Whether the Dasam Granth is the tenth Guru's.
Three of its compositions — Jaap Sahib, Tav Prasad Savaiye, Benti Chaupai — sit in the daily Nitnem and in the amrit ceremony itself, and nobody disputes those. Whether Guru Gobind Singh wrote the rest, in particular the Charitropakhian, has divided scholars and jathebandis since the nineteenth century and still does.
The Dasam Granth question is the sharpest live textual dispute in Sikhism and it cannot be described neutrally without annoying someone. Nobody disputes that Jaap Sahib, Tav Prasad Savaiye and Benti Chaupai are Guru Gobind Singh's and are recited daily and used in the amrit ceremony. The disputes concern the rest — especially the Charitropakhian, a long cycle of cautionary tales about deception, much of it sexual, which critics say cannot be the Guru's and defenders say is being read without its frame. Positions map roughly onto institutions: Damdami Taksal, the Nihangs and Takht Patna Sahib treat the whole volume as the Guru's and install it in some places; Sikh missionary colleges and a large body of academic scholarship treat much of it as a court compilation. The Akal Takht has repeatedly declined to settle it, and the practical compromise — the Dasam Granth is never enthroned as Guru in a mainstream gurdwara, but its banis are said every morning — is the tradition living with an unresolved question.
The same ground, other faiths
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