Simple Guide to Sikhism (World Religion Series)

Rating:
Summary: good introduction
Review: Sewa Singh Kalsi's "Simple Guide to Sikhism" is pretty much just what the title says it is. At only 120 pages I breezed through it in a few days. The book covers Sikh history, teachings, traditions, scriptures, worship, festivals, rites of passage, sects and the diaspora. It is pretty easy reading and no one high school age or over should have any trouble with the text. The only problem I had with the book was that there is so much Punjabi (the language of most Sikhs) that I couldn't remember what all the words meant and they would be used later without translation and I had to flip to the glossary or flip back to the original spot a decent bit. Even then, that is largely unavoidable as many religious terms (not just in Sikhism) are difficult to translate and repeatedly translating within the text would have been even more distracting. This definately isn't the place to go for in depth knowledge, but that's not the point of this book. If you want a general idea of what Sikhism is all about then this is a good place to go.

Rating:
Summary: good introduction
Review: Sewa Singh Kalsi's "Simple Guide to Sikhism" is pretty much just what the title says it is. At only 120 pages I breezed through it in a few days. The book covers Sikh history, teachings, traditions, scriptures, worship, festivals, rites of passage, sects and the diaspora. It is pretty easy reading and no one high school age or over should have any trouble with the text. The only problem I had with the book was that there is so much Punjabi (the language of most Sikhs) that I couldn't remember what all the words meant and they would be used later without translation and I had to flip to the glossary or flip back to the original spot a decent bit. Even then, that is largely unavoidable as many religious terms (not just in Sikhism) are difficult to translate and repeatedly translating within the text would have been even more distracting. This definately isn't the place to go for in depth knowledge, but that's not the point of this book. If you want a general idea of what Sikhism is all about then this is a good place to go.