Mahan Kosh says:

ਸੰ. त्रिवर्ग. {ਸੰਗ੍ਯਾ}. ਤਿੰਨ ਦਾ ਸਮੁਦਾਯ। (2) ਤ੍ਰਿਫਲਾ। (3) ਤ੍ਰਿਕੁਟਾ। (4) ਤਿੰਨ ਪਦਾਂ ਵਾਲੀ ਗਾਯਤ੍ਰੀ. ਤ੍ਰਿਪਦਾ। ੫. ਸਤ ਰਜ ਤਮ। (6) ਮਨੁ ਦੇ ਲੇਖ ਅਨੁਸਾਰ ਅਰਥ ਧਰਮ ਕਾਮ. “ਨਮਸ੍ਤੰ ਤ੍ਰਿਵਰਗੇ”. (ਜਾਪੁ).

So in English let’s have a breakdown:

ਤ੍ਰਿਬਰਗੇ - Tribarge – 9  Things, all present in Waheguru

• ੩ Manorat – The three objectives of the world
  • ਧਰਮ - Dharam – Religion/Dsicelpnie
  • ਅਰਥ - Arth – Money
  • ਕਾਮ - Kaam – Desire, Greed
• ੩  Gunn – The three virtues of the world
  • ਸਤ - Sato – Person who does Dharam
  • ਰਜ - Rajas – Person who wants Money (all about the $$$)
  • ਤਮ - Tamas – Tamsic – Greedy / Negative person who is always desiring something
• ੩ Halta – Three states of Mind/Being
  • Chardi Kala – Postive State
  • Samanta – Equilibrium state (stable, balanced) –
  • Tandi Kala – Negative

All that, is what you need to know when a single word is mentioned in Gurbani: ਤ੍ਰਿਬਰਗੇ

Today the Sikher Project released GurbaniDB, where you can download 52 translations and 22 transliterations of Shri Guru Granth Sahib Ji under a CC-BY-NC-SA license.

As far as I can tell these are entirely machine generated and of pretty poor quality – but that’s the point, these are destined to be used as starting points on a collaboritive effort to create actual usable translations and transliterations. Sign up to help here.

They suggest the use of the Code2000 font, which is actually a pretty ugly Shareware (meaning it costs $5 to use) font. It’s generally uneeded to use these giant Pan-Unicode fonts, as most modern operating systems include the proper regional fonts already. If you have to use one of these I would suggest either GNU Freefont or GNU Unifont. Even better than using these would be to get the regional Unicode fonts for the language you are using, for Gurmukhi the best one is SAAB which is released under the GPL.

So definitely check out this cool project, donate some money or time towards it if you think it’s useful (I do)

Check out this cool new Sikh project that just publicly launched Panjab Digital Library.
From the press release:

For the first time ever a searchable collection of millions of rare pages, on Sikhs and the region of Panjab has been made available. Panjab Digital Library (PDL) will include texts of manuscripts, books, magazines, newspapers and photographs and will be available to anyone with Internet access at www.panjabdigilib.org. This launch was made possible in part by the Nanakshahi Trust and the Sikh Research Institute.

Panjab Digital Library has been in development since 2003, charged with a mission to select, collect, preserve, digitize and make accessible the accumulated wisdom of Panjab. Texts were included without distinction as to script, language, religion, nationality, or other human condition.

Definitely a cool and worthy project that I’ll be keeping my eye on in the future.

After using Gurbani Anywhere on my phone for the last few weeks, my little brother has been getting pretty jealous of all the cool things I could do with it sitting in Diwans, Kirtans, or anytime on-the-go. So Yesterday I grabbed his iPhone and installed the iSikhi iPhone app, which promises to

• Work on iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iTouch devices
• Search Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji and view shabad(s) line by line with english translations
• Search with either First Letters or First Letters Anywhere
• Simple to install like any other iPhone application through App Store. No need to JailBreak your iPhone or any other modifications are required.

Let’s have a look at version 3 of this software. One thing to note is that my brother has the iPhone 2G, but is running version 3.0 of the iPhone OS. I suggest you view these pictures in order:

So the application is extremely clean and well-made. The gurmukhi keyboard and input work wonderfully. One thing I did notice is that performance on this older iPhone was definetly slower than expected, but not enough to bother me too much, or deter me from further use. The application makes good use of the iPhones screen real estate, and viewing the shabad in landscape mode with a slightly increased font makes it perfect for balancing on top of the vaja while practising kirtan.

There are some features from Gurbani Anywhere (which has an upcoming iPhone release also) are the transliterations, favorites, increased viewing options, and searching Bhai Gurdas Vara and Dasam Granth. Hopefully the iSikhi dev team can add some of these and more in upcoming releases.

Head on over to the iSikhi website, install it, donate, and post on the forums for help, comments, and support

I think it’s awesome cool that guru knows we’re retarded, every shabad tells us a little more, but repeats the last part a bit cause probably we still didn’t get it. Everytime in a different way cause we all relate differently to different situations (e.g Merchant/mom/dad/begger/rich person) Tells us the same/similar thing again and again until our dumbasses get it.
(maybe)

Every Saturday morning I get together with some like-minding Singhs and Kaurs to go over some bani. Currently we are going through Anand Sahib, trying to get some understanding of what this essential part of our nitnem is trying to teach us. It really strikes me sometimes how maybe in one pauri I don’t really get what’s going on (yes, I’m a dumbass) but by the time we’ve read the darpans explanation of the next pauri I totally “get” what’s going on in the last two pauri’s, all because every pauri is related to the other!

I’m sure many of you have come to similar revelations when going over bani, I just think it’s absolutely amazing that I have that revelation again, and again, and again everytime we read some more shabads, tukhs, or even sakhis!

If you’ve read Macleod and Macaullife, you should check out this book by Khushwant Singh. Now I have to admit, I haven’t read it myself yet, but it looks pretty interesting so I thought I should share it with the world! If you’ve read it, or if you do download and read it, please leave a comment and let me know what you think!

So my buddy Mr. Sikhnet contacted me and pointed me to this intriguing app called Gurbani Anywhere. This App promises to “enable fast and efficient methods to search & display Gurbani, on a truly mobile platform.”

So I registered on the website and waited (not-so)patiently for a several hours to get my membership approved. (Update: they have listened to user requests and enabled email activation rather than manual administrator activation for the website – definetly much easier to get to the download and forums now!)Finally got the download link so let’s have a look!

The app is distributed as a .zip file download from the site containing a terse README and a standard CAB file. Any owner of a windows mobile phone will know what this is and immediately what to do with it. Note: The application and cab file come in at a hefty 66MB so you will definitely want to transfer and install this to a storage card rather than to your phones (or PDA’s) main memory.

So I transferred the cab file over to my phone and installed it to the card. Let’s take a first-look visual tour!

Overall I found this to be a very nifty app, and I’m sure once the developers do some more updates, this will quickly  become the defacto standard in Sikh mobile applications. Personally I’ve allready replaced Sikhi To The Max – Mobile on my phone with this, as it’s much better, more stable, has active developers, has more features, and is generally a better product. The various cool features, and addition of SDGS and Bhai Gurdas Vara make it especially compelling. I would strongly encourage everyone with a windows mobile device to run over to the website, register, download, and give some positive feedback to the developers as soon as you can!

Unlike my usual self, I will not mirror the installer here as the developers have asked that everyone please register on their site/forums

*whoosh* <– What’s that sound you ask? Well that’s the sound of another cool book and worthwhile read flying your way. Compilation of Sri Guru Granth Sahib by Professor Sahib Singh (translation by Sardar Dalip Singh) is a really interesting and quick read about how the Sri Guru Granth as we know it today came to be.

Why the venerated Professor wrote this:

One day we, the members of faculty, were sitting in a verandah opposite to the’ staff room, a Professor told me that he had read first three chapters of my book on Gurbani te Itihas Baare – Gurus’ Compositions and the related History”, and’ the maximum one could say was that Guru Amar Das had with him some of the Compositions of Guru Nanak Dev. It could not, however, be established that Guru Amar Das had with him all the compositions.

Any other person after reading those three chapters could form the same opinion. People could still have the misconcept that it was. Guru Arjan Dev, the 5th Guru, who collected the Compositions of all the preceding Gurus. In order to solve this intricate problem, I undertook to compare all, the Compositions of Guru Nanak Dev and Guru Amar Das and wrote the book “Adi Birh Bare – About Compilation of Sri Guru Granth Sahib” during 1949 A.D.

This really is a very interesting read, and I highly suggest all of you guys check it out

A good option for non-windows users or people on other java-enabled platforms. It works sufficiently well and definetly meets it’s goal of providing something to put up for the sangat to follow along. I will add the download files to the downloads section soon, but all the relevant and up-to-date files are available on the SGDV website