The 31 raags and the watches of the day

Most of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji is arranged by raag — the melodic framework a composition is set to. After the opening banis, the Granth moves through a sequence of raags, and the great majority of its shabads sit under one of them. The first is Sirīrāg, which begins with its own heading:

ਰਾਗੁ ਸਿਰੀਰਾਗੁ ਮਹਲਾ ਪਹਿਲਾ ੧ ਘਰੁ ੧ ॥

and then opens:

ਮੋਤੀ ਤ ਮੰਦਰ ਊਸਰਹਿ ਰਤਨੀ ਤ ਹੋਹਿ ਜੜਾਉ ॥

The watches of the day

Alongside raag, Indian classical tradition ties melodies to times of day. The day and night are divided into eight pahars — watches of roughly three hours each. Certain raags are associated with certain watches, so that a raag sung at its proper hour is felt to sit most naturally.

The Raag Clock

Gurbani Soul’s Raag Clock brings these two ideas together. It shows the eight pahars around a dial and, for the current watch, the raags associated with it. Times follow your device’s clock, and you can switch on a solar mode that follows sunrise and sunset where you are.

The deep-night watch is deliberately left quiet, rather than filled in — an absence shown as content, not a gap. The Raag Clock is a way to notice the shape of the day, not a rule about when anything must be read.

The raag arrangement also tells you something about how the Granth was compiled. Rather than group compositions by author or by theme, the Gurus and Bhagats’ words are gathered under the raag they are sung in, so voices from different centuries sit side by side within one melody. Reading a raag from its start therefore moves you through many hands at once, held together by a single musical setting.

You can explore the raags of the whole Granth in the Knowledge Base, or read any raag’s compositions in order in the reader.