formatted with the labor of love by:
Avtar Singh Gahir, President, Kingston Sikh Cultural Society, 482 Roosevelt
Dr., Kingston, Ontario K7M 4B1, CANADA.
The document “Ardaas” inside
folder “For_Chil” on the Gurbani-CD has been written by: Dr. Jogindar Singh
Randhawa, MBBS, 12 Baron Green, Heald Green, Cheadle, Cheshire, England SK8
3HT, UK.
No funds were ever collected
for the completion of this project. All individuals who helped in the
project did it with the understanding that this was a free “Sewa” and that
the project was a non-commercial one for “Sewa” only.
Many other individuals
including a number of friends and relatives of Sewadars have offered their
support and help for the completion of the project and deserve thanks.
When the distribution of the
Gurbani-CDs was started in Nov. 95, we expected to distribute only a few
hundred of the CDs. However, the experience proved otherwise. By the end of
February 96, we had already recorded (at home) and distributed more than 550
of Gurbani-CDs and the demand seemed to be increasing. By then it became
obvious that the distribution of Gurbani-CDs by recording at home was not
the an efficient method for the given demand. Subsequently, it was decided
to get the Gurbani-CDs professionally stamped with available support from
some charitable individuals/organizations.
Dr. Tarlochan Singh of the
Sikh Center of Orange County (a Gurdwara in Southern California) was very
enthused about the Gurbani-CD. The Sikh center has contributed significantly
towards the manufacture of compressed CDs and offered its services for the
distribution of the Gurbani-CDs. It may be noted that subsequently the name
of the organization involved in the distribution of Gurbani-CDs has changed
to "Shri Guru Granth Sahib Foundation, Inc."
Dr. Thind is personally
indebted to the following individuals who provided their support during
early days of the making of the Gurbani-CDs by supplying significant number
of recordable CDs and helping in the distribution:
Dr. Gurpal Singh, Bhuller, MD
(Virginia)
Dr. Harbans Lal, Ph D (Texas)
Dr. Pritam Singh, Ph D
(Texas)
Surinder Singh (California)
Dr. Baljit S. Sidhu, MD,
(Virginia)
Shamsher Singh Puri
(Georgia).
We are also indebted to
Charanjit Singh Anand of Massachusettes & S. Kirat Singh Sethi of New York
who provided valuable support and contact with S. Maninder Singh Sethi of
New York that led to the initial manufacture of stamped Gurbani-CDs.
Dr. Harbhajan Singh Chawla,
MD of New Jersey provided many recordable CDs as well $2500 for the
manufacture of professionally compressed Gurbani-CDs.
Dr. Thind is also thankful to
Dr. Bhupinder Singh Waraich, MD; Dr. Prabhjot Singh Khalsa, MD and Dr.
Sunder Singh Saluja, Ph.D. for their support in the project.
Our thanks are due to
numerous other individuals (not listed here) who provided monetary or other
help in the manufacture and distribution of the Gurbani-CDs. Many of them
have provided support directly to the Sikh Center. We are very grateful foro contribute
to the Gurbani-CD by creating (1) "All Words List" from Siri Guru Granth
Sahib files (2) a “Word Index” file that indexes all words from SGGS with
page and line numbers (3) a “sorting” program to help users sort lines of
text written with GurbaniLipi according to the Gurmukhi alphabet and (4) by
sorting the “PLRA_SRT” file according to the Gur | 
