Traditions: Guru Nanak’s Sikh Japji Sahib,Qur’anic Islamic Motif: inexhaustible divine expression Connection verdict: substantive metaphorical convergence; direct borrowing unproven Article status: Expanded Date: 2026-11-04
Summary
Both passages use impossibly large verbal resources to mark a limit before the divine.
Read the two scenes
Japji 32 asks the listener to imagine not one but a hundred thousand tongues, multiplied further, each repeating the divine Name. The excess of speech leads not to a technique guaranteed to possess God but to the statement that the One is obtained by grace, not boastful claims. Qur’an 18:109 uses a different medium: even an ocean of ink, replenished, would be insufficient to write the Lord’s words. Both stress inadequacy of finite expression, but the Sikh stanza concerns yearning and repeated Name, while the Qur’anic verse asserts the inexhaustibility of divine words.
What connects—and what does not
Japji multiplies tongues reciting the Name and insists attainment is by grace; Qur’an 18:109 imagines the sea exhausted as ink before the Lord’s words are exhausted.
Sikh and Islamic communities interacted in early modern Punjab, but this paired metaphor alone does not document Guru Nanak’s use of this exact Qur’anic verse.
Why read them side by side?
This pair identifies a meaningful metaphorical parallel yet resists turning historical proximity into proof of a specific quotation.
Sources and reading notes
- Guru Nanak, Japji Sahib, stanza 32, Guru Granth Sahib Ang 7 (SriGranth English); Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa English translation — The stanza imagines tongues multiplied and the Name repeated without measure, then says the Lord is obtained by grace.
- Qur’an 18:109, Arabic and English renderings, Quranic Arabic Corpus — The verse says the sea would run out as ink before the words of the Lord, even with another sea added.
Research limit
A named parallel can establish literary reuse or related tradition; a general resemblance alone cannot prove borrowing. Linked editions and translations vary. Where a source is identified as secondary orientation, the comparison does not claim direct close reading of that tradition’s primary text.