Vaars, saloks and pauris

Explanation, not scripture — scholar review pending. These pages explain the scripture to engineers and students. Every quoted line is verbatim from the pinned database and cited by Ang; everything else is explanation, written by engineers and awaiting a Granthi’s review. Where this page and the scripture differ, the scripture is right.

A Vaar is a ballad: a sequence of pauris — stanzas — each preceded, in the Granth’s arrangement, by one or more saloks, couplet-style verses. The pauris are by one author; the saloks that go with them are drawn from several Gurus and carry their own Mahalla headers. Twenty-two Vaars sit inside the raags; the pinned database lists them like this:

#	Raag	Angs	Pauris	Saloks	Pauris by	Salok authors
1	ਸਿਰੀਰਾਗੁ (sireeraag)	83–91	21	43	Guru Ram Das Ji (M4)	4
2	ਮਾਝ (maajh)	137–150	27	63	Guru Nanak Dev Ji (M1)	4
3	ਗਉੜੀ (gaurhee)	300–317	33	68	Guru Ram Das Ji (M4)	3
4	ਗਉੜੀ (gaurhee)	318–323	21	42	Guru Arjan Dev Ji (M5)	1
5	ਆਸਾ (aasaa)	462–475	24	59	Guru Nanak Dev Ji (M1)	2
6	ਗੂਜਰੀ (goojaree)	508–517	22	44	Guru Amar Das Ji (M3)	1
7	ਗੂਜਰੀ (goojaree)	517–524	21	42	Guru Arjan Dev Ji (M5)	1
8	ਬਿਹਾਗੜਾ (bihaagarhaa)	548–556	21	41	Guru Ram Das Ji (M4)	5
9	ਵਡਹੰਸੁ (vadahans)	585–594	21	43	Guru Ram Das Ji (M4)	2
10	ਸੋਰਠਿ (sorath)	642–653	29	58	Guru Ram Das Ji (M4)	4
11	ਜੈਤਸਰੀ (jaitasaree)	705–710	20	20	Guru Arjan Dev Ji (M5)	1
12	ਸੂਹੀ (soohee)	785–792	20	47	Guru Amar Das Ji (M3)	3
13	ਬਿਲਾਵਲੁ (bilaaval)	849–855	13	27	Guru Ram Das Ji (M4)	3
14	ਰਾਮਕਲੀ (raamakalee)	947–956	21	53	Guru Amar Das Ji (M3)	3
15	ਰਾਮਕਲੀ (raamakalee)	957–966	22	44	Guru Arjan Dev Ji (M5)	1
16	ਰਾਮਕਲੀ (raamakalee)	966–968	8	0	Satta & Balwand	0
17	ਮਾਰੂ (maaroo)	1086–1094	22	47	Guru Amar Das Ji (M3)	5
18	ਮਾਰੂ (maaroo)	1094–1102	23	52	Guru Arjan Dev Ji (M5)	1
19	ਬਸੰਤੁ (basant)	1193–1193	3	0	Guru Arjan Dev Ji (M5)	0
20	ਸਾਰੰਗ (saarang)	1237–1251	36	74	Guru Ram Das Ji (M4)	5
21	ਮਲਾਰ (malaar)	1278–1291	28	58	Guru Nanak Dev Ji (M1)	4
22	ਕਾਨੜਾ (kaanarhaa)	1312–1318	15	30	Guru Ram Das Ji (M4)	1

Why attribution needs a rule

Read line by line, a Vaar looks like a stream of alternating authors: a salok of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, a salok of Guru Angad Dev Ji, then a pauri. The pauri belongs to the Vaar’s author even though the line just before it carried another Guru’s ਮਃ header. So the pipeline gives a Vaar’s pauris the Vaar’s author (vaar_author), never the author of the preceding salok — one of the engineering invariants. The Vaar with no saloks is Satta and Balwand’s (Angs 966–968), the one composition in the Granth by those two authors; the short Vaar on Ang 1193 is Guru Arjan Dev Ji’s in Basant.

Detected by title, not by shape

Twenty-two is the count of Vaars by title header — a heading carrying ਵਾਰ with ਕੀ or ਧੁਨੀ. Detecting Vaars structurally, by runs of pauris, over- and under-counts, so the pipeline never does it. The vaars and vaar_units tables in the database hold every Vaar’s anatomy — /api/analytics/vaars and /api/analytics/vaar?id=N serve them — and golden_analytics.ndjson pins the count.

In the app

The daily banis include Asa Ki Vaar (Vaar 5 above, Angs 462–475), read both as printed and in its kirtan interleave with the chhants of Angs 448–451 — two Nitnem variants of one registry key — and a Vaar’s pauri numbers come only from the markers the scripture prints (Nitnem for engineers).

Read next: The Bhatts and the Swaiyye.